Wikipedia:EQuest Group

EQuest Group is a private educational group in Vietnam consisting of 16 member units in 4 main operating sectors: K12; University, college and vocational school; English As A Second Language (ESL); Education Technology (edtech). EQuest also has member schools that include kindergarten, primary school, secondary school, high school, colleges, universities and study abroad connections. As of July 2020, EQuest Group has 25 educational institutions in Hanoi, Hue and Ho Chi Minh City; There are 215 courses, 2,500 lecturers and staffs; 80,000 currently enrolled pupils and students.

History of formation and development
EQuest has two predecessors, EQuest Academy, founded in 2003 in Hanoi and the Institution of American Education (IAE). EQuest Academy was established and provides full-service for studying abroad in the US, including English programs with international certificates TOEFL, IELTS ... SAT, soft skills, document preparation, schools and scholarship information.

In 2007, EQuest Academy opened its first campus in Ho Chi Minh City and gradually shifted its focus to the Southern region.

Before, since 4/1999 in Ho Chi Minh City, another group of Vietnamese and American educational investors had established the Institution of American Education (IAE). IAE developed for a while and had some affiliated educational units such as American Polytechnic College,... Later, shareholders of EQuest and related companies carried out the acquisition of shares of foreign investment funds in IAE in the third quarter of 2013.

After this M&A deal in 2013, all member units of this group were restructured and operated under the legal entity IAE. Until 2016, TAEL Partners - one of Singapore's investment funds has invested in IAE to help IAE expand its operations and form a completed education ecosystem.

After that, IAE has taken a series of M&A activities to form a larger scale IAE and one of them is merging with Viet My VATC Education. From these predecessors, IAE continued to cooperate, invest and merge with more companies and schools to form a diversified educational group.

In November 2019, IAE decided to change its name to EQuest Education Group (EQuest Group). The group's goal now is to become more diversified, including bringing Vietnamese high quality programs and international standard programs such as the US Common Core to a large number of Vietnamese students with the best price. At the same time, EQuest is promoting the digital and technology application in teaching through the system of digital lessons and blended learning methods at high schools throughout the country.

EQuest's historical milestones: EQuest's recorded milestones show the journey to form an education group in Vietnam as follows:


 * 11/5/1999, the precursor of EQuest Group - Institution of American Education (IAE) was established. At this time, private education is still an area that has not been paid attention. This early move is a good start.
 * 2000: Broward College established the only branch in Vietnam and became a member of IAE up to now (2020)
 * 1999: Viet My VATC education became a member of IAE with the main subject of study is English, international English certificates training, which was also an area that very few people were interested in investing at that time.
 * 2007: American Polytechnic College became a member of IAE and was one of the first private colleges. Since then, the university has continuously opened up practical new fields for students and innovated programs according to the requirements of the labor market.
 * 2007: iTD Academy was established
 * 2009: IvyPrep Education was founded in Hanoi and was originally a center to teach English and prepare for study in the US. This is the second precursor of EQuest Education Group.
 * 2012: iSMART Education was established at the time that forming education technology (edtech) concept.
 * 2015: English Champion was founded and organized by EQuest Education
 * 2016: TAEL Partners invested in IAE
 * 2017: Saigon Polytechnic College became a member of IAE
 * 2018: Victory Experimental Education System became a member of IAE
 * 2018: Alpha School became a member of IAE.
 * 2018: Phu Xuan University became a member of IAE. After that, the school abandoned most of the old majors and built new ones to match the needs of the market and applied more advanced teaching technologies to the curriculum.
 * 2018: Newton Grammar School became a member of IAE.
 * 2019: DreamLab became a member. This is a member specializing in digital content for education with the goal of ensuring teaching quality and reducing the cost of lectures for EQuest. Digitalizing lessons help students learn at a much more good standard and affordable fee.
 * IAE changed its name to EQuest Education Group.
 * 2019: Platform 789.vn became a member of EQuest Group.
 * 2020: Invested in Hanoi College of Economics-Technology (HNET).

Products & services
EQuest Group has 4 operating sectors with 4 main product and service lines:

Every year, our ESL member units have English competitions for Primary, Secondary students and nationwide English Champion contest.
 * 'K12': including Victory Experimental School, Newton Grammar School, Alpha School, Dong Do High School (Ho Chi Minh City).
 * 'University, College and Vocational training': including Saigon Polytechnic College (SPC), American Polytechnic College (APC), Hanoi College of Economics-Technology (HNET), Phu Xuan University (PXU), Broward College Vietnam (BC)
 * 'Educational technology': including iSMART Edtech and its subsidiaries: iSMART education, 789.vn, iTD Academy ...
 * 'English As A Second Language (ESL)': Including IvyPrep Education, VATC, English Champion ... The main activity is teaching English and international certificates such as IELTS, TOEFL, TOIEC. In 2016, two members of EQuest implemented an exclusive solution in English training based on Jewish digital technology in Vietnam. Each year, the English Champion attracts more than 30,000 students and this is a nationwide non-profit activity for students.

Human Resource Policy
EQuest Group updates its Human Resource Policy according to new trends in the world, so there is no HR department in the group, but instead, there is a Talent Management department with the aim of finding, recruiting, facilitating and promoting the development of talent in the education industry to work with. By 2020, EQuest Group has over 2,500 employees. EQuest employs a large number of foreign teachers and looks for employees from other fields. Starting in 2019, after successfully merging a number of schools into the group, EQuest Group began to experiment with recruiting a number of senior staff for the new phase of the group.

Vietnamese-American Vocational Training College
VATC is one of the oldest leading English center focusing on teaching English at an affordable price. Currently, VATC has facilities in Can Tho, Dong Thap, Hau Giang and is continuing to develop the system. VATC currently has a team of more than 200 teachers and 82,500 trainees with 10 centers nationwide.

American Polytechnic College
American Polytechnic College focuses on training program that are applicable to social needs such as Health Care, Economics - Services, Foreign Languages, Design, and Information Technology. The programs are based on a credit system for 2 years and 4 months. American Polytechnic College regularly signs cooperation with universities and businesses to create transfer and job opportunities for students. In addition, to create a quality workforce for the market, in the 2020–2021 school year, the school has opened a 9+ College program for students who have just finished high school.

iTD Academy
iTD is one of the Cambridge Assessment English (CAE) exam academy. iTD organizes Cambridge English exams in Vietnam such as Cambridge English Qualifications, Cambridge Teaching Qualifications, Linguaskill.

iTD is an exam academy provides training program in Teachers of English to Speaker of Other Languages TESOL. The TESOL Certificate deployed by iTD is recognized in nearly 100 countries around the world, accredited by ALAP (Language Awards for Professionals - UK) - one of the accrediting organizations in UK.

IvyPrep Education
IvyPrep Education operates in the field of English training, study abroad scholarship and American K12 online courses. IvyPrep has 7 centers in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh city. In addition, IvyPrep offers many scholarships for students who study well and win prizes in Olympic exams.

iSMART Education
iSMART Education is an educational technology unit, offering English learning through Math and Science with a smart classroom model that is applied to 165 schools across the country with nearly 60,000 students enrolled. In addition, iSMART is also the organizer of many international competitions attracting thousands of contestants across the country.

Saigon Polytechnic College
Saigon Polytechnic College has two campuses in Go Vap and Cu Chi, HCMC. The school has diverse majors and especially advanced in Health, Healthcare, Education, Economics, ...

Victory Experimental Education System
Victory Experimental Education System consists of 3 levels: Preschool, Primary, Secondary School. It is also the first experimental school that combines experimental educational methods with bilingual training programs such as American primary and secondary school programs.

Alpha School
Alpha School System includes Primary, Secondary, and High School. Alpha School's educational model towards the comprehensive development of students include: Personality education; skills and knowledge development; 8 output criteria of a good citizen and a competent person.

Alpha School has activities to train personality and leadership as well as cultural activities for students

Phu Xuan University
Phu Xuan University is the first and only private university in Hue City, and is also the first university that applies "Learning Office" and "Learning Project" in training to develop the working skills for students. Phu Xuan University is sponsored by companies and organizations that need to recruit quality employees and has boldly committed to jobs for most students after graduation and reduced tuition fees for many disciplines to attract students.

Broward College Vietnam
Broward College Vietnam (Broward College) is one of 10 official international centers in the world of Broward College - Top 03 Community College in the United States. Students can choose 2 + 2 program (2 years studying in Vietnam and 2 years studying in the US) or can choose to study for 4 years in Vietnam.

Newton Grammar School
Newton Grammar School is a system of schools from primary school to high school. The school is consistent with creating and maintaining a high-quality Vietnamese education program and has many successful students. Currently, Newton has all 3 campuses in Hanoi.

The school has a variety of activities outside of its mainstream curriculum and offers scholarships for excellent students who apply early. At the same time, the school also has free courses for students and all of these activities are updated on the school website.

Hanoi College of Economics-Technology
The Hanoi College of Economics - Technology (HNET) trains occupations with great demand for the current labor market such as business, technology, administration, translation ... HNET pays special attention to training, new technology; Foreign language ability and global integration ability; theory application to practical activities and practical experience in the business.

789.vn
789 provides a platform that allows teachers to create tests online as well as organize and manage them through digital platforms instead of paperwork as before. The 789 products allow teachers to reduce 90% of the workload.; Before, to prepare test teachers need to look up the book and then compose it on the computer, print it out,..... now it is possible to look up on the database of about 500,000 exam questions and use matrix to mix the questions. At the same time, students can also be more flexible in studying with a bank of many review questions.

Dong Do High School
Became a member in 2019. Dong Do Private High School is located in Binh Thanh District, operating under both day-boarding and boarding model. Beside the academic activities, the school also organizes additional extracurricular activities of educational value for students.

English Champion
Founded and organized by EQuest Education, with professional sponsorship from iSMART Education, English Champion has become the leading academic English contest in Vietnam with a scale of 30,000 candidates participating nationwide each year.

Ivy Global School
Based in Florida (USA), currently being the partner of the leading educational units such as Mizzou Academy, Edmentum... The main product is American K12 program which meets the Common Core standard for global students with an affordable price.