Apollo acquires BPP - law school chiefs respond

On Monday 8 June Legal Week reported that the parent company of top UK law school BPP had accepted a £303.5m takeover offer from US education provider Apollo. The move will be closely watched by the legal profession as it effectively means that a US company has bought degree-awarding powers in the UK (BPP is the only private company in the UK to hold such powers). The College of Law, the largest law school in Britain, also has degree-awarding powers, but it is a charity.

I received this statement from the Quality Assurance Agency - the body responsible for granting degree-awarding powers: "BPP College of Professional Studies has taught degree-awarding powers, which cannot be transferred to another organisation. The Privy Council granted BPP the powers to award taught degrees for six years with effect from 1 September 2007. A change of ownership may not, in itself, affect the entitlement to award degrees, provided BPP continues to operate as the entity which has been granted degree-awarding powers, and within the terms of the criteria relating to those powers." (BPP College is not transferring ownership to another organisation, but will continue to be run as a subsidiary of BPP Holdings.)

To gain an insight into what this news will mean for legal education I talked to the chief executives of the two leading providers of post-academic stage legal education - Nigel Savage of the College of Law and BPP Law School's Peter Crisp.

To listen to the interview with Nigel Savage, click here, while the interview with Peter Crisp can be accessed here. Mike Semple Piggot is the editor of Insite Law magazine and also blogs as Charon QC.