Private education shooting the lights out in South Africa

South Africa’s JSE-listed private education companies are performing exceptionally well, indicating a growing demand for private education in the country.

Over the past week, private education providers STADIO and ADvTECH released trading updates revealing that both companies expect a significant boost in earnings for the first six months of 2025.

Curro’s latest results for its 2024 financial year also showed strong growth in terms of earnings and learner numbers.

All three companies have also revealed plans to expand their operations, with planned school openings and acquisitions set to grow their networks.

In South Africa’s private education market, ADvTECH and Curro are direct competitors. Both companies mainly operate at the primary and secondary education levels, while STADIO operates primarily at the tertiary level.

ADvTECH’s roots date back to 1909, when the first establishment that ADvTECH would absorb was launched.

Brian Buckham founded Advanced Systems Incorporated in 1978, later called ADvTECH.

The company was listed on the JSE in 1987. In the following decade, it launched Varsity College and Crawford Schools and bought Rosebank College.

Today, ADvTECH is South Africa’s leading private education provider and a continental leader in education, training, skills development, and placement.

Its biggest competitor, Curro, was established in 1998 when Chris van der Merwe opened a small independent school with 28 learners in a church in Durbanville.

Van der Merwe later built the first physical Curro school with ten bricklayers and thirty labourers. This marked the start of a rapid growth curve and, by 2010, it had five campuses and about 3,000 enrolled learners.

This growth continued from year to year. Today, Curro has 178 schools across 82 campuses, with about 70,400 learners, including schools in Botswana and Namibia.

STADIO was created by Curro from the combination of Southern Business School, Embury Institute for Higher Education, LISOF, and Prestige Academy.

As Curro continued to grow, it snapped up higher education institutions to create STADIO. 

In 2017, Curro unbundled its interest in STADIO and listed the company on the JSE in October 2017 to create a separate business focused on higher education.

Financial performance

All three of these private education companies have reported or expect to report strong results, as they benefit from the growing popularity of private education.

In its latest results for the 2024 financial year, Curro reported revenue growth of 8% year-on-year, with its profit skyrocketing by 203% to R97 million.

The company also recorded a 13% increase in earnings per share to 18.6 cents for its 2024 financial year.

Curro also recorded that it had 72,638 learners on its roster at year-end, with plans to open three new campuses in 2023 in Walvis Bay and Oshana in Namibia, as well as Barlow Park in Sandton.

In ADvTECH’s latest trading statement for the six months through June 2025, the company said it expects its basic headline earnings per share and basic earnings per share to grow by between 13% and 18% compared to the first half of the 2024 financial year.

This indicates that ADvTECH is set to release another strong set of results, as the company continues to go from strength to strength.

For its 2024 financial year, ADvTECH reported revenue growth of 8% and a 13% increase in operating profit.

Its enrollment in South Africa also grew by over 10% to 45,000 students, with it having a capacity for an additional 10,000.

STADIO released its trading statement for the six months through June 2025 on Friday, 14 August 2025.

This statement showed that the company expects its earnings per share to grow by between 22.7% and 32.5%, with headline earnings expected to rise by between 22.8% and 32.7%.

In its latest results for the 2024 financial year, STADIO grew its revenue by 14% to R1.6 billion on the back of higher student numbers.

Crucially, this improved revenue flowed through to the bottom line, with STADIO’s profit after tax increasing by 17% to R276 million.

Core headline earnings per share, the company’s preferred performance metric, rose by 28% to 31.5 cents per share.

STADIO is also bullish about its future growth. The company is on track to reach its pre-listing forecast of 56,000 students by 2026 and believes it can reach 80,000 students by 2030.