Japanese educational service provider ISA Inc. signed an agreement to form a strategic partnership with Golden Path Academics Vietnam Jsc. (GPA) on Monday.

This included a minority equity investment in the Ha Noi-based education company.

GPA said that the sum invested by ISA would be used to reinforce the quality of its domestic summer camp and outdoor camps, create a comprehensive international camp programme, expand its English training programmes and build the capacity to help more students prepare for college and career abroad.

The value of the investment was not disclosed at the signing ceremony.

Founder and CEO of GPA Dao Thu Hien said, “With this partnership, our goal is to give Vietnamese students access to a broad range of short-term study abroad and summer camp opportunities in English speaking countries such as the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK, where ISA has operations.”

Hien said that partnership would also open up a two-way exchange of students between Viet Nam and Japan.

According to Atsushi Ikegame, senior managing director of ISA, Asia had become the next focus of ISA, adding that this was the first alliance of the Japanese leading educational service provider with an Asian company and the investment in GPA was strategically important.

Tokyo-based ISA, founded in 1970, is one of the Japanese educational service providers with the longest business history in the industry, which offers English-speaking camps and mid-term, long-term study abroad programmes with approximately 25,000 enrolments per year.

Founded in 2012, GPA aimed to help Vietnamese students become global citizens with education services such as English language training, camps and skills, and study-abroad consulting. - VNS