Galileo Global Education

About Galileo Global Education

Galileo Global Education (GGE) is a world leader in private education, owning over 60 universities across four continents. By offering education to nearly 200,000 students GGE is in a position to positively impact thousands of young people’s lives on a daily basis. As a result, social and governance values, as well as environmental management are central to their company DNA.

GGE is relatively mature in its ESG strategy and has been collecting and reporting on ESG data since 2019. They are now in the fifth year of reporting and collect data on 120 KPIs that are customised to be relevant to the private education industry.

The challenge: growing regulatory responsibilities and increasing complexity around carbon emission calculation across 60 global locations

GGE already has an advanced ESG KPI reporting framework in place which is based on metrics relevant for the higher-education sector. They also have reporting demands implemented by their investors, Montagu, who require data on the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR). The internal ESG KPI reporting framework is managed using a different ESG software provider, while GGE uses KEY ESG to manage the reporting requirements set by their investors. Alongside this, GGE is focussing on the impending challenge of CSRD, and the marked increase in reporting requirements which this new regulation poses. CSRD requires an even more data-driven approach and GGE will need to map its double materiality assessment result to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS) and produce a set of auditable, CSRD-compliant ESG reports to include in their annual management reports.

Another challenge outside of the increasing regulatory demands is the sheer number of reporting sites which GGE has to include. They have over 60 universities spanning four continents, each of which have users operating in different languages and time zones. It is therefore essential that they can work collaboratively in a centralised platform which manages the workflows and helps GGE keep track of the reporting process.

The solution: KEY ESG’s platform is simple to use and provides “excellent” carbon accounting functionality

Benjamin Negre, ESG and Risk Manager at Galileo Global Education, explains that “KEY ESG is engaging and easy to use from the start.” He was able to use the self-guidance documents and in-platform guides to get set up and complete the onboarding for the 60 sites withing GGE’s portfolio.

Benjamin continued:

“Using KEY ESG has been a significant improvement on previous years when we were using excel sheets with over 100 KPIs which we had to collect data on. KEY ESG enabled us to streamline and centralise the reporting process and customise the metrics so that they are relevant for our business.”

Due to the broad geographic spread of GGE’s universities and schools, their users have a range of different ESG understandings and Benjamin noticed that KEY ESG’s carbon calculators and estimators really helped with their Scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon calculations in particular.  Leading to more consistency and higher accuracy in the calculated data.

Benjamin explains that:

“Improvement of the ESG reporting process has revealed the benefits of a more data-driven culture and has enabled the senior management team to effectively prioritise ESG activities.”

Leveraging high quality data that can be trusted for management decision making, GGE can now confidently assess and manage ESG risks and capture opportunities.

Another significant commercial gain of using the KEY ESG platform is the potential cost reduction of CSRD compliance. If GGE adopt KEY ESG’s CSRD compliance module, they would be able to import the results from its double materiality assessment into the platform and seamlessly begin reporting on the applicable ESRS data points. Centralising CSRD data and building a scalable and repeatable process around CSRD compliance would imply not only a one-off cost win, but also significant ongoing efficiencies and cost advantages. In the medium term, this would enable GGE to leverage its resources to manage compliance, and also to continue to produce real results for the communities in which the company operates.

What’s next

Last year was the first year that GGE has used KEY ESG for its shareholder’s reporting and marked a dramatic improvement in the data quality and efficiency of their ESG reporting process. The next step will be to more from data collection to improvement, and the senior leadership team are now pushing for this. This comes at a good time, since the CSRD regulation will also require them to set targets and track progress towards them. GGE will be able to use KEY ESG to set targets and actions on what and how to improve and will also be able to leverage the platform to manage progress towards the realisation of these targets.  KEY ESG is excited to continue its strong relationship with GGE and looks forward to helping them achieve their ESG goals.