Ideal Schools founder Elias van der Akker retires

“The managing director Brian McVean had a chance with some friends to go golfing in Portugal and he’s back tomorrow,” explains Mr van der Akker, known widely as ‘Al’. “We were covered, but then another senior member fell and broke her arm, so I stepped in.”

He jokingly adds that he had “nothing better to do” but after 40 years of running an award-winning business whose market has changed dramatically with the evolution of the internet and mobile technology, he candidly concedes that standing down has been difficult.

“It is quite hard,” he said. “I have hobbies to do – I joined a gym and I bowl as well. I’m nearly 80 so I’ve postponed my retirement a few times already.

“The business is in good hands. I should lie back and enjoy it, but you have probably spoken to other people who have had the same problem.”

Brian McVean (left), Elias van der Akker, and his son Scot (Image: Ideal Schools)

At an event in August to mark the 40th anniversary of Ideal Schools, Mr van der Akker announced his intention to retire before an audience of directors, business associates, tutors, and some of the approximately 25,000 students who have earned their qualifications through Ideal Schools during the past four decades. His son Scot has taken the role of chairman while Mr McVean, a long-time colleague within the business, assumed the post of managing director.

Mr McVean said his years working with Mr van der Akker have given him “insight into what a good business should be like”.

“When I was getting qualifications in management and accountancy, I did distance learning courses and that is just what they were – distant and uncommunicative,” he told the audience at the Voco Hotels Grand Central. “In contrast, Ideal Schools has always tried to ensure that students are treated properly and given the support they deserve.”

Originally from Holland, Mr van der Akker moved to the United States as a teenager with his family in 1957. During the Vietnam war he volunteered for the US Navy and in 1966 was posted to the Holy Loch in Scotland, where he met my late wife.

He returned to the US and earned an honours degree in economics from the University of Michigan under the GI Bill, then came back to Scotland to lecture and write courses. He soon joined the Glasgow office of ICS Learn where he worked initially as a tutor, then a senior tutor, and then a director.

“I worked for them for just under 12 years, but the last couple of years were frustrating because I wasn’t happy with the way things were going, and I thought I could do it better,” he said.

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“So one time I went to America and was talking to my dad, and he said well if you can do it better then just do it, so I jumped in with not a lot of money. I begged and borrowed furniture, carpets, and filing cabinets, and took loans from friends to get this thing going, and I’ve never regretted it, never.”

 The company’s main accreditation partners are the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB) and the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT), and earlier this year it was named the Large Training Provider of the Year at the ICB’s Luca Awards. Pass rates among its students – about 85% of whom are based in England, with the remainder in Scotland and other countries further afield – are above 90%.

Mr van der Akker recalls the “masses of mail” coming and going in the early days of Ideal Schools before the internet, mobile phones and social media. Face-to-face exam diets that took place just twice a year have been supplanted by online assessments that can take place nearly any day of the year, which has made some aspects of the job “much easier”.

But there are drawbacks as well: “We probably had more contact with the students back then – writing on their scripts what they had done wrong and so forth,” he said. “Now we have a lot of automatic responses that are still just as good, but you kind of lose that personal touch.”

Even so, Mr van der Akker said video and mobile technology have an important and increasingly significant role to play in meeting students’ changing expectations: “As long as the students pass the exams, that is the key.”

Q&A

Where do you find yourself most at ease?

At home reading with a good glass of red wine and some choral music in the background.

If you weren’t in your current role, what job would you most fancy?

Something self-employed definitely but after so long it is hard to imagine doing anything else! If pushed probably an economist working in statistical research, or writing about economics for a broadsheet newspaper.

What phrase or quotation has inspired you the most?  

I know that in 2023 these inspirational posters and memes are everywhere but I have none on my walls. I probably refer back to my dad’s solid advice more than anything, two examples of which were: “Always finish what you started” and “Don’t back down when you know you are in the right”.

What is the best book you have ever read? Why is it the best?

“How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie. As a young man in America the book was very well-known and popular and gave insights into the world of business and management for people who weren’t born into that life. It made sense to a non-academic crowd including the younger me! In terms of relaxing, I love John Grisham and especially his first and best novel A Time To Kill.

What has been your most challenging moment in life or business?

Start-up was tough – begging and borrowing furniture, carpets, filing cabinets, and loans from friends and family. Also 40 years means as many recessions as booms, each one a new challenge in terms of belt tightening while also being able to take advantage of any shoots of recovery.

What do you now know that you wish you had known when starting out in your career?

To be honest I did it then as I would now: enjoy the successful periods, invest for the future, trust the good people you employ, be honest and open with everyone you meet from the liftman to royalty. The most important is getting the right people – I have been lucky with that and have been rewarded with loyalty and commitment.