Blog
Running a School: Systems, Part 5
It’s also very important to think about your personal life. What you want your daily, weekly and yearly routine to look like. Your hopes, dreams and aspirations, now, in the near and not too distant future, and after you ‘retire’. This should start to tell you some...
Running a School: Systems, Part 4
We’re not quite getting started on the systems just yet. First comes your mission, vision and values statement. This may well be one of the hardest things you’ve done. I certainly found it very difficult. A few years ago we restructured to form a parent company which...
Running a School: Systems, Part 3
Please note, for those running schools, we will assume you have a great curriculum and qualified, experienced, happy, well-recruited and trained teachers enrolled in a professional development course. You have to realise you are not important. Your business is, but...
Running a School: Systems, Part 2
We’ve also previously discussed what business you are actually in. You may be running an English school. You may be selling crêpes. Either way, your product is neither learning English, nor eating food. Anybody can learn English or sate their appetite anywhere. The...
Running a School: Systems, Part 1
recent posts while away on holiday or business, I hinted at having a business that worked for me while I’m not there. To do this, you need systems in place. At a recent school owners’ conference here in Japan, a small, self-employed, teacher-owner-operator recently...
Happy Reiwa
We’re enjoying an extended holiday here, until May 12th. This is very important. It's best to spend your precious time doing what you want, not what other people want, making your own rules, your own plans and your own schedule. The trick is turning some time you...
Running a School: What business are you in? Part 5
While English may be the world’s lingua franca, it’s a lingua franca more often spoken by non-native speaker to non-native speaker. There are more English language learners in China than there are native speakers of English in the whole world (400 million to 360...
Running a School: What business are you in? Part 4
I meet hundreds of school owners each year here in Japan. There seems to be an overwhelming concern with the teaching of English to children. I’ve been collecting data on my schools for over 20 years. As I showed at a recent conference, the highest performing students...
Running a School: What business are you in? Part 3
The reasons you think students come to your school may not be the same as why they actually do. It is likely, as previously stated, that the drive is not economic, but rather social, cultural or artistic. Very little data is available on the private language school...
Running a School: What business are you in? Part 2
Four weeks ago I wrote about three well-known businesses that suffered by not adapting to a changing market and disruptive approaches and technologies. Since then I travelled to England, and as usual, people were very surprised to hear stories about Japan, a country...