Blog
Running an English School: Keeping Teachers and Staff Happy
When staff leave we always do exit interviews. I’m sure we never get a 100% accurate picture, as people may be reluctant to give their true feelings face-to-face, but we learn a lot. I always begin interviews by telling people I want their honest opinion, whether I...
Running an English School: Managing Staff
Once teachers are employed, they then have to be managed. At Modern English, we provide a structure under which teachers can work, but also give them freedom to implement their own ideas. This comes in the form of a curriculum and admin system that take a lot of the...
Running an English School: Training Teachers
Training can be a huge headache for small schools. It is great if the teacher you have just recruited has several years’ classroom experience and a TEFL certificate of some kind, though be sure to check they are actually familiar with everything their course or...
Running an English School: Recruitment
Recruitment is defined by BusinessDictionary.com as: The process of finding and hiring the best-qualified candidate for a job opening; it includes analyzing the requirements of a job, attracting employees to that job, screening and selecting applicants, hiring, and...
Running an English School: People, People, People
Anybody who has heard me speak at a conference will have heard me say there are only three problems running English schools: students, parents and teachers. People, people, people. Leaving aside the students and parents for now, we are left with the teachers. We need...
Holiday Greeting
Dear All, Many thanks for reading the Moran Actually blog this year. 2018 has been a great year for me personally and for our various businesses. We have brought in new schools, new clients, and, at the time of writing, still have some exciting announcements to make....
Starting or Buying an English School: Number Crunching
Last week we mentioned income, salary, rent and pricing. The other stats to look at are: Capacity: How many bums on seats could the school actually get, and what percentage of that is filled? At Modern English we use the term ‘seat’ as a restaurant would use the term...
Setting Up an English School: Start-up or Buyout?
One way to get into your own school is to buy an existing one. Given the often-transient nature of school owners, schools come on the market quite frequently. Whether they are good or not, only close inspection will reveal. When you find a school for sale, you’ll need...
Running an English School: Tell Me About the Numbers
Numbers, numbers, numbers. So, tell me about the numbers. I ask this question all the time when looking at schools to buy, or help out with management. Sometimes people have very good answers and have kept all the figures since they started. More often, they only have...
Advertising for English Schools, part 2
There are lots of ways of doing marketing, branding and advertising cheaply. Get the name of your school on T-shirts and jackets and wear them all the time. Your local supermarket wouldn’t like you handing flyers out between the aisles, but probably wouldn’t ask you...