Does work go faster and better in person?
Agnieszka Pędzimąż
On the 18 – 19 th August Project Erasmus + „Transformation of a traditional language school by means of business model innovation” had its continuation this time in person in Czech.
Tomas Bata University in Zlin at Faculty of Management and Economics organised the meeting for all project partners to present and discuss the results of the questionnaires conducted among language school owners, managers or directors and customers.
Q1 questionnaire aimed to analyse the offer of language schools in five different countries: Poland, Czech, Slovakia, Croatia and Latvia. The aim of partners’ discussion was to find dependencies and proportions in the offers from language schools.
There are many inquisitive conclusions from the questionnaires. One of them is the fact that more than 50 % of the schools run their businesses as private limited companies and employ only from 1 to 5 employees. However, there are more employed lectures almost up to 9 per school. 28 % of language schools are functioning 25 years or more on the market.
Does this long life existence mean that it is easy business to run?
No doubt this business requires a lot of stamina and a lot of self-engagement. However, 32% of school owners decided to set up their businesses because of the desire to become independent. Moreover, 11,5% of language schools have been opened owing to lucky coincidence. And all of the owners are still in the business.
Teaching in public schools give certain safeness but on the other hand teachers are attached to particular levels of English and the same style of work. Therefore the main aims of running a language school for the questionnaire respondents were independence and teaching in a different way. Language development of clients seems to be as significant aim as two previously mentioned. The conclusion seems to be one – the flexibility in both teaching and managing your own time matters immensely in the life of the language school owners.
Not only school owners or managers seek for the the better time management. Managers from various industries also require different offers from language schools and therefore 74 % of schools allow these customers to create their own courses. Although , there are still traditional teaching methods in vast number of schools which are conversations, language courses and private lessons.
A huge change can be observed in the number of students that can attend group courses. Not long time ago there was a tendency to create courses with 12 students in a group. Nowadays, 47 % of language schools claim that they offer groups consisting of only 5-6 students per group. Most schools offer mainly and purely language courses. However, there are schools that experiment with unusual courses and except for a language they also sell courses in personal development.
Is this going to be the future for language schools? Do school owners or managers have to get prepared for a rapid change in the school offer? Whether personal development will be inseparable part of a language course?
Hopefully the answers to these questions are going to be found.
