Chapter 3. Analysis
3.2.2 Environment
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isn’t this violating the “all-English” teaching policy from the school’s mission?
3.2.2 Environment
1. Problem 1 – No Chinese
A “no Chinese and all English” learning environment makes a big difference while children are learning English. When children are placed in a no Chinese environment, they are forced to speak English. Some parents might feel that it’s too much of a burden for young children.
However, children are able to use their body language and the limited vocabulary they have to start a simple conversation with their peers. Moreover, young children are less afraid of making grammatical errors and are able to speak freely without thinking. Therefore, some schools made rules for children to speak English only once they step through the front door, and not just in classrooms. If children speak Chinese, they will be scolded or receive some sort of minor punishments. The purpose of this is to encourage students to speak English as much as possible.
Most importantly, the goal is to get the students to feel comfortable speaking English in their daily lives. When the investigator walked into two of the schools, once the door was opened, all she heard was English. Even the front desk staff members were speaking English to one another, not just to students.
This makes a strong impression on potential parents when they walked in for try outs. On the other hand, at the other schools, not only teachers, but also students were all speaking Chinese.
From a parent’s point of view, would they want to spend so much money for their children to learn English in a learning environment that still speaks Chinese all the time? This would be something to consider.
2. Problem 2 – Number of classes per week
In order to improve faster, the number of classes per week is also another factor. If students meet five days a week, they are exposed to English every day. The more opportunity you have to speak, read, and write in English, the faster you can improve. That’s why there is a saying
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“practice makes perfect.” Thus, if students only study English twice a week, the materials that could be taught are limited. Teachers would have to spend more time reviewing the materials taught from the previous class first, before moving on to the next lesson. Children’s learning progress from classes twice a week would definitely be slower than classes offered five times a week. As listed in Figure 9, out of the seven schools that the investigator visited, only the small non-franchised school offers a five-day-a-week curriculum for students. Others mainly offer classes that meet twice a week only.
English Classes
0 2 4 6 8
5 days/week 2 days/week 4 days/week 1 day/week
Schools
Figure 9 Number of English Classes per Week
3. Problem 3 – Differences in each chain store
In order to gather and verify more information, the investigator called around different branches for each school. Surprisingly, the investigator noticed quite a few differences within the same corporate-owned or franchised school.
The first difference noticed was that not all schools follow the same price list. They also don’t follow the same class time arrangements. Even though the corporate office franchised their school names, the individual owner of each school is able to change around the class schedule and the price.
Due to the different geographic locations, braches in the metropolitan areas would definitely look different than the smaller ones in rural areas. Some schools would look very fancy and big
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from the outside, yet others would only have a small company logo on the outside. Some of the schools only use the name of the English cram school to recruit students to learn English.
However, their main business target is to offer after school program to help students to finish their homework from their primary school or in other words, providing a day care service. The shocking news found from the investigator was that the director from one of the “Joy English School” said that they offer FREE English classes if students enrolled in the Chinese class every day. Ironically, Chinese seems to be more important than English at “Joy ENGLISH School”.
Another differences noticed was if the school offers kindergarten, then their school would have more facilities and bigger area for the children. This case was especially true at Hess and at Happy Marian.
3.2.3 Attitude
1. Problem 1 – Unfriendly attitude
When the investigator was at one of the big well-known English schools, she didn’t feel welcomed when she walked in. One of the schools refused to let her visit the school because she hadn’t arranged an appointment with the school ahead of time. After she had explained herself at the front door, the staff member at the front desk asked for her telephone number and told her that the director or the person in charge would call her back, but they never did. Even though the school might have a strong brand name recognition in the market, that doesn’t necessary mean they shouldn’t welcome walk-in first time customers.
In order to find out if this was true at all the other branches, the investigator visited another branch. This time she was able to walk in and find out information about the school. However, the staff at the front desk wasn’t very professional either. When she walked in, there was a kid who was sitting at the front desk writing his Chinese homework next to the staff member. When the staff member saw her walked in, the teacher told the kid to work on the assignment by himself first and that she would help him later. While the investigator was asking about the curriculum, the price, and the time schedule at the school, the child interrupted our conversation because he had
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some questions. The front desk staff stopped the conversation with the customer, and said to the student, “What do you need? CAN’T you tell I’m in the middle of something?” with a stern look on her face and in a mean voice. Unfortunately, that poor kid got yelled at by the front desk staff in a loud voice, which is something that a parent would not want to see.
It is interesting to see how her attitude had changed from when she talked to the investigator to when she spoke to the student. Was she pretending to be friendly to the customer? If she could be so mean to the students when a potential customer is there, how would she be when the parents are not around? In conclusion, the investigator not only did not feel that the school appreciated her business, but also observed an unfriendly attitude. No matter how big or how strong the company image is, leaving a nice and friendly attitude is very important to parents.
2. Problem 2 – Unprofessional
How people talk, act, and work determines whether you are a professional or amateur. A professional school keeps its workplace clean and orderly, and provides high quality services. If a parents or a potential customer walks into the school, a professional staff member at the front desk should always be prepared and ready to introduce the school’s program right away. A professional school should also have fliers or program brochures, or business cards and contact information of the school ready for parents in handy. This was not always the case at another brand-name school the investigator visited.
At first, during a preliminary telephone conversation, the front desk staff clearly stated that she wasn’t able to explain the school’s curriculum and asked the investigator to stop by the school in person and speak to the school director. When the investigator got to the school, the front desk staff still couldn’t provide any kind of services. While talking to the school director, the director asked the assistant to get the school’s program and class schedule. However, she couldn’t find it and had to print out new ones from the computer. The school did not have the brochures ready nor did the assistant know which program to print out. It seems like the front desk assistants are not well-trained. Without the director, no one seems to be able to handle the business. Having
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the customer wait there while they prepared it is just unprofessional. These kinds of administrative tasks should have been done and been well-prepared in advanced. If simple things like would cause such a chaos, who know how well the school is running.
3.2.4 Long term management
1. Problem 1 – Strong market positioning for brand name schools
While walking around major streets in Taipei, mainly around elementary or junior high schools, huge bulletin boards of different English schools are easily noticed. Most schools also have a mascot or a unique logo that represents the school. Bigger chain schools typically have larger budgets to spend a great deal of money on advertisement each year to promote their school.
Some schools also have catchy advertisement songs or slogans on TV to attract children’s attention.
When the advertisement is played over and over again on TV, the public is exposed to the brand more and they can recognize those schools more easily. With the internet technology today, all these brand-name cram schools also set up websites for busy parents to find out more information about them.
A strong marketing position tends to show the public an impression that the business would be in market for a long period of time. This is something that smaller privately-owned schools cannot compete with. Without advertisements or websites, parents might get the wrong impression that the school isn’t doing well and cannot afford spending more money on selling the school. In the long run, this is something that smaller schools should improve to show that they are a strong established business that would last in the market.
2. Problem 2 –No career improvement at small schools
The size of the company makes a difference in the long term business. When the company’s business scale is smaller, there aren’t as many career opportunities compared to bigger chain stores that have corporate offices. This could be a problem because teachers might not be loyal to the job or to the company. Teachers might not be committed to his or her job as a professional teacher.
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They will only stay with the company for a short period of time. When the staff and teachers at smaller schools seek a better job opportunity, they would leave the company. The flip side of this is that when the business scale is bigger, a lot of decisions must be approved through the corporate office. This usually takes longer time to process and usually a lot more company policy would be involved. When there are more staff members in a corporation, the company would have to spend more money on employee’s benefit packages. Due to the huge amount of employees in the whole school, they would all be sharing the amount of resources or employee benefits, not to mention lower salary wages. On the other hand, the chances of all these issues might not be a problem at smaller schools. Smaller privately-owned schools usually spends less money on all the costs, therefore they are able to spend the extra money they saved from advertising on employee’s salary.
In conclusion, although there isn’t a great career growth in smaller companies, there are still some advantages that most chain-store schools can’t offer. Therefore, there are pros and cons on both small schools and bigger chain schools.
3. Problem 3 –No published teaching materials for small schools
Majority of the schools were established during the late 1980s (Figure 10). They have been in the English cram school industry for quite a long time. Although AMC Language School didn’t join the industry until 6 years ago, they have been in the English magazine business for more than 30 years in Taiwan. All of these schools has opened many chain stores or opened themselves up for franchising and their businesses have been growing. As a result, these schools were able to publish their own textbooks and teaching materials. They are able to make profits from not only the children’s tuition fees but also the material fees from their own publishers. However, as for the smaller privately-owned schools, they are using textbooks and teaching materials that could be bought in the open market. This could be a problem because if other competitors know what type of materials are being used, they can easily copy the school’s curriculum system. Therefore, in the long run, smaller privately-owned schools might want to consider to start publishing their own textbooks and teaching materials
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Figure 10 Year School Established
3.2.5 Other
1. Problem 1 – Time slot overlap with other cram schools
Parents nowadays wish their children to be talented and do well in all subjects. After students are finished with their primary school day, the majority of them go directly to crams schools. It could be English class, math class, piano class, or swimming class, just to name a few. Finding the right class schedule that fits the parent’s needs is a critical factor when parents pick cram schools. Some parents might feel that academic subjects are more important than extra-curricular activities. Then they would want their children to learn English every day after school. However, if students have English classes five days a week, they wouldn’t have time for other classes such as math, or music. Children’s free time after school would either be all occupied with English classes or might be overlapped with other classes.
On the other hand, some parents might not want their child to only learn English. For that reason, most English cram schools offer classes that only meet twice a week. For other parents who might feel that other classes are equally important and would prefer the twice-a-week class.
Everyone has their own different needs. No one has the perfect answer to how many days students should spend on learning English. Therefore, it all comes down to what kind of outcome parents are looking for.
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Price could be a main problem or factor when parents choosing cram schools. Table 3 below shows the fee for each school.
Table 3 Tuition Fee Comparison
Smart
Kids
Happy
Marian Hess Giraffe Kojen Joy AMC
Days / week 5 days 2 days 2 days 2 days 2 days 2 days 2 days English class fee $11300/m $8800/3 m $8000/3 m $9000/3 m $7,600 $8200/3 m $7800/3 m Material fee $2,500 $2,500 $980 $1,000 $1,300 $1,000 $1,500 Hours/ class 2 2 2 2 2 1.5 1.5
$6,780 $8,808 $7,992 $4,500 $7,608 $4,104 $3,900
Estimated profit each class / month including material fee
$36,780 $68,808 $31,512 $16,500 $38,808 $16,104 $21,900
Based on the price table, it is interesting to see that if you calculate the average fee per class, privately-owned English schools are more expensive than the other chain stores (Figure 11).
However, it is also the only school that’s offering only five-days-a week classes. On average, it is about one hundred dollars more per hour compared with other brand-name schools that offers only two classes per week. If you only look at the price as a factor, then most parents might think it’s too expensive and would consider choosing other schools. Though price might be important, it is not the only thing to be considered. Therefore, for parents who are able to afford the tuition fee and care more about children’s learning progress, and quality of the service, they would be willing to spend more money on their children’s education.
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Figure 11 Average Tuition Fee per Class
From a business point of view, if privately-owned schools could charge more tuition fee because they offer more classes per week, then why don’t all the other brand-name schools also offer five-day-classes? Actually, the popular brand-name schools and chain stores do offer either classes that meet twice a week or four days a week, both two hour per class. However, they are still mainly promoting the twice a week classes. The reason behind this might be because the tuition fee for classes that only meet twice a week are cheaper for parents. Therefore, parents wouldn’t be scared away by the numbers. Then again, if we analyze it in another way, the result is quite different. These bigger brand-name schools have more students per classroom and not to mention more stores throughout Taiwan. If you estimate the profit they would be making per month, it’s is obvious that the privately-owned schools are not making more money (Figure 12).
Due to the fact that there are more available capacities to recruit more students at different chain stores, the company would be able to make more money. Over all the more chain stores or franchised stores the schools have, the more profit they would be making.
All of the estimated profit does not include all the expenses, such as employee salary or rent from the cram schools. Different schools recruit different types of English teachers. The salary between foreigners, ABC teachers, and local Taiwanese teachers would not be the same for sure.
As we know from previous analysis, majority of the schools are hiring Taiwanese teachers as
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English teachers. Another reason for this could possibly be because it is cheaper to hire them compared to foreigners or teachers who have educational degree from a foreign county. Then the larger chain schools would have more budgets to spend on advertisement. Thus making more profits for the school.
Figure 12 Estimated Profit at Different Cram Schools per Month
3.3 Online Survey Results
It should be noted that the response rate was low (n=21) and while informative, not generalized statistical inferences can or should be made. There were twenty-one respondents and majority of them were in the 31-40 age group. The first question was to ask the respondents to name out three English cram schools they know. Figure 13 shows the results from the respondents.
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Figure 13 Top of Mind Awareness
It is not surprising to note that the most frequently mentioned schools are among the largest national chain schools in Taiwan. Some of the schools mentioned are English cram schools for younger children while some are schools that are targeted for adults or for people who are trying to pursuit higher education. The schools that appear to have the highest top-of-mind unaided recall were Giraffe, Hess, and Joy. Generally speaking, people tend to recognize famous brands more easily. Not coincidentally, the top three schools identified (Giraffe, Hess and Joy) were also the schools that the mystery shopper had visited.
As illustrated in Figure 14, among all the schools they mentioned, 47% of the schools are franchised and 24% are chain stores managed by the corporate office. 29% of the schools the respondents mentioned are privately-owned schools. This, however, should not be surprising.
Among the more than 14,000 registered English schools in Taiwan, the market leading major name
Among the more than 14,000 registered English schools in Taiwan, the market leading major name