Go Enrol have just completed their second annual survey of English language schools, and shared the highlights with us. They surveyed 46 school directors, principals and marketing managers in schools around the world. The results paint a mixed picture of the industry, with less than half of the schools reporting that they are optimistic about their prospects for the coming year.
Go Enrol’s main conclusions are that the industry is highly fragmented, which makes it hard for a school to stand out from the crowd; schools are still highly reliant on agents and personal recommendations; but they are gradually placing more importance on their websites as a way to attract students.
A change from last year is the perception that fewer students are going to UK language schools in order to have holiday while also learning some English, although over a quarter still cite ‘holiday’ as a motivation. This change chimes with the general view among ELT publishers that people are learning English more and more for pragmatic and entirely career-centric reasons. Unsurprisingly, almost all respondents cited ‘improving employablity’ as a motivator for students.
A school’s brand was seen as key factor affecting students’ decisions about where to study by over half of the respondents, which is obviously a major challenge for smaller independent schools and increases the pressure on them to provide a good enough experience for students that they a) return and b) recommend the school to others.
Finally, schools were asked how optimistic they are that their school’s business will grow in the coming year:
The number reporting that that they are either ‘optimistic’ or ‘extremely optimistic’ has fallen from 69% last year to 48% this year. 15% are ‘pessimistic’, compared with 9% last year.
Photo from https://www.flickr.com/photos/aigle_dore/
Great article, I recently spent some time in Cape town, during my time there I took part some private tuition British English classes. Mainly for curiosity and also because I am a business man who needs to be aware of the variation between both British and American English. The people I met on this course confirmed that they were there purely for ‘improved employability’ reasons. I too could say that was my main motivation whilst also being on holiday. I think with life becoming more busy and employability becoming more competitive, people are combining business with pleasure more frequently.
You may find this interesting : http://www.lalschools.com/en/schools/lal-cape-town , http://www.lalschools.com/en
So basically what they are saying is that people get more and more unsure about this.