It’s only simple maths. Being in a neighbourhood with 10 competitive foreign language schools, you are one out of ten. Quality factors and parameters may boost or repress your chances, so it’s pretty unlikely that you and your competitors will take a share of 10% of the local student population each. Still you are one […]

For the past few years that I have been writing this column, I have also implied that there are two different, however related, needs of the market that the average language school is serving. One is that of teaching a foreign language to the extent that the student is going to acquire it as a […]

Dear Yannis, I am a school owner, English teacher, holder of BA degree, an ex South-African residing in Limnos for the past sixteen years( an ardent reader of your column too.) Would you be so kind as to shed some light on the’ eparkeia’ issue? Has all talk of banning this blatant unfairness fallen through? […]

This year we have had the lowest turnout of junior students of the past 10 years throughout the country. This is definitely something to be further observed and analysed, without rushed assumptions. Low numbers of junior students also appeared in 1998 and 2001, but not to the extent of 2007. However, this earlier phenomenon provided […]

Though we are getting closer to the second decade of the 21st century, talking or even doing politics in Greece is still shaded by the last half of the 20th century, in terms of ethos, expectations and attitudes. To be more specific, although a government should be a team of “nation’s employees” serving the public […]

Running a business is a profession in itself. Two years ago, I introduced the concept of parallelism to business and the human body. By correlating various human resources to the different parts of the body, the position of the business owner becomes the “brain” of the business “body”. If this brain is to guarantee the […]

There are two kinds of competition in every market. Direct competition is practised by professionals of the same kind in an attempt to lock a larger share of the common target market. In the case of Greek ELT it is schools vs schools, publishers vs publishers, distributors vs distributors and so on. Indirect competition is […]

Why numbers alone is not all you need for the development of your educational business and how the CAN DO statements of the business owner reflect on it! Closing 2006 I proceeded with the review of 18 of my co-operations, the first phase of which was completed in the last year. Reviewing results, the first […]