Page 31 - ELG1709 Agu-Sep Issue 450

INTERVIEW .

‘Communal

crystal ball

gazing is

very useful’

Richard Day, owner of English in
Chester, talks about how language
schools have been working together to
Caption style
raise standards and tackle upcoming Richard Day with
Nigel Paramor
thus
challenges in the UK market

n Tell us a bit about who you are and your role at the find an appropriate way forward. Sharing experiences is very valuable
language school English in Chester. and we learn a lot from each other.
I am the owner and current director of marketing. Over my 41
years at the school I have worked in and led all departments. I n What are the benefits to the schools of being in a looser
handed over the role of principal to Nigel Paramor 10 years ago. Nigel network rather than a chain of schools – both for the staff and
is in charge of running the school and this leaves me with time to the schools overall?
represent the school nationally, regionally and internationally and So often in a small/medium-sized business you wonder if you are
focus on developing the business. on the right track. Within the network we are not alone. It is great to
have someone to bounce ideas off.
n English in Chester belongs to The It is also great to have ten minds sharing
English Network (TEN). What does the So often in a small/ experiences in their particular area of
group aim to do? operation, ranging from social programmes to
TEN is a network of ten like-minded medium-sized business academic management. The pool of expertise
independent schools, all based in England. we can call upon is considerable.
Each school has been operating for many you wonder if you are on
years and the owners, directors and managers n TEN has six schools in the top ten
have also been in post for a long time and are the right track. Within and eight in the top twenty of the EL
familiar faces in the industry. Our schools differ the network we are not Gazette UK Language Centre Rankings
in size and location but are similar in many (see rankings supplement). That takes
respects. alone. It is great to have some doing – how do you manage to
We meet regularly to share ideas and achieve that level of consistency?
benchmark ourselves against other members someone to bounce Our individual members have always
of the network. Schools of the same type ideas off focused on quality. This is something
often have similar problems, and we believe that is very important for me as an owner
in sharing our experiences in the search for and manager. We are regularly faced with
continuous improvement. balancing commercial against educational
Our admin staff, our academic managers and our marketing teams considerations and I am pleased to say that the commercial aspect
meet annually to learn from each other. We want people to visit our usually takes second place. On a practical level, the network enables
schools and regularly run familiarisation trips. We also run occasional us to exchange views on responses to new circumstances affecting our
in-country events to raise the profile of the network. Together, we industry.
can also do some very cost-effective work. For example, we recently
received the UK government’s GREAT Challenge funding for an n What are TEN’s future plans?
exploration of the Indonesian market. At the moment we are confronting change and the market of the
future. We are individually looking at our products and our services
n How much freedom do the schools have to do their own and are fine-tuning them to ensure that we remain in business for
thing within the group? years to come.
Each member school is entirely free to ‘do their own thing’. As we are all the same ‘type’ of school, some communal crystal ball
The network is built on consensus, sharing experiences and trust. gazing is very useful. We also want to explore new income streams
Members are independent and set their own goals. We often find, together. We have a lot of experience and expertise within our
for example, that we have a similar management issue or response to membership and we feel that this can be corralled effectively to tackle
specific market conditions. In these cases we can work together to larger and more prestigious projects.
30 August/September 2017

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