Tefl.NET Forums

As a retiring businessman, i would rather open my own language school teaching English, French, German, Spanish and Dutch, in countries like the Philippines or Malaysia, but not limited to those two countries. What advice can any of you give me?

Here is an article on How to Set Up a Language School which may be of some help.

You have to ask yourself what the market demand for European languages other than English, is in Asia. You would have to offer courses in all of them to make any $$$ I reckon.

Do you have any experience running a language school? If not, it I would recommend thinking hard about it before jumping in. I, like you had a business background, but without my wife (who had 15 years of teaching experience) it would have been almost impossible to start.

Be extremely wary of purchasing a franchise - the cost of it can often be better invested in doing your own marketing, and selecting the course books, and the exams preparations your students will want to go for. A start-up base of resource materials, and lots of help and advice can often be obtained free by the leading textbook publishers. Other organisations will help with advice on recruiting teachers.
There are also some inexpensive, dedicated software packages for automating much of the running of a language school (compiling courses from student enrollments to match course levels, timetables, allocating available part-time teachers, compiling lesson plans, etc., etc.)

I am also exploring the possibility of opening an ESL school. I taught ESL at a number of schools in the 1990's. I imagine the field is quite different from those days. Does anyone know of a site that publishes projections and demographics about the need for ESL?

Thanks
Paul