English Schools Continue to Lose Business
According to the Japan Times today, sales in language related businesses in Japan have fallen for the fourth straight year, with a 5.2% drop to 767.2 billion yen in fiscal 2008. Foreign language schools dropped some 5.6%, with the drop in sales to adults the most marked, with a 9.1% decrease. Only one on one lessons saw a slight 1.6% rise overall.
According to a Geos spokseman, the decline began about 5 years ago, with the Nova bankruptcy also having a large impact. The article goes on to blame the global economic downturn in part, but this doesn’t appear to be the full cause for the decline.
I have been involved in one form or another with teaching English to Japanese people for most of the past 15 years. I’ve worked for an English school, have taught at Colleges and High Schools, have taught children from 3 years of age and up, and have taught plenty of my own private classes. Just from my own experience, and the people that I have run into, I’ve felt a growing reluctance from people to turn to ‘production line’ English instruction for their learning. I would even say that the trend may have started more than 5 years ago, but the major English schools at that time were still competing madly with each other and probably weren’t hit by the effects as soon as some of the smaller schools. As the growth in one on one classes shows, people that I have dealt with tend to be a lot more savvy regarding what they want out of their learning experience, and tend to prefer a more ’boutique approach’ where they can make the rules to some extent.
Its hard to ignore the impact of the internet too. Casual searches can pull up thousands of resources for people that want to learn English their own way, at their own pace. Of course, if they really want to be able to communicate they will need to seek out native speakers, but every city in the country seems to have ‘Friendship Societies’ and a million ‘circles’, where people can join with others in the community for language instruction for relatively low cost and therefore without the need for such a huge commitment.
Personally, I’ve never liked teaching in the production line environment of a big school, and I find it difficult to see how the great army of largely untrained teachers that descended upon Japan in the heyday of the big English schools could really be worth the money that was being paid for them… It takes a long time to really understand the techniques and approaches that are most appropriate for teaching English in Japan, and by the time that many teachers start to find their feet their oddysey in Japan is over… Those that stay, tend not to stay for years and years at the larger schools.
Its no real surprise to me that the industry is suffering. Call it less disposable income, or call it a more savvy language learner. Either way, I find it difficult to imagine large growth in the one size fits all language instruction market. If I were starting a teaching career right now, I would be looking at the growth of child language education, which will be mandatory in elementary schools starting in 2011 (although having taught young children for several years I know that this takes a very special amount of energy….)… Otherwise, I would try to find small groups or individuals that want you to cater a product specially for them. I think that the language learners of the future are more likely to be those that know what they want, and want someone who can deliver it most effectively.
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Tags: English, English Teaching, Language Learning
Great post!
This is really a great analysis of the situation. I think that the shifting tides present a bunch of unique opportunities for those willing to adapt or create specialized products. I wonder how the big schools will deal with it…
Great article. Not only is the economy in a slump but as you mentioned there are other means of studying including online courses and social network groups. I myself, however, prefer the old fashioned – study language face to face – in the classroom.
Yes, I agree with you Billy. I think the ’shape’ of those classrooms is changing, to a more personalized approach, but when it comes to learning to speak a language there will never be a substitute for… speaking to people….
The Internet offers so much, content, functionality, learning systems, language partners and more. It will change how languages are learned. We are just at the beginning of the change. The monopoly of the classroom and formal instruction will crumble.
Thoughtful article, Guyjin, and realistically, why wouldn’t students turn away from “production line” learning ? I currently teach Elementary, Junior High and adult students in classrooms, and online. Personally, I suspect that more and more students, especially adults, will gravitate to online learning. For digital natives, of whom more are born every day, there’s almost no delineation between a real and virtual classroom. The only time you’re even remotely conscious of the medium is when it doesn’t work perfectly. Moreover, along with the obvious cost and convenience benefits, having access to vast textual, visual, and audio resources in realtime makes online learning far more effective.