JEXIT

In case you hadn’t heard, my position as CEO of the IHLS Group ended – rather abruptly, it has to be said – a few weeks ago. After 26 years in the role this represents a profound change, both for me and for most of the IHLS team. The reasons behind the change are many and various; suffice it to say that my business partners and I have had serious differences of opinion for some time about how we should deal with present challenges, and the sort of route we should take going forward. They eventually decided that they would better be able to push ahead with their own agenda without me – which makes perfect sense. Time will tell if their decision pays off.

This unforeseen change caused ripples which stretched way beyond my immediate circle. Dozens of people from all over the world have sent messages expressing their sense of shock and incomprehension. One of the most memorable said “It’s as if they’d decided to take the Eiffel Tower away from Paris”. (I assume the author wasn’t simply referring to my height.) I’m truly grateful for all the support. I’ve even had a couple of tentative job offers!

Which brings me rather neatly to my next point. What do I do now? Well, Plan A is to try to negotiate a share swap with my partners so I get to keep some of the companies in the group and they keep the rest. That would leave everybody with something to work on. I could then set about expanding my own group of companies. But this sort of negotiation is easier said than done. While I have no interest in holding a minority stake in a group of companies that I’m not able to influence, my partners may have no interest in dividing the group, for all sorts of reasons.

Plan B is to start again, either alone, or with other partners. People ask: “But don’t you want to retire? Do you really need the hassle of starting another business?” My answer is simple: I love doing all sorts of things – travelling, gardening, reading, watching sport, playing music – but these are never going to be more than hobbies. I seem to have been genetically programmed to start and manage businesses in the field of international education. That’s what I do. And to a certain extent, what you do (and how you do it) defines who you are.

Watch this space.

 

 

 

TV interview

My recent interview (in English) on El Punt Avui TV. Talking about how I started out in the language teaching business, some of what’s happened over the past 40 years and what may happen in the future.

Musings on pricing

How much should a language course cost? Needless to say the answer will depend on all sorts of variables: how long the course lasts; whether it is face-to-face, online, or a mixture of the two; where it takes place (country, region, town/city, location); whether the teacher is professionally qualified; how many students are in the class; whether the course is a standard ‘general’ language course or something more specialised; whether materials are included in the course fee; and so on.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume we’re talking about a general, ten-week semi-intensive course which consists of 100 hours’ face-to-face tuition, given by a professional language teacher in a private language school located in the centre of a mid-size town in the south of Europe, with a maximum of 10 students in the class. How much might a course of this description cost?

An easy response would be to say: ‘as much as a typical student is prepared to pay’. But what’s a typical student? Someone who is paying for her own course or having it paid for her by her company or parents? Someone who desperately needs to take a course to pass an exam? Or someone who is studying for no obvious reason?

Again for the sake of argument, let’s assume our typical student is a young adult who wants to improve her career prospects and her ability to communicate on her travels, but doesn’t have any urgent need to demonstrate her skills and is paying for her own course. How much could she be asked to pay for the course outlined above?

Is there any way of calculating a ‘Goldilocks price’ that is not too cheap (so the school ends up losing income unnecessarily) or too expensive (so that the student is frightened away)? This ‘just right’ price should help the school generate the sort of margin it needs to provide its services now and in the future, while giving the student the sensation that she’s getting good value for money. So what? More than 500 but less than 1,500 euros? That still leaves quite a wide range of possibilities to choose from.

There are dozens of pricing strategies designed to help companies determine the price of their goods or services (see for example http://bit.ly/2owp5Wz). A couple of the most familiar are cost-plus pricing and value-based pricing.

Cost-plus pricing is relatively straightforward: first work out your direct costs (the cost of the teacher, primarily, but also such items such as photocopies for students, course-specific advertising campaigns, etc.) and divide this by the average number of students per group. Let’s assume these direct costs come to 25 euros per hour and the average number of students per group is 5. Direct costs per student hour are therefore 5 euros. Next calculate your overheads or indirect costs (which means everything that isn’t a direct cost, such as your rent, lighting, administrative staff costs, etc.) and divide this by the total number of student hours you have over a given period (could be a month, a term, or a year). Let’s assume this adds another 3 euros to the cost per student hour, making 8 euros in total. Adding a gross margin of 25% will put 2 euros onto the total cost, giving a selling price of 10 euros per hour, or 1,000 euros for the 100-hour course. Sound reasonable?

The answer to this question will most probably be: that depends how much other schools in the same location are charging for a similar course. If a local competitor has lower salary costs and/or lower overheads and/or is happy to work with a lower margin, they could be offering a very similar service for as little as 600 euros. That’s a whopping 40% less.

So should we base our prices on what our competitors are charging? Well, we should certainly know what the going market rate is. But the danger of basing our pricing on what the guys down the road are doing is that it can easily lead to a price war, or a race to the bottom, leaving margins wafer thin or non-existent, and staff feeling underpaid, unappreciated and unhappy.

An alternative to a cost-plus pricing strategy is value-based pricing. This is based on the idea that the client (student) will pay in relation to the value she obtains from the service (course) she is receiving. In the case of a 100-hour language course, the primary value will most commonly be defined in terms of how much progress she has made developing her language learning skills. That can be measured in broad terms by progress tests and/or continuous assessment, but it will probably also involve ensuring our student feels that she’s made significant progress.

Other factors that contribute value will be less obvious but may be just as important: Is she enjoying the course and enjoying interacting with her teacher and the other students? Is the learning environment clean and comfortable? Does the timetable fit easily into her other commitments? Are the reception staff efficient and welcoming? Is the school easy to get to, and/or easy to park near? Does the school offer extra-curricular services and activities such as social events or access to digital study materials outside classroom times?

The value of all these additional factors can also be measured to an extent, but in many instances it could boil down to individual attitudes or preferences. So objectifying all these values can be tricky, never mind attaching a price to them.

As we all know, perceived value can also be heavily influenced by brand recognition and advertising. Car A may be objectively better (more fuel-efficient, more reliable, more spacious, faster …) than car B, but if car B is branded Mercedes or Range Rover (for example) it is likely to command a premium price.

Building brand value is easier said than done. It requires both delivering services that are perceived to be better than average (in some significant way) and communicating these differentiating values clearly and effectively. What’s more both delivery and communication usually need to happen over a prolonged period of time. But if we’re successful at enhancing the perceived value of our brand, the price of our sample course could be closer to 1,500 than to 500 euros. And no-one will complain.

Catalonia today (6th October, 2017)

Having lived in Catalonia for nearly 40 years, I feel I might be able to offer some insight into the current turbulent situation, albeit from the perspective of a semi-outsider who is mainly concerned about the impact this turmoil could have on our business.

A slice of context first: Up until the global economic crisis of 2008, the vast majority of Catalans were more or less content with the degree of political autonomy the region enjoyed. The Catalan government controlled many key ministries such as education and culture and the Catalan language had been restored to pre-Franco levels of use. In opinion polls only around 10% of Catalans supported pro-independence movements, despite the fact that Catalonia was a net contributor towards Spanish state finances.

The financial crash turned everything around. Hundreds of businesses went bankrupt, unemployment soared (especially among young people) and both the central government in Madrid and the Catalan regional government were forced to adopt unpopular austerity measures.

Suddenly the difference between the amount of money Catalonia contributed to the central government and the amount it received back, became a burning issue. If Catalonia could only keep more of the wealth it generated, the argument went, there would be less need for austerity, and the mountain of debt that the Catalan government had built up could also be reduced. (Parallels with the Brexiteer’s attitude to the EU are strikingly obvious.)

A wide spectrum of Catalan politicians ranging from centre-right Christian democrats to anti-system leftist extremists saw their opportunity to gain support by fanning the flames of popular resentment, pointing the finger of blame at the government in Madrid, and arguing that independence was the only solution. Their task was made easier by the countless corruption scandals that surfaced from Spain’s governing Partido Popular party and the lacklustre performance of its leader, Mariano Rajoy. Of course the Catalans had almost as many corruptions stories of their own to digest, especially from the now defunct centre-right Covergencia i Unió party, but that simply provided the left-leaning separatist parties in Catalonia with more ammunition to fight their own, local battles.

A proposed change to the Catalan Statue of Autonomy that would have recognised Catalonia as a nation within Spain, and which was initially approved by the Spanish parliament, was overruled by the Spanish constitutional court in 2010 at the behest of the PP. This was a slap in the face for many Catalans and added a large amount of fuel to the already smouldering fire.

In the last elections for the Catalan Government, those parties in favour of independence won a majority of seats, although not a majority of votes. Despite not having a clear, popular mandate, the multi-party coalition government decided to press ahead with a route map towards full independence. A key step in the process was to hold a referendum, which would ask the local population if they were favour of forming a new Catalan Republic or not. The Spanish constitution in its current form (a document negotiated in its day by representatives from all over Spain, including a number of eminent Catalan politicians) doesn’t allow for this sort of separatist referendum and predictably enough, the Spanish government asked the courts to declare the proposed referendum illegal.

For their own political reasons, neither the Spanish government nor the Catalan government decided that it was in their interests to seriously attempt to find any middle ground so, despite some largely ineffectual attempts by the Spanish government to prevent the referendum taking place, it went ahead as scheduled last Sunday, October 1^st.

Around two million Catalans turned out to vote, many of them queuing stoically in the rain for hours on end. This represented around 42% of those eligible to vote. Most polling stations were left to get on with it, but the police who had been drafted into the region especially for the occasion, attempted to disrupt voting in a significant number of locations. Sickening images of policemen in full riot gear kicking and beating people who were trying to block their path, throwing would be voters down stairs, or pulling peaceful protestors along the ground by their hair, soon filled the world’s social media. What purpose this outrageous behaviour was supposed to serve is anyone’s guess, but it certainly backfired.

So while the turnout didn’t exactly give the Independence movement a clear and unambiguous mandate to push on with their ambitions, the brutish behaviour of the police has given them yet more emotionally charged reasons to proclaim the merits of their case.

Where will it all end? No-one yet knows, but the political chasm is wider than ever and neither side is showing any inclination to back down. The Catalan government is threatening to declare unilateral independence in the next few days; the Spanish government says it won’t give in to blackmail.

Catalans frequently describe their culture as being dominated by ‘seny’ which is akin to common sense or reason. A little more of that on all sides wouldn’t go amiss.

Personally, I feel a profound sense of sadness. It’s not quiet despair, but I don’t see too many reasons to feel optimistic either. Popularism merged with nationalism is rarely a pretty sight. And while I can empathise to an extent with the Catalans’ sense of grievance (especially after the horrific scenes from last Sunday), I can’t sympathise with the way that many of their politicians are attempting to deal with it.

A slim majority of the people who live in the region probably feel equally disillusioned with the way the political landscape is evolving. But this slim majority has been largely silent up to now.  The protestors, the ones making nearly all the running, are the people who think that the answer to their problems lies along the separatist path. Many of my friends, colleagues, clients and neighbours are in this camp, which makes it rather hard for me to express a divergent opinion. But I’m not convinced that separatism will solve anything. On the contrary, I’m concerned that it could easily plunge the region into a deep and long lasting recession, which would make a difficult situation a whole lot worse.

Why it’s good to be green

Back in 2007, on my way home from the ICEF workshop in Berlin, I was trying to think of new ways that we could make IH Barcelona stand out from the ever-increasing crowd of private language schools offering Intensive Spanish courses in our fair city. Having spent the previous few days in environmentally conscious Berlin, an idea occurred to me: we could perhaps become the world’s first accredited environmentally friendly language school. This could have three real benefits:

1. It could become a useful marketing tool, helping us attract environmentally conscious students from other parts of the world.
2. It might help us lower some costs, by cutting back on the amount of paper, water and energy we use.
3. It would lessen the impact our activities have on the environment and, as the slogan says, every little helps.

Having spent some time researching options, we eventually decided to go for EMAS which is the European Union’s Eco Management and Audit Scheme. To summarise what this involves:

• We have to publish an Environment Policy which specifies our aims and approach
• We have to set ourselves targets to reduce the consumption of energy, water, paper and so on.
• We have to recycle everything that can be recycled
• We have to ensure that we avoid purchasing products that can be damaging to the environment (e.g. cleaning materials) and replace them with products that are as benign as possible
• We have to keep detailed records of all of the above and undergo two external audits each year.

We almost certainly were the first language school in Spain (if not the world) to achieve EMAS accreditation and we have now been on the register for 8 years.

So have the benefits we anticipated from adopting this policy materialised? Yes and no.

1. Our Eco-friendly policy probably hasn’t as much impact as a marketing tool as we originally hoped, although these things are notoriously difficult to gauge. One corporate client once told us that they had chosen us to be their provider as they were also on the EMAS register. But that’s just one case of our environmental policy having tipped the buyer’s decision in our favour. Has this policy influenced other clients in some shape or form? Our surveys suggest it might have, but not to any great extent.
2. While we’ve clearly lowered the amount of money we spend on utilities and consumables, we’ve had to spend rather more money than we’ve saved. Primarily because we’ve had to employ a part-time (but extremely enthusiastic) Environment Officer to oversee and manage the whole process. Secondly because the cost of the external audits isn’t exactly cheap.
3. The area where the policy has probably been most successful has been on lessening our impact on the environment. We have reduced the amount of energy we use in relation to student numbers consistently, year on year. The same with water and paper. We still have room for improvement – we still can’t persuade all our staff and students to always switch the lights off when they leave a room; and the amount of paper we use still seems excessive to me. But there is definitely a greater awareness of these issues in the school and while there will always be a number of cynics, peer pressure to consider how our behaviour impacts the environment increases each and every year.

So has it all been worth it? On balance I believe it has. We’re not about to stop global warming on our own, but at the very least we’re able to help raise awareness and we’re seriously trying to set a good example.

As our slogan says “The Earth is our International House”.

For more information on EMAS: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/emas/index_en.htm

To see our environment policy: http://www.ihes.com/bcn/medioamb.html

 

Alternative facts

At IATEFL 2016 Silvana Richardson gave an impassioned presentation which generated a great deal of discussion and support, both at the conference and on social media. She repeated her plenary at the ELT conference organised by IH Barcelona earlier this year and once again she had the audience on its feet.

Her argument, in summary, is that it is time to stop treating English teachers who are non-native speakers of the language as second class citizens. English language teaching institutions shouldn’t discriminate between native and non-native speakers of English when they hire teachers; rather they should simply hire people on their ability to teach the language effectively.

Silvana uses a number of arguments to support her case. One of these is that bilingual or multilingual non-native speakers of English are often more effective classroom teachers than monolingual native English speakers as, having gone through the process of learning English themselves, they are often better able to anticipate the many pitfalls that students are likely to find themselves stuck in. No-one in the profession would take issue with that.

Silvana also claims that a familiar argument, that it is the market that demands native English speakers, is false. She attempts to explode this myth (as she sees it) by providing data from a number of studies conducted in different parts of the world. Two of these studies were taken from SE Asia where, according to the data referenced, a majority of students actively prefer non-native speakers (understood to be speakers of the students’ own language) as teachers. Anyone familiar with this part of the world won’t be entirely surprised by this finding. Grammar translation is still a common teaching method in many classrooms in the region and that requires a thorough knowledge of the students’ mother tongue – something most native English speakers lack. The fear of losing face is also a cultural constant in this part of the world and this fear is often compounded in the presence of foreigners.

But does the argument hold elsewhere? The only data Silvana uses from Spain to reinforce her thesis (that the market doesn’t care) is taken from a study conducted at a university in the Basque region where around 50% of the 70 students surveyed stated they didn’t especially value native English speakers. But university students don’t get to choose their teachers in any case. Could this lack of choice have influenced the result?

The ‘alternative fact’ (to coin a current phrase) is that a large proportion of students studying at private language schools in Spain (i.e. those people who do have a choice where to study) indicate a very clear preference for having native English speakers as teachers. A recent survey conducted with past and present students at IH Barcelona bears this out.

The survey asked students to evaluate 10 qualities an English language teacher might have on a scale of 0 to 10. Some of the qualities students were asked to evaluate were:

• Experience
• Qualifications
• A friendly and caring nature
• Knowledge of the students’ language
• Etc.

The survey was completed online by 408 students.

The teacher quality that scored the highest percentage of responses (57,7%) with the maximum score of 10 was ‘Gives interesting classes’. ‘Native speaker’ was the quality that scored the third highest number of maximums, with 52,25% of respondents awarding this quality a top score of 10. But if we add the number of respondents scoring ‘Native speaker’ with an 8, 9, or 10 on the scale, it comes to a massive 83,4% (see graph). This out-performs nearly all the other qualities listed in the survey including even ‘Experience’ (76,1%).

So, whether we like it or not, ‘native speaker’ is evidently a quality that students in this particular market value highly. I think we can safely say that it is therefore very likely to be one of the factors that influences these students when they are evaluating their options and deciding where to study.

Having provided data that suggests the market doesn’t really care, Silvana seems prepared to admit that some people might care after all, as she then goes on to an ask a very pertinent question: Is the customer always right? In other words, should we as school owners and directors, go along with our students’ preferences for native speakers or “challenge them, rather than pander to them”?

Let’s state the obvious: in a highly competitive market, the providers of any service would be crazy to ignore the strongly felt preferences of their potential clients. Such an approach would be tantamount to commercial suicide.

This is precisely the situation that the owners and directors of private language schools in Spain find themselves in. Whether we agree with our clients’ perceptions or not, a large majority of those people prepared to pay to improve their English language skills (or their children’s language skills) evidently value teachers who are native English speakers very highly. Does this mean that we can’t or won’t employ non-native speakers as teachers? No, we can, we do and we will. But it does mean that there is a clear and obvious risk in doing so; a risk that is ignored by Silvana’s claims that

a) the market is essentially agnostic and

b) those students that do prefer native speakers should have their views challenged.

‘Discrimination’ is an ugly term that no-one wants to be associated with. A majority of the private language schools in Spain (including all the schools that I’m involved with personally) pride themselves on being companies that will not discriminate on gender, race, sexual preferences, age, weight, height, or anything else. But we are working in the world as is, not as we’d like it, and it will take time to wean our students away from the idea that ‘native speaker’ somehow equals ‘better value teacher’. The risks inherent in challenging this widely held view too quickly or too openly – especially in the current market conditions – are simply too great.

One final thought: this debate, which is a very lively one, seems to centre almost exclusively on native or non-native teachers of English. Presumably this reflects the global demand for English and the huge numbers of English teachers, both native and non-native speakers, needed to address it. The debate feels rather different if we think about teachers of other languages. Imagine a student coming to Spain to take an intensive Spanish course, for example. Would such a student be surprised and possibly even disappointed if her teacher turned out not to be a native speaker of Spanish? I think perhaps she would.

A video recording of Silvana’s plenary at IATEFL can be found here: http://bit.ly/1XxfxDH

 

 

Online language learning providers

The number of companies offering online language learning is going through something akin to an algal bloom. To borrow another metaphor, this time from the animal kingdom, perhaps it’s time to try to sort the sheep from the goats.

Broadly speaking online providers offer either language learning materials designed for self-study, a tutorial service of some description, or both. Each of these services can be good, bad or undeniably appalling.

So, what makes good self-study content? There are no hard and fast rules, but I think we could agree that there are a number of key criteria:

1. Online material should have been written by people who know something about second language acquisition. This is a subject that provokes all sorts of disagreements, but most people in the profession would probably agree that languages are not best learnt simply by heavy doses of grammar translation (for example).
2. Material should also be instructive. It other words, it should be as effective as a good teacher at explaining why the language behaves in a certain way. This probably means it should be interactive on various levels; not simply indicating whether an answer is correct or not, but also explaining why.
3. Material should also cover as many aspects of the languages as possible. Not just grammar and vocabulary, but all the skills, pronunciation, colloquial language use, etc.
4. Crucially, online material should be interesting, relevant and motivating. In short it should be fun. If the material is dull, students will quickly switch back to YouTube (it only takes a couple of clicks).
5. User interfaces should be both attractive and intuitive to use; you shouldn’t need a course in order to be able to do the course.
6. The materials should be accessible on different devices: PCs, laptops, tablets, phablets and quite possibly mobile phones, although small screen sizes can limit the sort of activity that’s feasible. Students should also be able to use the browser or operating system of their choice.
7. Stating the obvious, but the programming the makes the material interactive needs to be glitch-free, on all devices and with all browsers.
8. Students’ work should register on a Learner Management System or e-learning platform so their progress can be tracked and time spent studying recorded.
9. Students should be invited to give feedback about their study materials and encouraged to make suggestions for improvements.
10. Last but not least, online material shouldn’t include content that is designed primarily as a marketing tool and has little or no pedagogical value. For example, progress tests that are designed fool students into thinking they’re making more progress than they are; or voice recognition graphics that delude students into thinking their pronunciation is accurate to 72%. Voice recognition software is getting better and will become useful at some point, but we’re not there yet. The same could be said of adaptive learning software.

What about the tutorial service? The key criteria here are these:

1. Are the tutors proficient speakers of the language themselves? No, this doesn’t necessarily mean “native speakers” but a B1 level simply isn’t enough.
2. Is the provider employing fully qualified professional language teachers or are they happy to contract students or retirees looking for a little extra income?
3. Have the tutors been trained to teach online? It is different enough from classroom teaching to warrant some form of training.
4. Crucially, are the tutors working out of a 24/7 call centre, or are students assigned their own tutor to work with? Knowing their students obviously helps teachers focus their tutorials on their students’ needs and also helps them anticipate any difficulties they may have. Not knowing who you’re going to be talking to makes everything a lot harder for both teacher and student.

Predictably enough there tends to be a direct and clear relation between quality and price (see graph). Professional language tutors cost money, as does well developed self-study material. As a rule of thumb, if it’s cheap (or perhaps even free), it might be useful, but it’s likely to disappoint. If you are able to afford the higher end products (top right-hand corner of the graph) you’re likely to make more progress.

Of course a similar argument could be made for traditional, classroom based teaching.