Here is a video to get you ready for our conference.

We have created this room as a virtual lobby like many of us have in our schools. It is a place to relax, drink coffee, and just chat.

The first presentation is at 10:30 but for the early birds you can come here at 9:45 and test your Zoom accounts or start networking if you like. This room will be a place to relax, to exchange information, to have a good cup of coffee, and to get ready for the day!

One of the most stressful and expensive mistakes you can make as an EFL school manager or owner is inviting the wrong person to join your team. The costs of a bad hiring decision can be 1,000,000 yen or more. Save yourself the misery of a bad hire. Join Sean for a lively discussion about his top 10 biggest red flags when hiring.

Good communication with the families that support your school can be the glue that holds everything together. You need strategies that are effective for your particular school-- both low and high-tech-- and you need to use them with confidence. It goes without saying that what works in Tokyo may not fly in the countryside, so Doris and Ruth, who represent these two perspectives, will speak to both contexts. They will introduce systems that have proved successful in their schools, how to implement them, and why they work.

With around 130 students and 20 teaching hours a week over 4 days, Sunshine English School makes a very healthy profit with little marketing. This presentation will explain the thought process and advantages of having just one age group of students enter the school each year. It will look at timetabling, pricing to keep time slots profitable, encouraging word of mouth promotion, and the importance of looking ahead when planning. The ideas in this presentation will be of use not just to those who are starting out, but also of value to those with small schools who find themselves with too many small classes and a scheduling nightmare every March.

Growing your school can be a blessing or a curse based on your personality and goals. To grow past 200 students, you need to provide good quality lessons and have a high sign-up and lower quitter rate. 500 students, you need to have good management and training. To grow past 1000 students, you need solid marketing, operations, recruiting, and strategy. The speaker will share about the stages your company will face based on his experience creating a school in Japan with more than 7000 students.

Growing your school can be a blessing or a curse based on your personality and goals. To grow past 200 students, you need to provide good quality lessons and have a high sign-up and lower quitter rate. 500 students, you need to have good management and training. To grow past 1000 students, you need solid marketing, operations, recruiting, and strategy. The speaker will share about the stages your company will face based on his experience creating a school in Japan with more than 7000 students.

Remember when we used to go to face to face conferences and would sometimes casually talk with the presenter and a few attendees after a session? Or we’d sit around with some fellow school owners with some coffee in between sessions and talk about how our schools were going? Let’s try to recreate that online and have some time to talk in small groups, now that we’ve heard some great ideas in four different presentations. Each breakout room will be include the presenter and/or a SO SIG officer, but this is not a presentation, it is a time to have a discussion.

Breakout Room 1 – Hiring Breakout Room 2 – Communicating with parents Breakout Room 3 – Management of a small school Breakout Room 4 – Larger schools (Recommended for owners with around 300 (200) students or more who are considering expanding.)

AGM