The Private English Language School in Taiwan

Teaching English in Taiwan is big business. Every parent wants their children to speak English and it is becoming a government requirement that civil servants pass tests in English proficiency before being given a job. Adults all over the country are enrolling in English classes to boost their ability to obtain jobs in private industries and companies and simply to be fashionable or trendy. Whole hordes of executives, army personnel and officials are being sent by their companies to learn English.

In resplendent Chinese tradition children's education is placed high in priority and often runs late into the evenings, on Saturdays, Sundays and during School holidays. The western world may call it rivalry or "face" but at the end of the day this constant effort of parents to lift their children one rung further up the ladder means more education. It is also becoming more commonplace to find both parents in a family working full-time and again in true Chinese tradition the making of money overrides all else so that children find themselves being farmed out to further education centres until all hours of the evening.

The institutionalised education system does provide as part of the curriculum a comprehensive and suitable grounding in the English language but with parents striving to be one better than the next family a whole network of private establishments have set-up shop all over Taiwan. From adult learning centres to pre-school English classes and nursery schools, from lone backyard effort of an individual to large chain schools they are appearing on every street.

Some of the bigger names in the industry are Hess who operate schools the world over, the Schoolhouse who have famous children's curriculum authors to back them up and Global Village who rely on steady conservative educational principles. Smaller schools tend to strive for attention against these champions of the private schools, some make it with a nice income at the end of the day, and others start off with trumpets and fanfare but fall on the wayside like dominoes.

Many factors go towards whether a school makes it or fails including location, fees charged, current fashionable trends amongst parents and government blessing. But probably the most important factor of the schools continuing survival is their ability to hire and to keep quality expatriate English teachers on their books. Bad Feng Shui is often blamed for a schools failure but at the end of the day parents look for a school that has a good name, that other parents talk about and recommend and one that has a steady 'white' face in the window. The Schoolhouse Chain places great emphasis on the showing of a foreigner by having one classroom with a very big window facing the street so that all passers-by see the expatriate teacher in action and whether this has been helpful in making them popular is unquantifiable but it certainly does no harm.

The industry and the lure of financial profit have caused many an entrepreneur to invest heavily in start-up schools. Groups of shareholders have clubbed together to finance and build massive structures of glass and glitter to potentially house hundreds of students keen to study the English language. Massive dedicated nurseries with hundreds of rooms have sprung up next to converted five story houses to teach after hour kids. Bricks and mortar are laid continually for new schools and every time a new housing or renovation project gets underway in a neighbour a school opens its doors.

Sadly, most of these schools have or will fail. Too many investors who imagined one school growing to five, then a chain forming all over Taiwan and with subsequent expansion to mainland China, did not foresee the time that it takes to build up custom and reputation. The large Chains like Hess can easily set up a school anywhere in Taiwan and receive good custom purely based upon past and present repute. New schools take many years to build rapport up and this time span is too long for a group of money hungry investors who want to see immediate return.

Where individual schools are to have success it will more likely be a backyard start-up run by an expatriate where profit made will be channelled back into the school. As a small business charging lower fees than a mass investment school calls for customers are more easily available. Furthermore, simply because the school is owned by an expatriate the need to hire costly expatriates to teach is not necessary and thus another cost is avoided.

Many other schools fail because they cannot keep hold of their English staff. This maybe due to culture or language differences, a lack of ability to pay or they don't pay enough so the staff leave. But at the end of the day whether it is due to one reason or another it does not sit well with the parents. Mothers and fathers like to see stability and constant change of faces at the school does not sit well with them: the schools reputation invariably goes down. Again in this sense the large chains win out as they pay their staff well and usually bind them to a contract. The smaller schools often operate outside the law, to keep their overheads down and thus pay cash to their English teaching staff, thus having no hold on them.

As time goes on the Industry is set to expand further, probably with a shake up in the way that most of these schools operate but with the chains winning out in the long run. Government bureaucracy, standards and reputation are easily won over by the chains that understand and can afford to follow through the necessary channels to be acknowledged by the government and the state. The smaller groups and schools who operate on tight budgets and who often resort to fiddling the system might well find that the government will clamp down on them in the long term. The latter group is often accused of delivering sub standard teaching, without proper curriculums and by teachers who have unsuitable or no qualifications apart themselves from being a native speaker and available.

The idea that a person qualified to teach English is a person that speaks English, whether from an English speaking country or not might be an area for attack by the government. In this regard the large chains will be able to afford the teaching and training of their staff from abroad and from home whilst the individual schools will not. The cost of employing prior-trained teachers will be too costly for the smaller establishments.

Whatever means the government uses to improve the current standards of the private and government established schools it will remain big-business for the very long term. It is extremely important for the Taiwanese to remain one-step ahead of mainland China, to have something that they do not. It is so important for the financial survival of this island; for them to speak English and to speak it well is to be one jump ahead of the giant across the water that is sleeping no more.