Hello all, I just received the gold card and I would like to possibly open a cram school around eastern taiwan. I opened two so far in mainland china but I prefer the life in taiwan and now that I am able to legally operate I’m very excited to get things started.
if anyone would like a good dinner or cash for some info on school structures here I would like to ask some of the following:
How many students a class max
tuition fees/structure
class length/breaks inbetween classes
based on my faith research these last two days it seems the focus is around when they start elementary (as opposed to mainland china when they focus 2-6 years old maybe until 8 then around 3rd grade when the homework is too much they stop)
5.how many classes do they take a week.
if anyone would like a good dinner or cash please feel free to message me
Hi PBT, I’ve been running a school for a few years so I have some experience opening and operating a cram school. To answer your questions:
There is no maximum students per class or maximum teacher to student ratio for a buxiban class. The only limiting factor is the size of the space due to fire regulations. I max out at 16 to maintain a good quality learning experience.
Tuition fees are highly variable. I have a two hour class for elementary kids twice a week for $500 a class. Another class is 1.5 hours for $400 twice a week. My morning class for ages 3-6 is $500 for 3 hours, Monday through Friday. There is a lot of variation with tuition based on how desirable your school is. Book fees and registration fees are very common.
I take 10 minute breaks in the middle of 2 hour classes and 5 minute breaks for the 1.5 hour class.
Our 3 hour class has a 15 minute break. Breaks between classes are 10 minutes.
I think the norm is 2 classes a week. One to two hours a class. Many schools have opened to serve the kindergarten aged kids but they operate inside a legal grey area. I think the laws are slowly changing to allow for more English instruction for the youngest students. Perhaps the Taiwanese place more of an emphasis on English as apposed to the Chinese. Most of my students take two classes a week until grade 5 when they spend most of their time in the local elementary school. Even then there are students that attend classes after dinner. I can’t really comment on English instruction after grade 6.
Usually two classes a week.
Are your schools in China still in operation? I understand there has been a backlash against the west ever since Trump started stirring up trouble.
I’m interested in breaking into online teaching in China. Any experience or advice?
Wow thank you so much, please feel free to answer any questions
I currently have two places but both are tech illegal since 2021 because of the ‘double reduction policy’ (teaching school subjects outside of school is banned) both of my schools are in guangxi (a countryside province) and I moved to shanghai recently to open another and expected to live here until i got news i received the gold card.
I let the parents watch all my classes plus when all the money goes into your pocket of course you are going to be motivated to teach good so after I hired a canadian guy to teach the classes most of the parents werent happy even though he taught good (no one is ever going to put as much effort as you) so a lot of them followed me online.
for offline classes I did 1 on 4 for about 900 twd per 45 min class. and only older kids can do 2 classes in a row of an hour and a half (dam I cant imagine 3 hours with 3-6 years old haha)
for the market outside of tier 1 cities typical prices are : 1 on 6 200 rmb per class credit (average class credit is 45 mins) in teir 1 cities 1 on 6 250 rmb per class credit. most places do 2 classes a week but in teir 1 cities a lot of places do 2 classes in a row of twice a week.
tbh I dont know much about how to get students online since they only followed me online from my school. if you dont have it already download wechat and tengxun huiyi is a free app that they are use to using as an online platform but i find xoom or classin a lot more stable in connection
currently I’m charging 89 rmb 1 on 6 per 30 min class (the benefit of being online i tell the parents is that since they dont have to worry about sending the kids they can have class more often and we just lower the time for better results)
please feel free to ask anything you would like though,
lets say from that 2 hour class is that 10 min break deducted from the 2 hours or is it 1 hour, 10 min break, another hour
is this the typical payment structure in taiwan, if not do you know what the average bigger chain cram schools charge
also are the prices throughout the cities in taiwan similar? in mianland there’s a big difference between tier 1/2 vs tier 3/4 (im thinking of setting up in hsinchu, lower competition, highest gdp per capita, and birth rates are highest.)
btw you may have a problem receiving rmb from the parents since you may not have a chinese bank account or wechat account, let me know if I can help set something up for you here so you are able to transfer out of china
btw typically there are not any registration fees or book fees (or if there are any very insignificant) how much do you charge for those fees/ typical schools charge for those fees?
The break is included in the class time and the price includes the break so no deduction. Registration fees can range from $10,000 to $20,000 or more. Their function is to have the parents stay committed to the program so they don’t waste money by leaving halfway through the year. I’ve never charged a registration fee but I am probably the only school that I know of that doesn’t have a fee to begin classes. Book fees are usually inflated so that you can increase your profits a bit. A little bit like an additional charge that they don’t learn about until they are hit with the fine print. Tricky, but common practice.
The Chinese market for online English class is so big. I would love to break in somehow. Have you considered making online advertisements to attract students to your online class?
I never advertised for online before, all of my students were just m by word of mouth (besides the first week when I opened the school I took a poster with my info and the school info and went to the nearby nice kindergarten and elementary and said first semester is half off then got 7 students in those few days)then they recommended others and I couldn’t even stop that tidal wave. I was different than most schools because I was the first place to ever say ‘you are free to leave whenever you want and ever unused penny gets instantly transferred back to you’ as well as being the first place to only charge by month instead of charging a year tuition, I only ever had a few students stop coming, and half of those came back after checking out other places.
So when I told them I’m moving to shanghai to open another school and stay there a lot of the parents insisted on continuing online with me so here I am. I’m not even sure how to advertise for online classes and while I’m still pyschially in china I would be scared since my school became illegal since 2021 crackdown. But I like online, you can lay down and do classes while traveling, as long as they dont have tech problems but the platforms are so good now online is very stable.
do you have wechat? maybe I can hook you up with a chinese bank account and wechat and you will have the ability to collect payments and transfer it to wherever you are.
And I offically move to taiwan I will then make posts on my wechat and school’s wechat about the online classes otherwise I’m afraid of getting caught and they check my history (I would be jailed and possibly have to pay 2-3mil twd in taxes, whatever number they estimate you owe) on top of being deported.