Nope. Listen, I’m in NY. Public school teacher. This time last year people asked me when were we going back into the classroom. I replied, “Never.” We’re still not fully back yet.
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Many would argue that if people didnt notice until the ccp virus hit, they werent actually paying much attention.
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I am out of date being a dinosaur, but does Taiwan still have those massive gold reserves or was it all sold off. Time to start throwing big money for vaccines.
That’s what they should have done last year. Literally money can’t really solve this problem right now.
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I’m having a hard time seeing how the the english cram school situation will change much.
English and babysitting ate still important. Some may lose jobs due to a lack in perceived quality of online classes but if and when things get back to normal, I kind of see things returning to as they were before. With perhaps a certain percentage of students opting for online classes instead of in person due to the new availability of such a feature by many of these schools.
The falling birthrate is another thing, but that just means fewer schools and opportunities for teachers, but the need would still be there regardless just to a lesser extent. Just in time for other countries to hopefully start offering higher salaries for english teachers (vietnam, etc) which could, again hopefully, apply a bit more pressure to taiwanese buxibans to increase the salary a bit to compete. That’s just my theory though. Who knows.
People still need people to watch their kids and teach them english. Some pay more for smaller classes and better quality education while others pay less for pure babysitting and a foreigner shoving flashcards in their kids’ faces. But I don’t see the need going away much anytime soon. Interested in hearing why some might think otherwise though.
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This article was more about Cram schools than exclusively English language schools.
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no one has talked about one thing here
why are Taiwanese parents so afraid to leave kids home alone?
my kids all started spending limited time alone in first grade, basically once they were old enough to reliably contact people if need be and prepare simple snacks for themselves
kids is third or fourth grade can surely do it… it’s messed up
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Shopee is international, it and Momo have decent UI/UX, though I think Shopee is the winner especially with the app, which is what is primarily used. The other two are dinos, and you’re largely right, IT sux in Taiwan. Shopee was a big improvement.
Many companies were already doing online teaching, but not many buxibans.
By that, do you mean an chin bans? I think that’s what the article refers to as tutoring classes.
Most of that goal had little to do with buxibans and more to do with having qualified English-fluent instructors in schools. Buxibans were a side-plot.
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My “good” pre-service English teachers have tutoring opportunities aplenty (face-to-face, but in groups less than 5). Surely a savvy cram school boss would lever the Pareto ratio to earn more from those richer parents who can afford and have need of more personalized service. Teachers on ARCs that restrict their contracts might be out of luck, but certainly there are ways to keep the business afloat.
To be fair to the schools, our University gave us 24 hours (on a Sunday) to implement online teaching the next day. Or, in the case of our teacher training center, we were asked to provide a revised syllabus (literally) “yesterday.” Email sent 1 am Monday, plans required submission before Monday 
. Par for the 
.
Does anyone know, if you run a cram school or know someone who does, how much net profit does a buxiban make on its gross income? In other words, how much tuition does the school keep after expenses, rent, salaries, etc. One earlier article had it at only 20%, which seems incredibly risky.
I don’t feel so bad for the schools, because there was the entire year where taiwan was isolated from the virus where the schools could have been working on a potential online solution in case taiwan ended up getting hit. They could have learned from the mistakes and troubles that schools overseas had to go through when they were forced to do this same thing.
Instead of coming up with a contingency plan for this very likely scenario, they chose complacency. Now they are dealing with the fall out from this decision
No, the large scale centers that help students navigate their way through all levels of Taiwan’s demanding testing processes. It’s interesting that the Education Ministry seems to view this as a core part of the system, if we can judge by their willingness to bail it out.
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I thought that was part of what an chin bans did.
Those are for little kids.
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It’s really easy to figure this out. Just check out one of the tuition bills when they go home. Multiply it by number of kids.
Same with any all afternoon classes.
Figure staff salary.
Ask about water and electric and rent.
Depends. We did very well. 
Right! I knew I was forgetting something in my post. Last year, we were required to write to a plan for every class, in case of online teaching (semester 108-2). The last two semesters there was no such requirement. I had drafted a version to send to the 教務處, but they ignored it and said it was unnecessary. Only destinated seating maps were required. Apparently, I was in the 5% of teachers who created and implemented these seating arrangements. This is definitely an oversight on the part of schools, not teachers.
In terms of tech, they offered us Google Education Suite, but few teachers or students enrolled. I did. Now, since more teachers need it for online teaching, our previously UNLIMITED storage is down to 10GB. Also, right before Level 3 was enacted, our school posted instructions on using Moodle to upload videos, in the form of a YouTube video. Unsurprisingly, two days into online teaching that function was no longer available. We were told to upload to YouTube and post the link instead.
I have trouble believing this. You have three main expenses as far as I see it, rent, salaries, and teaching materials.
Each student pays 20,000-40,000 ntd a month in tuition.
You just need two students per class to off set a single teacher. Most classes have 15-20 students each.
Let’s do the math for the smallest amounts so 1 class of 15 at 20,000 a month each. That’s 300,000 per class.
300,000- roughly 60,000 for the teacher salary is a remainder of 240,000.
The other factors would be rent and materials which admittedly I’m unsure if you need to like secure rights to materials on top of textbook copies or not. But it’s likely that you’d still end up with at least 50% profit per class.
Are there factors I’m not considering here? I suppose you’d have to factor in other costs like business accountant and administrative staff but it still looks like it’s likely be higher than 20%
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Oh damn that’s bad. The Google suite for educators is pretty much essential if you’re using Google classroom and meet for classes (the free version is a mess that misses essential administrative features that makes online teaching for kids a real nightmare)
Like I said before, it all comes down to complacency. I suspected that was what happened and what you said definitely confirms it.
Who bothers with that?
I wasn’t planning to buy a school, I just wondered how profitable it was per student on average. I’ve had an idea for a B2B service that I’ll probably never do and I was wondering if it would be worth it to a company. Probably not as most are old and set in their ways, even if they’re new. And it’s a big factor in how well they weather this storm. That was the point of the other article I read.
Something else I’d like to know is how much established online schools are growing. Buxibans scrambling to arrange classes don’t have much to offer over those who have been doing it for awhile, other than customer loyalty.
I can’t remember which thread I read it in, but I remember someone saying it was against the law to leave kids under 10 or 12 home alone.
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