What brings success in education is simply education.

“You begin to teach because you love human beings.”- Jan Blommaert

Just a bit before the new 2022 dawn, here are a few thoughts on successful educational businesses. This is just my personal take but it comes from 30-year experience in education, as a business owner, a trainer, and a consultant for multiple educational organizations. As always, put very simply, in just a few words, I will attempt to answer the (quite complex) question of what makes an educational organization successful. Of course, one needs to define ‘success’ before even starting this conversation. I will use Wilson’’s definition on the topic: ‘Success is running a profitable firm that conducts business with honesty and integrity, makes meaningful contributions to the communities it serves and nurtures high-quality, balanced lives for its employees.’

So if you’re into educational business and you want to consider yourself successful, focus on the key words of the definition above: profitable, honesty, integrity, contributions, high-quality.

In my field, i.e. language education, my experience, observations and data analyses point to the following simple criteria for successful businesscraft:

1. Philosophy: a successful school needs a clear, outlined educational philosophy. There’s no success without vision. There’s no success without mission. There’s no success without values, principles, even more, ideas that guide us through everyday practices. If you want a successful educational business, start with education.
2. People: education is a service. It is (or should be) a high-quality service. Its main power, the source of everything, the core, the essence is its people. Teachers are everything. There’s no successful school without qualified, inspired, passionate educators. Education happens through educators. A successful school needs a well-paid, constantly-developing, professional teaching team. I could end here. What comes after that is really minimally important.
3. Materials: books, softwares, activities. A good school makes good choices. A good coursebook is a well-researched tool that can help a good teacher do wonders. If our criteria for our materials are related to parents, benefits, presents and freebies, our criteria are not educational. Period.
4. Space: a beautiful, welcoming space matters. a good school is also a beautiful school. But if as a business person you care more about spending money on interior design and less on teachers, you’re making a bad choice.
5. Communication: website, social media accounts, marketing. This shouldbe pretty straightforward. Communicate your identity in a principled, consistent way. Well, of course, to communicate an identity, you need to first have one. So go back to step 1. If you start with communication, the bubble will soon burst.

Summing it up, if you want a successful educational business, focus on education. In fact, start, go on and end with Education.

Maria is a school owner, teacher, teacher trainer and researcher. She has a BA in Philosophy, Cambridge DELTA, an MA in TESOL, St Michael’s College, Vermont, and has studied for a PhD in Applied Linguistics at Lancaster University, UK. She is now completing her Doctorate degree in Athens. She held an ESRC research award. She is currently doing an MBA in Educational Leadership. She has more than twenty-five years’ experience in teaching, teacher training and syllabus design in Greece, the UK and the US. She is a language school owner in Athens, promoting alternative and experiential models of teaching. She is an international trainer and academic consultant for publishing companies, private schools and Ministries of Education. She is an adjunct professor for the Hellenic American University (HAEC), where she teaches TESOL Management and a visiting professor for the MA in Creative Writing at the University of Western Macedonia.