Scheduling

Rules for English Schools
There are a few things that you need to consider when deciding on rules for your English school.

There are lots of things to think about when making rules for your school.

 

In this blog, I’ll cover 5 things that every English school should think about

when making rules for class reservations. Specifically I’ll touch on what you

need to think about when making rules for when and how often students can

cancel their lesson. Also, what types of lessons they can take if they’re allowed

to take makeup lessons.

 

The answers to these questions really depend on the type of classes that you

are offering.

 

Remember, if you are too lenient, it will negatively affect your bottomline. If

you are too strict, you may scare students away.

 

A lot of what you choose to do also depends on how you market it. I’ve given a

few examples below and will touch on more on this in future blogs.

 

Here are 5 things to get you started!

 

How’s your schedule look?

 

1. Consider your schedule

 

If you’re offering more options to take makeup lessons, will you be able to

cover them?

 

Will you be opening up and offering new lessons or will they be joining lessons

that already exist?

 

If they’re able to join other classes, it might not affect anything. If you’re

creating a new class, how much will it cost you to open the new class? Is it

worth it?

 

Can you monetize it?

 

What extra value does this add for students? What is that added value worth?

For example, creating a super flexible membership level should come at a

premium.

 

How you advertise and market it is also key.

 

Premium: For the super busy businessman/woman, Mom or Dad whose

schedule often changes at the last minute due to responsibilities.

 

Basic: For those who have control over their schedule and come whenever

they want.

 

The way that you advertise and market the different membership types you

have will help your customers decide which tier they fall under. Worded

properly it will also help persuade them into buying one membership over the

other. People want to be looked at in certain ways.

 

How much time do you need to prepare for lessons?

 

2. Consider what goes into planning a lesson

 

How much time is spend tailoring lessons depending on who’s in your class?

 

This is especially important when determining the “How far in advance” rule.

 

This doesn’t affect some teachers, schools and systems.

 

How will the quality of lessons will be affected?

 

Will this reflect in my lessons?

 

How will this potentially be looked at by students? By this last question, if

you’re selling a premium lesson at a premium price and you’re allowing Jane

Doe to sign in for a lesson one minute before it starts … that isn’t going to look

like much of a premium lesson.

 

On the other hand if you’re offering a free conversation lesson, it won’t matter

as much.

 

How many students should I allow to take my class at the

same time?

 

3. Consider occupancy rates

 

Occupancy: What are the maximum number of seats in each class? How many

seats do you have to fill in order to break even?

 

If the maximum number of students per class is 4, how much profit will you

make?

 

“My two cents” tip: Do not try to pack in 10 or 12 students per class. Of course

this depends on the type of class that you’re offering.

 

Yes, there are methods and techniques to maximize student talking time in big

classes. On the other hand, the amount of quality feedback that you (or other

teachers) will be able to give them will be very limited. This does of course

depend on the type of lesson. Conversation based lessons demand more

immediate input and feedback from the teacher than a writing class (which

you can give written feedback after the class) Choose accordingly, but choose

wisely.

 

This is another example of how you might market lessons.

 

For example, “We only allow a maximum of 4 students per class in order to

maximize student talking time. We want to ensure there’s ample time to give

students immediate quality feedback.”

 

How many levels should my school have?

 

4. Consider your curriculum and level structure

 

How many levels does your school have? If you’re just starting out and offer

group classes, go lean.

 

This is an important thing to consider because if you offer makeup lessons,

you need to think about whether they’ll be too challenging.

 

If your school doesn’t have many levels, there will be more challenging going

from one level to next.

 

Generally speaking the more levels you offer, the easier the transition from

one level to the next.

 

However, keep in mind that the more levels you offer, the less likely you may

be to fill the seats until your student numbers increase.

 

The number of classes that you offer should reflect your student

demographics. In other words, how many students are false beginner,

beginner, low intermediate, etc.?

 

If you’re just opening your English school it’s wise to start with 2 or 3 levels

and tell students that you plan to add another level in “x” number of months.

 

There are many more things to consider, but these are 4 things that will get

you started when deciding whether or not students can cancel lessons.

 

As the owner of your English school, you need to define what your rules are.

Every sustainable business that offers a service has rules. 

In order to create value for students and maximize profit, you need to set and stick to the rules. 

One important thing to keep in mind when setting up your school rules is that

one you should only do it once. 

It will hurt your school’s bottomline to change them. Inform your students and

be clear about what the rules are, and only budge in extreme cases. Being a

pushover won’t help you in the long run. 

 

Pocket Passport: Save time, eliminate mistakes and offer value

 

Managing reservations is a lot of work. It can eat up large parts of your day

very quickly. 

 

The Pocket Passport online reservation system is very flexible and is designed

for school owners to create a variety of classes and options to maximize your

class capacity. It gives you options to up sell students on benefits for premium

membership types.

 

Students will pay extra for flexibility. Offer a premium ticket package that

gives students makeup chances if they cancel their lessons. 

 

Another option might be to offer students makeup lessons that are above

and/or below their level. By offering a plan like this, students will have more

options to take makeup lessons.

 

Types of Students and Tickets

 

Note: 1 class = 1 ticket

 

There are typically two types of tickets: Fixed and flexible. 

 

Students with Fixed Tickets come at the same time and the same day every

week. 

 

Students with flexible tickets come whenever their schedule permits and

according to what’s available at your school. 

 

Cancelation Rule & Grace Period

 

The first rule you should consider is your cancelation rule.

 

There are three things to keep in mind here.

 

1. If a student cancels a lesson after this cancelation rule, they will lose their

ticket. For example, if your cancelation rule is one hour before a lesson and the

student cancels their lesson 30 minutes before the lesson, they will lose their

ticket.

 

2. By default, Pocket Passport offers a grace period for flexible tickets. The

grace period is 24 hours. So if a student cancels a lesson 24 hours or one full

day before the cancelation rule they will get their ticket back with no penalty.

 

So for example, if the cancelation rule is set to 60 minutes…

 

– the student can cancel their class 24 hours + the cancelation rule. In this case

it’s 60 minutes or one hour, so the student must cancel their class 25 hours

before the class starts in order to get their ticket back.

 

3. If the student cancels their lesson after the grace period, but before the

cancelation period, the student will get a makeup lesson (if you’re offering

makeup lessons).

 

If you don’t offer makeups, they will lose their ticket completely after the

grace period.

 

Offer value to your students

 

Remember you can create multiple ticket types with Pocket Passport.

 

So for example, your “Basic Plan” might not offer makeup lessons, but your

“Premium Plan” might. If the student didn’t buy the “Premium Plan”, they’ll

lose their ticket when they cancel. If they did buy the “Premium Plan”, they’ll

be able to take a makeup lesson according to your school rules.

 

With Pocket Passport’s flexible reservation system, you can assign different

types of tickets to different students in the same class.

 

 

What are Makeup Level Rules?

 

There are 2 kinds of makeup lessons.

 

Renewable and non-renewable

 

Renewable

 

A renewable makeup lesson means that the student can cancel their lesson

multiple times within the renewable period.

So for example, if you set the renewable period to 10 days, and Angela cancels

her lesson on April 1st, she has until April 11th to make that lesson up.

 

If she cancels her lesson again on April 5th, the expiration date remains the

same: April 11th, BUT she can reserve a makeup lesson again.

 

Non-renewable

 

A non-renewable makeup lesson means students only have one chance to

make up the canceled lesson before they lose it. If they cancel the makeup

lesson when it’s non-renewable, they lose it entirely.

 

Of course, you don’t have to offer any makeup lesson if you don’t want. 

 

Again, this is a great option and up sell to offer your students. Offer 3 types of

packages:

 

1. Basic (no makeup lesson)

 

2. Silver (non-renewable makeup lesson)

 

3. Premium (renewable makeup lesson)

 

NOTE: the makeup level rules are the only rules in school set up that can be

changed.

 

What is the Upward/Downward Rules for Makeup Lessons?

 

Next, let’s look at the upward/downward rule for makeup lessons.

 

If your school allows makeups:

 

a. are they permitted to take makeup lessons in their level only?

 

b. are they allowed to take makeup lessons in classes above and below their

level?

 

If they are allowed to take them in other levels, how many levels above or

below?

 

NOTE: This is JUST another option and level of flexibility. You do not have to

offer makeup lessons above and below their level. However, this is something

that you may experiment with and change as your school grows.

 

What’s the Global Setting in Pocket Passport? 

 

The global setting is for flexible tickets only. The global setting is for schools

who allow students to take lessons in other levels. This is a great option to

offer for students with low or high confidence. This allows the student to view

and reserve lessons in other levels in addition to their own.

 

If your school is set to GLOBAL, this will allow students with normal or monthly

flexible tickets to see and reserve classes in other levels.

 

If this setting is not on, students will not be able to see other other levels.

 

What’s the Advance Appointment Rule?

 

Far in advance rule – how many days in advance are your students allowed to

reserve lessons?

 

How far into the future can they view the schedule. For example, can they see

lessons 30 days into the future?

 

Last minute rule.

 

How many minutes before the lesson can a student reserve the lesson?  If a

student can reserve a lesson right up until the lesson starts, you can just set it

as 1. If students must reserve a lesson 60 minutes before the start of the

lesson, you would set this at 60.

 

The flexibility for students to book right up until the start of the lesson is great

on one hand. On the other hand, if there’s a big gap between student levels at

your school, you may need time to prepare the right lesson material.

 

Final thoughts

 

Before you set your rules, there are things that you should carefully consider.

Check out tomorrow’s blog to learn the top 4 things that every school owner

should consider when setting your school rules. 

 

Online Reservation System for English Schools
Does your English school offer online reservations?

Should my school offer make up lessons?

 

When I took over the school that I used to own, I took over all the rules and

 

guidelines. Actually, I took over a school that didn’t have ANY rules!

 

Students were free to come and go as they pleased.

 

There were 3 ways that they could sign up for lessons:

 

1.  there was a book with a calendar in it. They could write their name in the

 

time slot they wanted to take a lesson.

 

2.  call me or the part-time staff that I had (the part-time staff only worked

 

about 8 hours per week back then)

 

3. they could email us

 

 

Scheduling the old school way

 

 

Scheduling and handling the reservations was a pretty big job in itself.

 

Students had cards with squares on the back that we ticked off each time they

 

took a lesson.

 

Sometimes they forgot their cards and we had to try to keep track of that as

 

well.

 

About a year later when we grew a little bigger a friend

 

recommended I look into an online reservation system. After a few months of

 

procrastinating I finally did and it saved me a lot of time, energy and money.

 

I readily admit that I should have changed the rules and implemented more

 

structure as soon as I took the school over.

 

 

Students could cancel without any penalty. They could just not show up and

 

still not lose the lesson.

 

Students often asked for extensions on their contracts. No problem!

 

 

What kinds of rules should my school have?

 

The first rule that I suggest implementing is your makeup rule.

 

Should you offer make up lessons or not? How many per month or year? How

 

far ahead of a lesson should my students have to cancel lessons before

 

they’re penalized?

 

 

First off, let’s define what a make up lesson is, since some schools may have

 

their own idea or definition of what that may be.

 

 

A make up lesson is when a student is absent from a lesson due to illness or

 

for personal reasons.

 

 

Every school should have a rule that explains and clearly defines:

 

 

a. How many make up lessons students are able to take each month or year.

 

For example, students can cancel and make up one lesson per month.

 

 

b. Schools define the deadlines for when students must cancel their lesson by.

 

For example, students must cancel by 11:00pm the night before the lesson or

 

they’ll lose that lesson credit entirely.

 

 

Or students must cancel no later than three hours before the lesson or they’ll

 

lose the lesson credit entirely.

 

 

IMPORTANT: Set a time limit for how long students can

reserve makeup lessons

 

 

c. How long is the make up lesson valid?

 

 

For example, when a student cancels a lesson, how long do they have until that

 

“make up lesson” expires (for example, 21 days)

 

 

So Yuko cancels her lesson before the deadline and she has 21 days to make it

 

up.

 

 

IMPORTANT: if she cancels the make up lesson, the original expiration date for

 

that make up lesson applies.

 

 

Scenario A: The deadline is 11:00 pm the night before.

 

 

Yuko cancels her lesson at 10:30pm on August 1st.

 

 

She’s given a make up lesson and has 21 days to do the make up lesson, which

 

means the expiry date for the make up lesson is August 22nd.

 

 

Yuko reserves a make up lesson on August 7th.

 

 

She cancels the make up lesson on August 5th – The deadline remains the

 

same.

 

 

The deadline is not for an additional 21 days from the date that she canceled,

 

it’s the original make up lesson deadline.

 

 

So even if Yuko cancels her make up lesson on August 5th, the make up date

 

wouldn’t change to the 26th, it would remain August 22nd. It DOES NOT

 

continue to change each time that she cancels the make up lesson.

 

 

Of course there may be exceptions to the rule, when admin chooses or needs

 

to override the system and allow for a student who needs to miss an entire

 

month because of influenza, etc. However having clearly defined rules in place

 

is critical to ensuring that students (or parents) are not taking advantage of

 

you.

 

Be careful how many make up lessons you offer.

 

 

I’ll cover more things about ticket types and rules in next week’s blogs. Having

 

clear rules in place will save you a lot of headaches, time and money.

 

Structuring rules the right way can also create extra revenue. More about that

 

next week!

 

Keeping track of all of this… isn’t fun! Pocket Passport’s online reservation

 

system is a flexible solution for language schools. Cancelation rules, makeup

 

lessons, level up, level down and lots more.