Academy owners

[pelayo]

Hi

Ive been running my own academy in Spain for a couple of years now and would love to speak to someone in a similar position or who has had an academy for longer. I'm not aware of any association or website which brings academy owners together but hopefully here someone might be able to help.

Many thanks
Phil Sassi

[Iberenglish]

Hello Phil!

Nice to see another academy owner around here. Whereabouts do you have your school?

Iberenglish is a full service English language consulting agency that offers in-company training, clasess " domicilio", training in our office for individuals and small groups as well as direct and inverse translation English-Spanish. Apart from that, we are one of the 16 authorized centers in Madrid to administer the TOEIC exam and specialize in preparing candidates for English part of their opposition exams, especially for El Consejo de Seguridad Nuclear among others.

We are located in the business/financial district of Madrid near Plaza de Castilla and Las Cuatro Torres.

It would be interesting to start a thread specifically for academy owners to network!

Welcome aboard!

Becky

[pelayo]

Hi Becky

It's great to hear from you. I work in alcañiz, a small town of about 18000 inhabitants about an hour from Zaragoza.  It sounds like we are quite diferent in set up. I have only been operating a couple of years and currently have just the one teacher as well as myself. However I now have over 100 students as well as contracts with the local escuela de idiomas, CPR and one or two businesses. I will also be running a summer camp for the second year with native teachers coming over to take part in classes and activities for 2 weeks.

To be honest I have never been so busy but apart from intermittent suicidal urges I've no regrets. I guess what I am beginning to miss the most right now is the opportunity to share problems, ideas, experiences with people in the same line of business. It seems hard to believe that with so many language schools in Spain there isnt some kind of association which offers support and advice to its members.

How long have you been going and how are you enjoying the responsibility? Is the job what you imagined?

Here's hoping we get a few more owners ready to offer their thoughts.

All the best

Phil

 

[Iberenglish]

Hi Phil,

Sorry for my delay in getting back to you. We are definitely in different set-ups! How is it running an academy in a small town/village?

As you can imagine, it's highly competitive here in Madrid, but we do have small piece of the English teaching pie.

We have been in business since 2004 and have marked incremental growth every year.

I definitely relish the challenge of the business, and also like the fact that I still teach a few classes as well. I don't know how I imagined the job but I do enjoy what I do which I think is most important.


There are a number of associations that do support language schools, I will poke around and see if I can post some links here. If you aren't already familiar with them, you should check out TESOL Spain (www.teso-spain.org). Let's definitely keep in touch. I'll PM you with my contact info.

Take care,
Becky