Summer Programs: How a Language School Can Work in Summer
A well-known song by the Ukrainian band Mad Heads tells you not to look for them, because they are at the seaside. Language school students say roughly the same thing when the summer break begins.
And that is exactly how summer vacations, beach holidays and trips to grandma’s eat up the lion’s share of the profit an education business builds up over the fall and spring. Sound familiar?
Then this article is for you: we look at ways a language school can organize its work in summer and keep providing services during the holidays.
Short intensive courses
I know, I know: summer is the time when the very word “studying” sounds like an attack on well-earned rest. But in this section we talk about how that word can change its meaning in summer.
A language school’s main product is its courses. Teaching is what your team and your business are experts in. So continuing your core activity is a good decision, but it is worth paying special attention to packaging your product in summer wrapping.
First of all, long courses do not work in summer. A client is unlikely to buy a 3-4 month course and spend the whole summer studying. It is a different story if you offer a shorter but more intensive course. For example, your regular course runs 4 months with 2 lessons a week, while the summer offer is a 2-month intensive course with 4 lessons a week. Or, for example, a one-month speaking course with 2-3 lessons a week.
When building your product, ask yourself who your course will appeal to. If it is an intensive course, your clients are schoolchildren who need to catch up on English over the summer because during the year they spend more time on sports clubs and activities; university students who need to prepare for an exam; or adults who want to move to a new position at work and need to close gaps in their English quickly.
Your language school has its own target audience that studies English with you during the year. Everyone knows the situation when, in the first lessons in September, your A2 students do not remember even pre-A1 material because they forgot everything over the summer. Sounds familiar, right? So tell your clients about it! Teach them that learning English is a CONTINUOUS process, and a 3-month break will bring a not very pleasant result.
And one last thing I want to add here. If you have never offered courses in summer before, recruiting groups for the first launch will not be easy. An audience needs to get used to new offers. I say this from the experience of the Green Country school network, which offers its clients “English 365 days a year”. The first summer course enrollment was a few dozen students, while last summer showed a result of 1,500 students, because clients gradually got used to summer offers.
Edutainment programs: English-language day camps
If you are looking for a way to combine fun with learning, a day camp is the perfect option.
Let’s start with the fact that this offer matches demand perfectly: the audience knows this kind of product, and it is a popular request in summer. A day camp lets you use your premises (if you work offline) and keep your team busy. In addition, think of a day camp as a new product that lets you attract new clients and keep them for the fall-spring term, because it is a very emotional program where it is easy to make friends with the children and win the parents’ hearts. The result: new loyal clients ;)
On the other side of the coin, an edutainment product can be something of a challenge for the team, because it differs from your typical product, courses. What can be challenging: developing the camp program; a new type of work for the team, entertaining rather than teaching (let’s be honest, not all teachers are good entertainers); organizing meals (finding reliable catering for children is quite a task!); walks and outdoor safety; and transportation (if you want to add excursions or off-site activities to the program).
And speaking of organizing a day camp, I cannot help mentioning that TalkEn.Cloud has an offer for you: a ready-made program for an English-language day camp, 10 days with 4 hours of activities a day.
Learn more about the program here (in Ukrainian).
Overnight camps
If a day camp is a popular request from parents, an overnight camp is a winning lottery ticket! For parents, it is a great chance to pull their children away from TikTok and Instagram and give them the opportunity to communicate with peers in real life! And if you add a little English to that, it is the perfect combo!
As for the challenges, besides those listed for the day camp, there is a veeeeery big responsibility: 24/7 responsibility for children’s lives and health. Add to that finding a camp site or hotel, extra staff (for example, a nurse), organizing logistics, and booking tickets and accommodation early, VERY EARLY, long before you have enrolled the children for the session.
Other important tips for summer
Collaborations. If you organize camp programs, look for opportunities to collaborate with other education centers. For example, together with an IT school you can create a great “English + IT” camp program.
Short courses or one-off events. Perhaps you have the ambition to develop a short marathon or an English-language board game club.
Do not lose your clients for the fall. Offer your clients the chance to book a place for the fall back in May, and prepare a nice perk for early booking. Bringing in a new client is quite expensive, so keep your existing clients in every possible way ;)
So if your summer strategy does not include giving the team three months off, and this article has given you ideas for organizing your work in summer, watch the video of our TalkEn Talks meeting, where we talk about seasonality in the education business, including how to get through the summer (in Ukrainian).