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 THE NEW FACE OF LARGE SCHOOL CHAINS

The world moves on and the situation of many foreign language centres in Greece (as well as in many other countries) has changed dramatically. 

Despite the fact there are still  many foreign language school owners whose qualifications (both in terms of Language as well as Methodology) are non-existent, at least they are involved in the process of foreign language education. Are they educators or not? Well, there are people who would disagree with me, but I believe that although they may know from next to nothing to extremely little about educational issues, they are educators by dint of exposure and experience to educational issues. They may not have the theoretical knowledge but some intuitive awareness of sound educational processes must have rubbed off on many of them. 

In the last decade or so, a new generation has emerged. This generation is made up of business people who have decided to invest in one of the new franchises or to create one themselves. 

Such groups include Linguaphone , owned in large part by mega publisher Mr.Christos Lambrakis through one of his subsidiary companies , INTERLINGUA, owned by businessman  Mr.Prokopis Foussas, and EUROGNOSI, owned by marketing expert Mr Yannis Iliadis (former employee or Mr Foussas of Interlingua). 

These men have created small empires, some of which have their ups and downs - for example Interlingua has now lost a lot of its branches, a group of which formed the new AXON franchise. Another ambitious franchise/chain, however faced bankruptcy a few years ago, is ENOSSIS now trying to recoup. The granddaddy of them all in Greece is the STRATIGAKIS chain, indeed a pioneer in the domain of franchises. However, Mr Stratigakis, being a teacher of English himself, cannot be included in this category of managers. 

Having nothing to do with education themselves, these managers have a rather industrial and 'product-oriented' attitude and they will protect their 'secret formula' in very much the same way that an ice cream factory will guard its secret recipes: zealously and passionately.

Some of the issues arising from the rules governing such institutions can be seen below:   

NON-EDUCATION  MANAGEMENT

• The choice of materials, course book, supplementary and support materials does not always have a sound educational basis but has very high 'impressing the client' value.
• There is a desire to have uniformity in everything - from furniture to course books to the exact unit of the course book that all the branches should be at a particular point of time - which kills individualization and fitting in with the learners' needs.
• All this 'product-oriented' foreign language education does not in fact pay teachers better. Teachers are as poorly paid as in every other small neighbourhood foreign language centre
• Teachers are- similarly with many other local foreign language centres - fired in June and go on unemployment benefit for the whole summer!
• ISO quality assurance certificates are advertised and much sought after.
• Although it is within the promises and assurances of their contracts to new or prospective franchisees, the teacher training and development which takes place is, in most cases, either minimal or paid for by a publisher  wishing to promote their books.

Being a member of a franchise does not, of course, mean that there will be no quality teaching or quality programmes offered. It does, however, allow entry of a high number of individuals who have little or nothing to do with education and whose main concern is sales and high profits.