The proprietors of schools make certain mistakes from their
start up point, which makes it seem they are ill-prepared for the task of
owning a school. These edupreneurs as I call V them
do not make certain to establish the basic principles that make running a
school simple. And because they have failed in this aspect, it becomes mistakes!
The essence of this is to identify the mistakes and find solutions to them. For
many proprietors, the first start up mistake they make is in their:
1. School names and motto.
Like every business venture, the name
a school adopts is extremely vital but far more important is the school motto
and or slogan. Over time, what you see edupreneurs adopt as school motto is the
Francis Baron adage that ‘’knowledge is power’’ and other conventional quotes
like ‘’knowledge is light’’ and ‘’education is the best legacy’’ to me, those kind of names does not
mean well for a schools that has foresight. Your school motto must tell
something about your ideal, zeal and the vacuum you wish to fill.
2. Vicious cycle mentality.
This might surprise many of the
edupreneurs but it’s a simple truth. Most of the primary and secondary school owners
today, are/were school teachers, having taught in one government/private school
or the other. This means that most of the schools in existence are based on
teaching methods as evident in their names like montessori’s method boldly
written on their signboards when these proprietors know fully, that the Montessori
method is mainly applicable to only toddlers in the pre-nursery or nursery
schools. The academic history of these
proprietors and their teachers, have always shown that most of them went to
colleges of educations and universities to obtain educational qualifications.
This means they are trained to teach and not to own schools, just as many Nigerian
graduates are trained to be job seekers and not job creators. As it
were, most of them are trained to be teachers and not business managers. Hence,
do not have the capacity to manage the man, methods, materials and money of the
school. Because most proprietors come into the school business with just
teaching methods, they have nothing different to offer… no innovation, no new
thoughts as they remain in the same vicious cycle. I can therefore boldly say,
most of the small schools in existence are built on teaching methods.
3. Meet The wrong man approach
Another actual mistake which
proprietors make is going to meet a proprietor to educate them on how they
started the same kind of business that they are about to go into. The truth is,
no matter how sincere a proprietor is, he /she will never tell you his secret
of making more money or increasing population, rather they will just tell you
what you need to know and not what you need to break even or stand out.
4. Low price mistake
Just like most start up problems,
most proprietors start their schools with ridiculously low school fees because
they want to get many students enrolled. When they eventually get the students,
they try increasing the school fees and end up losing the students. But by
then, they would have got teacher’s salaries to pay, government tax, union
levies and other sundry running cost to deal with. This in the end make them
constantly struggling. If you must start a school, start with the right price
that should not be change until three or four years after existence.
5. The only one wow.
In cracking the millionaires code,
the author created an acronym for WOW, which means wheels of wealth. To the
proprietors, many start schools and depend 100% on the school for survival
instead of creating other sources of revenue either within the school or
outside the school.
6.
Aristotle,
…and though it does not end then…
There are so many other mistakes or
in this case factors to consider before starting a school. All these suppose
mistakes stated here are first hand information garnered from on the field
work, working with proprietors of schools of various levels. And over the
years, we(GENIUSKROOL) have been able to create innovative solutions to help
proprietors over-come these challenges.
Synopsis
A mistake is not a mistake until you refuse to learn from it,
improve on your short comings and make amends. It’s not a crime to make
mistakes, but it is a crime not to learn from.
There are people whose business is to see to the need of your
business and that is what GENIUSKROOL stand for…seeing to the need of your
school business, I mean, any school business. If you have made any mistakes in
your school or you are facing any management challenge in your school. We are
just here for you.