As school owners, we would recommend having rules. And not bending them.
For many reasons:
- You are a business. To be professional, you must have rules.
2. Presumably you made the rules for a reason. If you CHANGE them easily, then why did you take the time to think about them and make them in the first place? You won’t see the cram schools changing their rules for one parent. You are the same, even if you are a lot smaller.
3. Your rules make your school a better school. For example, we have 4 lessons a month, not 2. Why? Well, in fact 4 lessons per month is insufficient; having just 2 is ludicrous.
If you want your child to learn English, they must come at least once a week.
If they don’t, then your child won’t learn well. And most likely you will blame the school.
You might LOSE some students. But in the long run, you will GAIN MORE students as your reputation of being a good school spreads.
If Moms had their own way, they’d have a class at 5:00 with kids the same age and gender as their child. But of course, that is NOT possible for ALL of your students.
Dave and Amy stories:
1. We’ve allowed cheaper lessons to families with financial issues. Unfortunately, we found out that the families had continued their kids' cram and swim school. You can be assured that the cram school didn’t lower their prices. So, why did we? Not anymore.
2. We had a new Mom irate about how some months had 3, 4, or 5 lessons. And the lesson fee was the same per month. We explained that all days have the same number of lessons per year. The monthly fee was the same regardless of the number of lessons that month.
She wanted us to discount the fee for the months with 3 lessons. We explained we couldn’t do that, we’d have to do it for everyone and with over 500 students, that is no small feat. We are fair, you are not being cheated. (plus, would we then have to increase the fee for months with 5 lessons?)
The funny thing is, she had signed her 2 daughters up for 2 lessons per week and I had already significantly discounted the fee. I reality, she WAS getting 2 free lessons a month.
She predictably ended up quitting. Of course, we were sorry to lose 2 promising students, but we had to stick to our guns.
If we change the rules for her, then we have to change the rules for everyone.
How about your school? Your stories?
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