Living in the present tense
He spoke about the challenges facing schools like his, the importance of good teachers and his plans for the future.
Andrew Kureth: What are current market conditions like?
Mike Mills: The initial answer would be tough - not in the sense that we're not doing well - our figures are actually going up and have been ever since I've had this school. To maintain that growth it becomes more and more difficult every six months - every semester.
I think it would be horribly difficult for someone to start up now, the market is so saturated with schools or you have the very big players with huge advertising budgets.
Is focusing on a niche the only way for a small school to survive?
Since we started that's been one of our biggest strengths - we get the people in. And the reason people come is because they know that we're getting people through exams.
How much does your school spend on advertising?
The honest answer is: not much. I mean basically I find advertising to be a necessary evil.
My aim is always to minimize what I spend on advertising. We have a couple of posters on the street close by, and that just reminds people walking past. What we are starting to do is advertise on the internet, because for most of customers they're the type of people who check out internet sites, educational sites and so on.
Is online advertising more effective?
We've only started going into that this year, so I'll have a better idea in September. We had some response in February but then we had only been in it two months then.
What advantage do you believe your school has over others?
The crucial thing is the quality of the teachers - that's the stand out. We pay our teachers extremely well - we pay more than anybody else apart from the [British] Council - we pay about a złoty less than the council does.
What makes for successful learning apart from the students themselves being motivated is having a good quality teacher who's both knowledgeable and enthusiastic. If you get that part wrong, then you don't really have much hope of keeping people. I'd say 80 percent has to be the teachers. The other 20 percent are the facilities and the atmosphere.
Do your instructors teach in English, Polish or both?
Basically I don't believe in the native-speaker/Polish-speaker dichotomy at all. Either you're a good teacher or you're not. Some schools still do it and it drives me crazy - the Polish teacher for grammar, the native speaker for conversation. You can't do one or the other. Most schools do that for one reason only - Polish teachers are generally cheaper and if you get an untrained, unqualified native speaker you can plonk him in a group and let him talk to them. And that becomes the conversation teacher. So you get two teachers both of whom are paid very low hourly rates. I've heard some schools pay as little as zł.18 an hour. Now, we pay three times that as a minimum. Some of our teachers get four times that. It's the old story - with one or two exceptions you get what you pay for.
If you want a top quality teacher you've got to pay top money for them - sometimes even that doesn't work out, but at least then you've got a better chance than if you're offering zł.20.
Does hiring native speakers drive up costs?
Fortunately the first problem - which is now gone - was the whole process of getting work permits and so on, because of the EU. We have employed American teachers and they had to get the relevant documents.
I've talked to Polish teachers that have turned down an offer of zł.85 for 45 minutes gross. Now, even allowing for ZUS, tax and everything else, that's why I pay for a native anyway.
Do you have plans to expand?
I prefer to do the one thing well than run the risk of expanding and it not being as good overall as it is now.
I'm here from eight in the morning to 8:30 in the evening, and that's what it's taken to be where it is, and if I suddenly expand to the point where I suddenly can't do everything - let's say I get 400 students as opposed to 300, but the quality is 50 percent less, I prefer to keep it at 300.
When we had 120 students I could honestly say that I knew every student's name, what classes they were in, something about them, and that makes it very special. This is 'Mike Mills English' and it is a small, friendly school. You can't be small and friendly if you've got 800 students.
Interview by Andrew Kureth
Andrew Kureth: What are current market conditions like?
Mike Mills: The initial answer would be tough - not in the sense that we're not doing well - our figures are actually going up and have been ever since I've had this school. To maintain that growth it becomes more and more difficult every six months - every semester.
I think it would be horribly difficult for someone to start up now, the market is so saturated with schools or you have the very big players with huge advertising budgets.
Is focusing on a niche the only way for a small school to survive?
Since we started that's been one of our biggest strengths - we get the people in. And the reason people come is because they know that we're getting people through exams.
How much does your school spend on advertising?
The honest answer is: not much. I mean basically I find advertising to be a necessary evil.
My aim is always to minimize what I spend on advertising. We have a couple of posters on the street close by, and that just reminds people walking past. What we are starting to do is advertise on the internet, because for most of customers they're the type of people who check out internet sites, educational sites and so on.
Is online advertising more effective?
We've only started going into that this year, so I'll have a better idea in September. We had some response in February but then we had only been in it two months then.
What advantage do you believe your school has over others?
The crucial thing is the quality of the teachers - that's the stand out. We pay our teachers extremely well - we pay more than anybody else apart from the [British] Council - we pay about a złoty less than the council does.
What makes for successful learning apart from the students themselves being motivated is having a good quality teacher who's both knowledgeable and enthusiastic. If you get that part wrong, then you don't really have much hope of keeping people. I'd say 80 percent has to be the teachers. The other 20 percent are the facilities and the atmosphere.
Do your instructors teach in English, Polish or both?
Basically I don't believe in the native-speaker/Polish-speaker dichotomy at all. Either you're a good teacher or you're not. Some schools still do it and it drives me crazy - the Polish teacher for grammar, the native speaker for conversation. You can't do one or the other. Most schools do that for one reason only - Polish teachers are generally cheaper and if you get an untrained, unqualified native speaker you can plonk him in a group and let him talk to them. And that becomes the conversation teacher. So you get two teachers both of whom are paid very low hourly rates. I've heard some schools pay as little as zł.18 an hour. Now, we pay three times that as a minimum. Some of our teachers get four times that. It's the old story - with one or two exceptions you get what you pay for.
If you want a top quality teacher you've got to pay top money for them - sometimes even that doesn't work out, but at least then you've got a better chance than if you're offering zł.20.
Does hiring native speakers drive up costs?
Fortunately the first problem - which is now gone - was the whole process of getting work permits and so on, because of the EU. We have employed American teachers and they had to get the relevant documents.
I've talked to Polish teachers that have turned down an offer of zł.85 for 45 minutes gross. Now, even allowing for ZUS, tax and everything else, that's why I pay for a native anyway.
Do you have plans to expand?
I prefer to do the one thing well than run the risk of expanding and it not being as good overall as it is now.
I'm here from eight in the morning to 8:30 in the evening, and that's what it's taken to be where it is, and if I suddenly expand to the point where I suddenly can't do everything - let's say I get 400 students as opposed to 300, but the quality is 50 percent less, I prefer to keep it at 300.
When we had 120 students I could honestly say that I knew every student's name, what classes they were in, something about them, and that makes it very special. This is 'Mike Mills English' and it is a small, friendly school. You can't be small and friendly if you've got 800 students.
Interview by Andrew Kureth
