The International Schools Review Forum

My husband and I work at a for profit school in SE Asia. We'll have finished our two year contract next year. We like our school, and would otherwise stay , but the school is bleeding enrollment, and the scare is that the school may close. Should we be covering ourselves and recruit this fall even though we don't get contracts until December?

How bad is the bleed? Are you sure its going to make it another year? What are your goals?

If you stay and the IS doesnt close but you have a lot of staff leave, you could be seen as saviors and possibly move into administration.

If you stay it depends on your infrastructure, and ownerships plans. There have been some very small ISs as low as single digit enrollments that survived and grew. If your IS has low overhead they may be able to recover. If they are a large ISs then they need a minimum enrollment to meet expenses and payroll, they will reach a critical enrollment point where they cant defer payments and then the doors are locked and everyone vanishes.

Whats the cause of the bleed? A new IS, better IS, poor leadership? Generally external factors (new IS, etc) cost a lot to mitigate, internal factors are far less expensive, but if its a poison factor (like sociopath ownership) its going to get worse.

If you decide to enter recruiting, Id start now, you might not have jobs at the start of 2016.

Ownership usually doesnt exhaust all funding, they close shop when the projected revenue goes negative and salvage what resources they can. They stop paying bills while collecting fees until they run out of time.

I agree with PsyGuy on this one. Start saving yesterday and start looking, at least somewhat, now.

We will definitely be here for the next school year. I'm just looking ahead beyond that. They've already dropped hints that costs will be cut dramatically next year. Basic office supplies this year aren't being reordered. We lost a chunk this year due to the new contract the owner submitted that didn't go over well, and I think we'll have a tidal wave of teachers leaving next year.

The enrollment is bleeding for several reasons. The oil/gas industry taking a hit has really hurt us badly, but it seems our school more so than others. The high school more so than elementary. It doesn't help that 10% of the kids are staff kids who pay no tuition either. It also doesn't help that the owner refuses to advertise. Even the Tier 1 school of our region has ads in all the ex-pat magazines. He's got this pride thing in the way. They also hired OSH to replace all the old ones who left instead of cutting down on classes. That didn't make sense at all.

At this point I'm contemplating activating my SA account and start gathering my references to be prepared for the next recruiting season.

@twoteachers

I can appreciate your optimism, but this is March and August is a long way a way, leadership rarely gives staff the full story, yours sounds bad enough you might not have an IS to return to next year.You really should consider an exit plan or plan B.