I used to teach an immersion kindergarten class in Nagano. Because I had the same group of students every day, all day, for two years I got to know the parents.
Many of these children were also going to an English-conversation class, and most, if not all, of the parents with children in these classes expressed concern at the high turnover of English-conversation teachers. They expressed frustration at how difficult it was to find good teachers and at how these classes couldn't hang on to good teachers.
When parents found a good teacher, they would slowly start to gravitate toward that school, but this can get expensive. What they wanted most was to find a good teacher who owned the school and taught all the classes, thus guaranteeing their children would get the same quality instruction year after year.
If the opinions of these parents are representative, the future of Japan's English-conversation industry lies in the hands of smaller players and bodes ill for the big chain schools.
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