Nova classes to grow by 5 times within the year
A report in the Asahi Shimbun today shows explains that G Communications, the company which bought bankrupt English language school Nova, have announced their plans for the upcoming year.
Their plans for development include:
• Growing from the current 195 schools to 975 schools by March 21, 2009.
• Consigning management to local companies in a franchise format .
• Introducing “mini” classes .
In an interview with the Asahi Shimbun, President of G Communications Masaki Inayoshi, said that of the 670 bankrupt classes, he plans to reopen 200 of them by May. He also plans to hold classes over the Internet via television phones.
Although Nova used to be under a direct management system, they now plan to make certain prefectures, such as Aichi, Osaka, Chiba and Kanagawa, hold franchise classes.
By the end of March next year, they plan to enroll 1024 English teachers by setting up recruitment points in America, Australia and Ireland as well as re-employ some of the 20,000 ex-Nova teachers that were made redundant last year.
Although this spells good news for budding English teachers, Inayoshi fails to mention what will happen to the former Nova teachers who are still awaiting back-payments from last year – although he did not negotiate freedom of this responsibility when he made the acquisition. Nonentheless, will former teachers want to get hired by Nova again, even though they are under new management? Or will the bad publicity continue to haunt G Communications into the future? Surely, a brand name change is on the cards.
The Asahi Shimbun article (Japanese): http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0422/NGY200804210007.html
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