How to open a private school in Russia from scratch: a detailed business plan and recommendations from professionals

What's the catch?

Verbernar? What else is this? A few years ago, similar questions were encountered all the time. But over the past year, the eLearning market has been growing by leaps and bounds, and webinars alone will no longer surprise anyone.

On the one hand, the prerequisites for this are objective: analysts’ forecasts, which promise long-term and stable growth of the industry as a whole, and vivid examples of the successful launch of online schools from scratch to millions in profits. In general, the stars aligned.

On the other hand, few people soberly assess the risks of entering a business and take into account all the nuances of opening an online school when making a decision.

It seems that it could be simpler? I’m great at baking pies / knitting socks / doing manicures (underline as appropriate) - why am I not an expert? Look how many likes and views Anya has on her channel! I'm doing at least as good. This is where the first difficulties and questions from the series “what to do and where to go to open your own online school on your own and with minimal investment” begin.

In practice, rose-colored glasses quickly break against the gray reinforced concrete of reality. Not a single step-by-step algorithm for creating an online school, of which there is a carriage and a small cart on the Internet, will give you a guarantee of successful development of events. Therefore, I suggest you be patient and try to figure out how to launch your own educational project without tears, resentment and disappointment.

So, let's go!

How does the state relate to the development of the market for children's development centers?

At the moment, the state has a positive attitude towards the development of this particular industry. And there are objective reasons for this. Firstly, there really are problems with the “free” sector, which is entirely supported by the budget. And one of them is the lack of places. Despite the decline in demographic indicators over the past 3-4 years, there are not enough places in kindergartens. And there are practically no government centers left where free additional education courses would be provided.

Secondly, if previously there was a semblance of “fairness”, when government agencies did everything for the residents of the country for free, and businesses paid for it, now the situation has changed. And even for going to a regular kindergarten, the client (now a client) needs to pay.

Thirdly, since 2020, the government has been talking about the need to transfer the social sphere to a competitive market. And in order for the business community to compete with free government institutions, it is necessary to give entrepreneurs in this area access to budget money.

Some may laugh here. But this is true. Moreover, bills are being developed that are aimed specifically at such innovations.

In simple words, the state wants to issue grants and subsidies to entrepreneurs to open private kindergartens and other socially significant institutions.

For now these are just projects. And given the slowness of the state machine, how quickly they will become a reality is unclear. But there is no doubt that they will.

As Marina Petrova, an expert on the legal aspects of the work of children's centers and the author of the portal bestbabyclub.ru, notes, the main thing in such laws is that the requirements for suppliers - both state and non-state - will become uniform. And the state will pay business the same amount for services as it pays the public sector for kindergartens. This will become the basis for proper competition.

As Gennady Degtev, head of the Moscow Department for Competition Policy, stated, “Particular attention should be paid to intellectual resources today, therefore the market for additional education services is included in the list of priorities for the capital within the framework of the competition development standard.” His words were reported by the editors of Vedomosti.

Although there is still an opinion that in 10-15 years Russia will no longer see state kindergartens. As well as clinics. Let's not rush to conclusions. We are more interested in what is happening with the market now, and what an entrepreneur who wants to open his own children's center should do. So let's get back to reality.

Where we are going?

The first thing you need to do is determine your own niche in the market. Find out what you're really good at. Find yourself.

For example, you have lived abroad for many years, communicate freely with native speakers on any topic, you can spend hours explaining the difference between Past Simple and Present Perfect and, what’s important, you really like it. Look towards creating an online English school - perhaps this will become your niche.

Or maybe you have already surpassed Jamie Oliver and Martha Stewart a long time ago? Do friends, neighbors, friends of neighbors come to you for recipes or ask you to cook something to order? Then consider starting an online cooking school.

Take the time to choose “your” niche. If she is so driven that she has the drive to work day and night on the project not only for profit, but also for pleasure, then you are on the right track.

Services

An important stage of a business plan for a school is to determine the main services that will be provided during the educational process.

The learning process will be organized for students in grades 1-9. It is best to choose a narrow training profile. For example, this will be a school with in-depth study of languages, and the main part of the program will be subjects that are aimed at their detailed study. You can also start the process of learning several languages at once, for example: French, English, German and Spanish. Parents will independently choose the set of languages that their child will learn.

The training groups themselves should consist of 7-9 students who will have approximately the same level of knowledge. At the same time, the school can launch courses to prepare for passing state exams: Unified State Examination and Unified State Examination. It is worth paying special attention to the creative and athletic development of the child. You can add daily exercises to the educational process (in addition to physical education classes). They can be carried out for 15 minutes before the start of lessons.

You can also open separate courses for preparing preschool children (5-7 years old) for admission to school.

Who are we saving?

We’ve decided on a niche, now we take out a microscope and start studying the market. We spy on our competitors: what they offer, at what price, we try to understand how their online schools are developing, how successful and profitable they are. Assess the strengths and weaknesses of other companies through the eyes of a potential client so that you can take them into account when creating your own project.

How is your online school different from hundreds of other “one and only” ones? What to bet on during active promotion and promotion? What twist should be added to your project? If there are no answers to these questions, then you risk simply disappearing from the competition.

We also study the downside of the market to determine the potential capacity of the niche. We look at the number of queries in search engines and subscribers on thematic channels on YouTube and Instagram.

By the way, pay attention to what exactly people are looking for. The wording of search queries can help you in the active stage of promoting an online school. After this, we move on to analyzing the target audience, drawing up a portrait of the client (gender, age, interests, occupation), determining the needs and pains that we will “treat.”

Surely, already at this stage the lion's share of those who thought that you could launch your own online project without experience and expertise could literally fall off in 1 day. It’s better for you – there are fewer competitors!

Costs of opening your own private school

Initial costs (calculations are given in rubles):

acquisition of a building with an area of 1,500 square meters - from 12 million;
repair and equipment of school grounds - from 3 million;
purchase of desks, chairs, teacher tables, sofas, beds and other furniture - from 1 million;
purchase of educational equipment, including sports equipment, chemical reagents, physical instruments, interactive whiteboards, etc. – from 3 million;
purchase of computers and office equipment – from 500 thousand;
kitchen, dining room, medical office equipment - from 500 thousand.

Thus, the initial costs will be about 17 million rubles. Of course, you can save a lot if you do not own the building, but the cost of rent can cover all the profits.

Monthly expenses for private school

wages for the teaching staff (10 teachers) – from 50 thousand each + taxes (about 15 thousand) – in total from 650 thousand;
wages for the rest of the staff (cleaners, foremen, security guards, cooks, nurses, accountants, etc.) – from 500 thousand, depending on the number of staff units (calculated individually);
purchase of missing equipment and current repairs – from 500 thousand;
organization of hot meals 3 times a day - at a rate of 500 rubles per day per student, with a 5-day school week - from 1 million;
payment for utilities, rent, communications, Internet, etc. – from 1.5 million

Thus, monthly costs are at least 4.15 million rubles, or 41.5 thousand per student.

Private school business plan.

What's the plan?

Now we return to the issue of expertise and readiness to work in an online format:

Do you want to take on the role of a mentor, tutor, teacher?
Do you have experience teaching online?
Do you understand the specifics of working with remote listeners?
Process incoming applications, accept payments, post homework, send closing documents - do you plan to take on all organizational issues yourself?
By the way, what do we have with the materials? Are they just in your head, or are there at least prepared electronic notes and training videos?

Well, then everything is as usual. We digitize knowledge, watch lessons on creating content for online schools and record our own. We think through the product line, the structure of each individual course, final tests and exams. We fill the modules with ready-made materials.

There is more than enough work for the first time!

Choosing a school structure

Decide whether the school will be for-profit or non-profit. Make this decision before making decisions about any other academic aspects of your school. Non-profit schools will be governed by a board of directors. On the other hand, for-profit schools will be overseen by an owner (perhaps yourself) or a business partnership. One structure is not better than another. It is up to you to decide how you want to run and finance your school.

Form a private school committee if your school is a nonprofit. This committee will work together to make important decisions about the school's future, select campus locations, and hire faculty. The members will eventually become the core members of your board of directors. Committee members must be experts in a variety of fields, including education, law, accounting, business and construction.

If you are not sure who to ask to serve on the committee, check with other private schools in your area. Talk to members of their administration and find out who these schools used as committee members.

Decide whether you want to run a day school or a boarding school. Day schools operate like regular public schools and send students home at the end of the 6-7 hour day. Boarding schools have overnight students. Boarding school students usually stay at school for the entire term. Boarding schools have more financial investment and more work, but students tend to be deeply involved in their communities and form close professional bonds with their teachers.

As another option, consider a Montessori school. Montessori schools are almost always private and offer children a discovery-based model of academic experimentation and learning.

Find a building for your private school. Look around residential or semi-residential areas where you would like to have your school. If there are no school buildings currently available, talk to a developer or commercial real estate agents who may know of a viable school building.

Unless you have a huge operating budget, don't plan to build a new building for your school.

Should we go light or prepare our equipment?

Immediately think about where you will host your online courses and communicate with students. Whether it be an Instagram page, a closed Facebook group, or a distance learning platform that will help automate processes and reduce the number of routine actions.

Have you decided to stop at SDO? Great, which one? Expensive or cheap. Simple or complex. Boxed or cloud. The choice is huge! But how not to get confused in all this diversity?

Personally, I vote for a service that will allow:

Organize communication both within the group and one-on-one
Weave webinars into the course structure
Set up motivation and gamification elements
Monitor the learning process of students
Issue certificates upon successful completion of the course

Why are such educational institutions popular?

This is mainly due to the fact that in many ordinary schools, teachers do not pay attention to the individual characteristics of the child when constructing the educational process. This is due to the fact that teachers need to prepare students for the Unified State Exam, and this requires memorizing the material rather than understanding it.

Also, many schools do not have a good material and technical base. But any parent wants their child to study in comfortable conditions. In most secondary schools there are neither speech therapists nor psychologists, which are especially needed for primary school students. Private schools provide the opportunity to visit interesting places, invite successful people, so that children have additional motivation to learn. Employees of such paid educational institutions have more opportunities to realize interesting ideas and the potential of the child.

Documentation? What other documents?

At the same time, we are engaged in the legal aspect of the activity - we register an individual entrepreneur or a legal entity. When registering, immediately clarify what documents you will need to open an online school.

It is also important to understand here that in the educational sphere everything should be “strictly to the line.” And if individual entrepreneurs are still exempt from the requirement to obtain a license, then in a year or two they will definitely need to think about it.

Search for school premises

It is better to find a premises before applying for a license. You can even conclude a preliminary lease agreement. This will help officials issue a license faster.

Requirements for school premises

Full requirements for premises for private schools are specified in SanPiN 2.4.2.2821-10. The main ones are: :

the building should be located away from roads, garages, car services and other transport facilities;
the surrounding area must be at least 50% planted with trees or shrubs;
a perimeter fence and artificial lighting are required;
transport routes must be connected to the school;
space must be provided for a sports ground, a recreation area and a utility room;
there should be only one shift at school;
the height of the premises is at least 3.6 meters, the height of the gym is at least 6;
The classroom area must be at least 2.5 square meters per student;
if there are bedrooms (for boarding houses) - at least 6 square meters per resident;
the school must be equipped with: a locker room, a gym and a medical room;
separate toilets for boys and girls should be provided on each floor;
it is required to maintain a certain temperature regime in all rooms - from 18 to 22 degrees Celsius, depending on the type;
the school must be equipped with fire extinguishing equipment and an “alarm” button;
For country schools, security is required.

Where's the line of customers?

The next stage is creating an online school website. You definitely need to have an online presence. This can be either a full-fledged multi-page website or a landing page for each specific course.

Outsource this task or hire a copywriter, designer and layout designer - the choice is yours. In any case, be sure to calculate the cost of such services and in the future budget for the maintenance of the site and improvements to update it.

By the way, if you decide to go with an LMS, then choose a service with a built-in landing page designer. For example, eTutorium LMS makes it possible not only to collect conversion landing pages, but also to automate the process of receiving applications and payments from your potential clients.

What is important to consider when creating a landing page? The very needs and pains that we identified during the analysis of the target audience. It's good if you can post reviews from former students. Real, of course.

If students have the opportunity to access a demo lesson, free webinar, or trial module, be sure to indicate this on the course landing page to increase trust. You are not yet known in the market, so you need to prove that you are an expert who presents the material competently and clearly.

After creating a landing page, start your advertising campaign. The keywords that you used to search for competitors when you were studying the market will help you launch it. Start being active on social networks, attract partners, use the resources of open platforms such as Udemy. And when you feel that it’s time to scale, don’t skimp on a specialist who will think through and implement the marketing strategy for your online school.

Creating a lesson

On the right side of the course, select “lessons”, create a lesson.

As you can see here, there is a very convenient editing panel, with the ability to insert video and fully customize it, insert pictures, titles, text formatting.

Fill out the necessary information about the lesson, homework and click “publish”.

That's it, the lesson is ready. And so you can create up to 10 lessons for the 1st course on the free plan.

Is this really mine?

As you can see, creating your own online school from scratch for free is as easy as finding a pink unicorn. To get the desired result, you will have to plow, not sleep and forget about proper rest. But it's worth it!

If you…

Determined your niche
Understood and felt the target audience
Prepared high-quality materials
We have built a communication process with your listeners
Focused on further work and business scaling

...then you will succeed!

Author:

Yulia Koroleva CEO eTutorium Webinar & eTutorium LMS

State accreditation and promotion

One of the main advantages of any private school is its accreditation, which in itself is the result of long-term and successful work of the educational institution.

As soon as accreditation is completed, the institution will be included in the list of the best private institutions in the region.

More and more parents will send their children there for education.

To do this, you need to work for at least three years and graduate at least one class.

Then the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation will evaluate the results of the work and issue a positive decision with state accreditation.

This is important and indisputable evidence of a high-quality education system.

To make as many people as possible aware of this, you can hold open days once or twice a year, encourage teachers to collaborate with scientific projects and regularly communicate with parents, ask them about topics that concern them regarding children’s learning and behavior.