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English school NOVA ordered to stop hiring for 6 months!

nhk9

先輩
27 Aug 2004
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http://news.tbs.co.jp/newseye/tbs_newseye3585081.html

The courts forced NOVA to stop hiring. This is apparently because of troubles within the company. Apparently the school promised no "entry fee" for joining the school, but for those who terminate the contract midway, this entry fee was deducted from the money that was supposed to be returned. Also, apparently there are other problems.

Maybe this shall be a wake up call for NOVA, which is not known for treating its teachers that well.
 
Actually its not stop hiring teachers, its stop signing new student contracts that are long term (a year or more) Student traffic and overall sales are down at NOVA. In my humble opinion its due to the low quality of teachers combined with their one-approach-to-all teaching system. The payment structure and early cancellations wouldn't be issues if most people continued going, but these issues are arising due to the number of people pulling out early due to dissatisfaction. To remedy the situation they should apply more stringent hiring practices and re-vamp their teaching methodologies.

Perhaps one day I'll be able to read Japanese without the help of Rikai, until then, myself and others in my boat can refer to this English article
:D

The Asahi Shimbun | Breaking News, Japan News and Analysis
 
If I were a "good" teacher, why would I join NOVA? Full schedules with little or no time to prepare for class, unless you come in on your own time. NOVA has a lot of good teachers that care about their students but when those teachers try to promote change they get shut down. Then, the "good" teachers don't care any more and status quo is intact.

In my branch we decided to change the system ourselves and made a lot of progress. Our students really imporved and could talk circles around most of the other schools students. It lasted for about a year or so and then the bosses heard about it and tried to lay down the smack down on us. We faked it for a while and just went back to our system. I was proud to be part of this little "project", and our students still thank us to this day for the effort we put in.

PS. I love it when NOVA makes the news!! LOL
 
Actually its not stop hiring teachers, its stop signing new student contracts that are long term (a year or more) Student traffic and overall sales are down at NOVA. In my humble opinion its due to the low quality of teachers combined with their one-approach-to-all teaching system. The payment structure and early cancellations wouldn't be issues if most people continued going, but these issues are arising due to the number of people pulling out early due to dissatisfaction.
I was wondering, also, if the other large eikaiwas might not use very similar heavy handed tactics to get students into their system, but by delivering a better quality product these differences get overlooked or minimized by their clients and government authorities. Of course it helps your business not to blatently infringe Japanese contract law and then not modify practices when students begin complaining and leaving in droves....
 
As far as I know, the eikaiwa I work for doesn't participate in these kinds of practices, but then again, I've never met a student that wasn't satisfied with the service they were getting from us. I agree, Elizabeth, that it's possible that if more eikaiwa were losing customers, we might see more stories like this pop up. Nova just seems to be particularly unscrupulous. I was discussing it with a professor today, and she thought that they spent too much money on advertisement instead of hiring quality teachers and creating a quality curriculum. So now Nova is a household name that isn't exactly synonymous with quality.

As a side note, this is great news for all other eikaiwa, who will probably go into a hiring frenzy to take up the slack of students.
 
My school is already actively recruiting pretty aggressively; if the biggest competitor got put out of commission for half a year, I would expect things to pick up a bit.
 
You don't "hire" students. Get your terminology straight. Students are customers.

nhk9 wrote:
Maybe this shall be a wake up call for NOVA,
Wake up, yourself. This is exactly what happened 5 YEARS ago with NOVA. Got a slap on the wrists, and despite students complaining, the government only now decided to step in...again. Nobody is held responsible now, either. Report their quarterly earnings for 2 years, and stop taking on new students. That's it. Total B.S.
 
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