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THE MOST POPULAR LANGUAGES TO LEARN (According toThe 2023 Duolingo Language Report) 1. English 2. Spanish 3. French 4. German 5. Japanese 6. Korean 7. Italian 8. Hindi 9. Chinese 10. Portuguese work outside of classes, will pay attention, will do as much as they can to try and learn this thing that you’re teaching them about,” she says. “I have a group on a Friday morning where we sit in a café and have coffee and I just teach them about this thing [Spanish] that I love.” Students vary significantly but most have disposable income, which highlights the importance of choosing the right location to open a language learning franchise. “We get interest because these are people that may have holiday homes in Spain and travel a lot. So, they are people that generally have spare income to be able to travel or have a second home,” says Megan. Although there are also students who attend as a hobby, travel has been a big motivation for consumers to spend money on learning languages, so much so that changes in holiday plans have affected the attendance of some students. “You’ve got people who were learning before, then Brexit happened, so they decided to sell their place in Spain, Italy, or France, so we lost them,” says Megan. However, she also says this has been balanced by the uptake of language classes during the pandemic, which added a revenue stream to the business by extending services to online classes. “This year we’ve hit our pre-COVID numbers, we’re above our pre-Covid numbers now.” Megan plans to continue leaning into the travel lifestyle that drives many of her students to her classes by offering Italian – a language that’s not currently offered by many franchises. The UK as a hot destination There are countries that typically have language learning engrained within their culture, much more so than the UK. However, as demand continues to propel the franchising efforts of brands on our shores, it has also begun attracting much bigger players in the market, including Helen Doron Educational Group. The business, which has been in operation for 40 years, has 1200 franchised units around the world in 40 countries, with a network of national and master franchisees. Now, the franchise plans to roll out it’s services across the UK, setting up a dedicated environment for students, with a pending headquarters based in London. “I think the UK needs something like this,” says founder Helen Doron. “We’ve got a curriculum. We don’t just sit down and sing a few songs with kids. They start at X and they end at Y. We know what the learning outcome is and next year they’re going to start from somewhere else.” The business has similarly chosen to focus on the dominance of Spanish, offering several age-appropriate classes which incorporate fun and specially developed songs. Alongside this, students can also access English as a Second Language, mathematics, and music in what Helen terms ‘a one-stop shop’. But why now? And why the UK? “I think parents are understanding it’s important to be culturally diverse, which you can’t be when you only know one language. But also, I think there’s a really big interest in early child development and their child’s brain will literally and physically grow in order to accommodate this extra language.” The franchise is aiming to appeal to the UK market via its established methodology, which Helen began developing more than 40 years ago and continues to innovate. “Forty years ago, [tutors] were starting with reading and writing. That’s not language, which is understanding and speaking,” says Helen. “We started with the pedagogy. We learned the marketing as we went along because we think this is an essential.” Now, the next challenge will be finding franchisees willing to invest as the brand makes its UK debut. These investors don’t necessarily need to be language speakers, but they do need to feel the brand has an important part to play in UK education. “I think people should be emotionally involved in this business. It’s an educational business. It has a soul,” says Helen. INS IGHT 20 WHAT FRANCHISE | ISSUE 19.3 CHILDREN’S SERVICES SPECIAL