Illusions created by some educational centers

It is known that currently, a significant portion of schoolchildren attend training centers organized by tutors. At the same time, there is an increase in sending children to educational centers among parents. We would like to share some thoughts about such centers against the backdrop of various events related to educational centers that have been spreading on social networks recently.

The overall condition of the training centers is unsatisfactory

The dissatisfaction with the situation of training centers is not due to the lack of strong teachers or the lack of training centers with the right system, but the real situation was explained very well by a specialist in a completely different field:

A few months ago, we came across a video on the YouTube platform from a franchising expert on the organization of small shops where a Russian shaurma bakes (an organization that helps others open such shops) listing the conditions for the shaurma branch to make a profit. The conditions were as follows:

• choose the location of the branch correctly;

• make the best possible repairs and designs of the station;

• choose the cheapest product on the market for making shaurma;

As long as the quality of the product does not make people sick, special chemical agents that give a taste give the necessary flavor and give the illusion of delicious food. (Remember the flavor of the fast-paced "hot lunch");

• attract the cheapest labor. If you do one thing, everyone becomes a master of their craft.

• the tactics currently used by training centers are very close to the tactics of this specialist (especially in Tashkent).

• the building is selected from the best location;

• to the maximum extent possible, repairs and designs will be carried out;

• the simplest, easiest program for the topic is chosen;

• the cheapest labor will be attracted.

How do they keep parents and students? There are many ways to create the illusion of a good education:

A simplified test system. Your child's test scores will increase, creating an illusion of increasing knowledge.

The illusion of activity. Lessons being taught to the child, videos on social media, various information, and images of children being taught are constantly abandoned, creating the illusion that the child is in the center of attention, the child's activity.

Gambling (a gambling element). There are continuous competitions among children, where the winners are awarded (even sometimes the child himself is paid for this, and the prizes are much cheaper than the money collected). The enthusiasm of our people for lotteries, cash prizes, and various risky games is skillfully used.

There are other ways to keep a child in the learning center

I'm a teacher, I've never done business before. In 2020, I decided to open my own training center. At that time, I was not aware of the real situation in the training centers. Before opening a training center, I worked out a plan for a year, packed the materials, and defined what a child should know at what stage. When the training center went into operation, I began to face the following major challenges:

The difficulty of attracting children to an adequate audience. When competing training centers were able to spend $1000 a month on advertising, I didn't have the money, experience, or knowledge.

I couldn't give the parents immediate results. Parents who bring their child demand a change in their child's knowledge after a month, a week, or even a day of lessons. At first, I didn't understand these requirements at all, how it was possible to make a change in a child's knowledge in such a short time, until he got acquainted with the methods described above.

Lack of tests, various games and other activities that interest the child, insufficient activity on Instagram. 11 months before the next exam in August, I refused when they asked me to take a rehearsal test in September.

Since I couldn't figure out how to take a rehearsal test from a child who hadn't learned anything yet, most of my students had moved to that center when a similar test was taken at a neighboring training center. Although these tests were of no real use, I realized too late that taking a test of some kind from a child creates an illusion of progress in parents.

The same applies to posting videos on Instagram. If I want to take a 60-90-minute lesson, I need at least 30 minutes of time and a lot of attention. The fact that I didn't do these things and have refused to do them so far has cost me a lot and is costing me.

As a result, although I was clearly the leader in the Khorezm region in terms of student enrollment in Presidential schools, the profit was at a constant minimum. I made a mistake, I'm to blame. I didn't adapt to the market, I didn't understand what the market demanded. I'm not an entrepreneur, but a teacher.

Some of the most powerful teachers I know are in my situation, either working in a training center with minimal profits, or teaching in other existing training centers, or following the advice of a shourma expert to survive in the marketplace. (There are few exceptions.)

There are two reasons why there has been so much talk about the quality of learning in different training centers recently:

First, it was evident from experience that the methods described above are not effective, even if they are used very often. You can fool once, twice, three times in this way, but it's hard to keep the fact that the result is zero again and again, even if the best illusion is created. These training centers should not have been able to function until today, in conditions where the result would be visible faster than once a year.

Second, some educational centers overloaded advertising to such an extent that the gap between promises and truth in advertising became too great, causing people to understand the truth.

Now the process has begun, and gradually people will begin to understand these methods and abandon them, realizing what quality education is. Of course, even if the result is not 100%, we hope that more people will switch to demanding quality than now.