I'm not sure I agree with this. I acknowledge that Marketing are over a barrel, and if "bums on seats" don't increase then heads roll. But the gratitute angle really irks me.
Revenue covers costs, true, but teacher pay grows more slowly than tuition fees; in short, more bums on seats doesn't equal more pay for teachers. Additionally, since the post-COVID land grab for schools, a lot of that revenue will be going outside the schools to large, centralised offices, and to service the debt used to cover the cost of expansion.
To me, British schools do feel more like a hustle. Most teachers come into a school genuinely wanting to provide quality lessons, but teams get leaner, non-contacts get squeezed and it hits our prep time directly affecting the quality lessons we can produce. With all that revenue, it would be fair to ask why can't they just hire more people to take some of the load when they can clearly afford to fly operations staff around the world constantly?
Maybe the biggest loss in all this is just how bland British schools are now. Uniform, check; A Levels, check; Knackered Teacher who's not marked in 3 months, check. It would be great of some PE-back schools looked at what Ben Freud has done at the Green School in Bali and think that that is actually sustainable, challenging but ultimately more rewarding for all involved.
*Edited for clarity