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How to spot a good children’s education franchise opportunity   Frank Ho   Canada Certified Math Teacher

Founder of Ho Math and Chess, Vancouver, Canada

Children’s education franchise comes in different forms, some are in the area of physical training such as sports, some involve in art, and some help children develop their academic abilities such as English or math etc. If you love to be with children with great patience then operating an education franchise may be the perfect business for you, but of course interest alone will not make the business viable. A factor to be considered when buying an education franchise is the uniqueness of the franchise system. There are many competitors out in the world of after-school math tutoring centres, so how to pick one, which has the best successful rate? The uniqueness of the franchise will make a difference.

Math tutoring franchise centre is one of the best children’s education franchises since all children in all countries must learn math from kindergarten to grade 12 as one of the compulsory subjects and many children need extra help in trying to understand math.

Technology changes, parent’s high demand, and fierce competition have caused sea changes in math franchise education system. Traditional math drill worksheets are signs of out-dated teaching style. Children raised in multi-media environment are no longer happy with drill style learning no matter how one would package it in different slogans such as self-learning etc. method.  Totally computer-guided learning method invented long time ago would have replaced all teachers if it were so accepted by children. Today’s children want to have math worksheets designed with their thinking in mind that is fun, exploratory, and educational, yet educators have not come up with innovative worksheets to reach the stage of “you order, we deliver”. In other words, child education franchisers are not at the stage of delivering products children like and also effective in raising children’s math ability.

It is not enough to buy a math-learning centre just because the franchiser claims the system is the most effective. Why? What factors have made the system the most effective? If the math computation technique method is not what children would learn in their day school then how long this non-mainstream computation method will retain in children’s memory if children do not practice them often? I have met so many children who abandoned some computation techniques they learned at other learning centres just because they did not have chance to practice after finishing learning. It may impress parents when children are learning this particular method but what happens after finishing program? They go back to pencil and paper method.

Math learning centre must use a computation technique which is in line with what children are learning at school so it complements children’s learning instead of having learn some new techniques and the consequence is that it adds more burden on children.

If children already have fear on math or simply feels it is no fun to do math work then what good is it to add more worksheets and have them to do more work?  This is the failure of most math learning centres because they simply ask children to do more what they feel dreadful. The drill method is even worse since the teaching and understanding concepts are not considered as important other than repetitions of practice.

It is difficult to develop a system, which can add spice into math skills practice so children will feel it is fun to work with, and they are more willing to work on. The main reason is no one has ever come up with practical math workbooks on how to systematically mix fun and math. Ho Math and Chess is the only world child education franchise has successfully mixed chess, math and puzzles all together so children will feel it is more fun to work on than traditional math worksheets.

To integrate math, chess, and puzzles altogether, we need innovative ideas to do it. Ho math and Chess has invented the technology to do just that. The technology is a copyrighted and trademarked proprietary intellectual product.