Has the ESF got its priorities right?

Today the SCMP has published an opinion piece that I wrote about "The Way Forward", Business gets in way of focus on teaching:

In recent months, the English Schools Foundation (ESF) seems to have decided that it is a "business". It was therefore no surprise that it should produce a business plan ("The Way Forward") that talks about "business opportunities" in Hong Kong and beyond.

The South China Morning Post reported that during the first of the meetings about "The Way Forward" concerns were raised with the ESF about the emphasis on business in the document. I attended the second meeting (at Renaissance College) and raised a similar question. The response from Heather du Quesnay was to ignore the substance of the question and explain that the ESF needed to be more professional.

I think all parents and teachers would agree that the ESF needs to be more professional and would hope that the ESF management can continue to focus on that. However, there is a big difference between running the ESF professionally and operating as a business.

Commercial organisations need to have business plans. Their owners or shareholders want to know how the company will increase profits, and companies often decide the only way forward is to expand geographically or into new business areas. These ventures are inevitably risky and take up a lot of management time and attention, with the strong possibility that the core business will suffer while everyone is focused on e-business or whatever else seemed attractive at the time. Sometimes the problems are so great the company closes down or is acquired by a rival.

The English Schools Foundation has no shareholders. Instead, it has stakeholders, principally the pupils, their parents, teaching and support staff, and (arguably) the government.

I am not aware of any pressure from any of these stakeholders for the ESF to pursue the "business opportunities" that the management has identified, or for the ESF to become a "bigger player in Asia". Indeed, I suspect that quite the opposite is true. At last week's meeting at Renaissance College to discuss "The Way Forward", most parents were concerned about more mundane issues such as the move to the primary, middle and diploma programmes of the International Baccalaureate, and the teaching of Chinese.

The subvention was also mentioned and this is a major concern for parents. This issue is confused because the ESF has already opened new classes that are not covered by the subvention and now it has a new private independent school that receives no subvention (with another one on the way). There is a new ordinance that will change the way that the ESF is run. The new IB curriculum and Chinese teaching are also significant challenges. So I believe the ESF has plenty to do without worrying about "business opportunities".