How to do a Preschool business plan?

PreSchool is for children aged between 2-6 years. It generally includes a nursery school, babysitting and other activities for the creative development of the children. Entrepreneurs wanting to start a functional nursery school should provide babysitting and other recreational activities for the children to make learning enjoyable. As a further mechanism to grow they should strategically align with other partners and establish experiential learning for the kids.

The PreSchools should provide a well sorted curriculum which will enhance knowledge and skills among the students.  The activities are both teachers directed and child centered build to modify the child’s social and personal orientation towards life. The curriculum of the school should be based on the following learning activities.

·                     Mathematical Development

·                     Communication Language and Literary Development

·                     Physical development

·                     Personal, Social and emotional development

·                     Knowledge and understanding of the world

·                     Creative development

·                     Information Communication and Technology (ICT)

Based on the theory that children learn through play, classroom routines encourage active involvement and meaningful experimentation. The intent of the program is to formulate a diverse yet age appropriate set of active learning experiences that will allow children to engage in exploration and discovery, self expression through music, movement and art, active listening to reading by the mentors, organized play, independent play and multi sensory simulation.

Attributes of Pre-school Students

Participation rate considerably increases in the age group of 3-5. The participation rate of children aged within 3-5 has been projected to almost 60%. Depending on the country there is a slight variation when children get enrolled in PreSchools. In some European countries it starts at 5 years while in India, it is common to find children starting off their schools at 3 years.

Motivation, the need to send children to preschools

Preschool provides a foundation for learning both socially and academically that helps children in development for the future. Preschool is the first experience in a structured setting with teachers and other children. It gives opportunity to learn to share, follow instructions and socially develop oneself.

In order to learn and adopt new things the children must feel secured with a teacher or care giver for which building trust relations is immensely important. High-quality preschool programs nurture warm relationships among children, teachers and parents. Teachers build a close personal connection with each child in their care. The development of the child in pre schools depend on how much they are involved in the learning process and how teachers are helping the students to learn new concepts.

Concern regarding early childhood care have significantly increased over the years among the parents as education have become modern and requires higher acumen to catch up to new concepts. Therefore it is essential to inculcate various skills from a very small age to increase competency.

Setting up a PreSchool can be done in 2 different ways. The first way to startup is to take a franchisee of any leading PreSchool brand in the country. This is an easier method because you have ready access to all study materials, curriculum and support required to start-up the school. The Entrepreneur needs to pull in the required capital and provide the physical infrastructure for the school. In the second option where the entrepreneur wants to start off on their own, they have to set-up their own curriculum, provide capital and set-up the physical infrastructure. This will be difficult but at the same time, it will give the entrepreneur the flexibility to operate it in their own way.  The school will also need to hire an advisor who should be a senior educationist with experience of running a reputed organization. The advisor can be supported by education director and teachers.

Quality education is costly and reputed schools are known to charge a higher fees. The fees structure for a PreSchool is defined below. This is only an example to define the fees structure and it can vary from one school to another.

Table-1: Course Fee in Junior Kindergarten

Like any other business, before launching a new PreSchool project, the entrepreneur should look at the market potential of the business by putting all details in a business plan. Factors like demography, financial status of family, Government policy and multiple other factors can be a make or break for the business. The PreSchool business if done right can give steady returns over a period of time. Some of the other advantages of this business are one time investment, not much change in Regulations etc.

The business can turn profitable after 2 initial years of losses because building the brand and scaling up the business can take time. Before closing out, I want to reiterate the fact that the project needs to be analyzed from multiple parameters that include revenue, expenses, market opportunities, SWOT and competition.  If launched at the right location wit adequate investments and with the right set of teachers and support staff a PreSchool project can be a great opportunity for all.

If you want to develop a business plan for a pre-school project, connect with us at info@intelligentq.co.in