Frank Milner, president of the teaching titan, discusses education’s much-needed revamp
Frank Milner is no stranger to teaching. Having helmed the Tutor Doctor franchise for more than 10 years, his expertise is invaluable; especially for burgeoning franchisors exploring their options.
The current structure of classrooms, according to Milner, is failing our children. “We need the opposite of what’s happening. Class sizes continue to get bigger and bigger, which means individual students get less personalized attention and large quantities are going through a broken system.” He continues: “We really have to start taking a student-centric approach to finding solutions, as opposed to the management-centric approach that I see happening all across the globe.”
Driving innovation
With Tutor Doctor, tutors arrive at a student’s home, fully aware of their needs and equipped with the tools and resources to deliver excellence. This is following a consultation and evaluation, which ensures that a student is placed with the perfect tutor for them. The brand motto – ‘Not all minds that wander are absent’ – encapsulates Milner’s unique approach to education. In his view, classrooms need a personal, one-to-one touch that simply doesn’t exist on the scale that it ought to.
“We really have to start taking a student-centric approach to finding solutions”
“That’s how we get such phenomenal results so quickly,” says Milner. “At a learning center a tutor could sit down with three or four students, and in order to have an effective session, you have to use common material. They’re not spending that hour – or however long they choose – focused on one student’s specific issues.”
In the public sector, Milner has found that teachers feel “shackled” to curricula that aren’t serving the outside-the-box thinkers of tomorrow. “There’s growing frustration with the bureaucracy they have to deal with,” he explains, “which limits them doing their job in the way they find most effective.”
Rapid improvement
New franchisees for Tutor Doctor can be “up-and-running in 30 days,” according to Milner. This impressive figure is thanks to the concept’s highly supportive training scheme, which sees entrepreneurs paired with a launch support specialist, or LSS, who assists with execution from the get-go.
“The LSS program was rolled out about two years ago, and the impact on new franchisees has been enormous,” says Milner. “Our franchisees today are getting off to a much faster start than they ever have in the history of our business.”The LSS program also removes any need for entrepreneurs to have a background in education, and only 17 per cent of franchisees have prior teaching experience.
Ultimately, regardless of whether you are interested in joining Tutor Doctor or starting your own venture, Milner recommends taking the plunge: “You’re never going to know everything. The biggest piece of advice I would give franchisors is: just do it. Take that step, take that plunge. Yes, you’ll have challenges, but unless you take that step, it will never happen.”
