No language barrier to helping children learn

Turning a love of languages into a business is an exciting possibility offered by Lingotot, which offers a turnkey solution to those who are passionate about inspiring children when it comes to language learning.

Founded in Britain in 2010, the franchise was brought to in Ireland in 2019 by Sofia Colás, master franchisor and director of Lingotot Ireland.

As Colás grew up in a trilingual household, languages have always been a huge part of her life. And, after a career in the corporate world and with a young family, Colás felt it was the right time to follow her dream and specialise in languages for children.

Lingotot currently teaches close to 20,000 children in Ireland and Britain every week, through a network of 60 franchisees and 138 tutors, and a variety of language classes, including Spanish, French, German, Italian and Mandarin, are provided.

The core offering is the teaching of languages to children up to the age of 13 in preschool and primary school settings, following an accredited curriculum. But, there are, however, several ancillary teaching opportunities such as language assemblies, theme days and workshops in schools, online classes, an outdoor forest school programme, LingoStars drama, and language holiday camps as well as LingoChat fun conversational language sessions for adults.

At national level, Lingotot is, for the third year running, supporting the Department of Education by facilitating the primary languages sampler module in 20 of the participating primary schools.

Tailored for third to sixth class pupils, this programme lays the groundwork for the future integration of additional languages into the Primary Curriculum Framework in 2025.

“This exciting initiative gives pupils an early experience of a foreign language and further expands languages to students and that would not normally have the opportunity,” Colás said.

“Language, as a means to communicate, is a core human skill, so at Lingotot we strive to make the learning of languages a motivating experience through our methodology of early language acquisition. Our franchise model is a considered, researched, supported and successful off-the-shelf solution for franchisees, children and, importantly, their parents.”

The franchise has been designed as a low entry cost, mobile and turnkey model, where the support is ongoing over the five-year term. The package includes tried and tested methodology and structured programmes, trading under the Lingotot brand name with an exclusive territory in which to trade. All languages are included as standard, with full training in business and all aspects of running the franchise provided. Qualifications, permanent head office support, a start-up marketing pack, a comprehensive teacher resource pack full of props and an operations manual on how to run the business, are all provided.

Regular meetings and webinars, and access to the award-winning internal hub ‘LingoHub’ are designed to support all day-to-day management and operations. This also embraces the help desk; proprietary booking system; financial management and tools; class management; best-in-class resources and social media support.

“It is simple — we provide all the tools, training, lesson plans, materials and content which are needed to successfully run the business. The content is provided in a structured framework, giving franchisees all the confidence to get going. However, we have also left enough room to encourage them to bring their own personality and ideas to the table,” she said.

Lingotot, which is a finalist in the Best Education Franchise category at the Irish Franchise Awards, is offering a number of franchise opportunities in Ireland at present.

“If you have initiative, an entrepreneurial spirit, bags of enthusiasm and a strong belief that languages enrich children’s opportunities, you have many of the qualities we look for in a franchisee,” Colás said.

www.lingotot.com