Law /
Advice on starting an international/British school in Warsaw, Poland [26]
Mark there's nothing wrong with having a dream as long as you temper it with common sense, realism and a bit of humility. Otherwise it's destined to remain only a dream and never become a reality.
To get back to your original query about funding, Roger5 was right that you won't get the info you need on any internet forum. The kind of information you need is simply not widely available to the public. The first thing you need to do is to write to the Polish ministry of education, just a brief letter stating your interest in possibly establishing a school and asking for information about funding and regulations. Bear in mind that they are unlikely to have anything prepared on paper which they can send you so they may simply ignore your letter. Depending on their response, or lack of it, you should write again and request a meeting. I strongly advise you at this initial stage, not to suggest a school ranging from pre-school to secondary as this concept will be way too much for them to grasp. Keep it simple. Choose either a primary/elementary or secondary. Bear in mind that pre-schools may come under a completely separate funding/regulatory scheme. In Ireland for example pre-schools are funded by the Dept of Health and Children, not by the Dept of Education.
As for banks, unless you have a very impressive background in education, or a partner with such, and an equally impressive business plan, it's very unlikely that they will back you. If you had money of your own to invest or if another investor was willing to back you, they might risk matching what you're putting in but you will not get millions out of any bank to fund your Utopian vision of a child-centred school.
I'm not sure what your teaching background is, but I sense a lack of solid training and experience. Mark, it is simply not possible to invent your own teaching methodology by cobbling together the best bits of several existing ones, not least because many educational philosophies which have similarities to each other, always have fundamental differences which make them diametrically opposed to each other and they simply do not work together. You're also talking about a vague, ill-formed concept of a child centred philosophy which you want to carry through from ages 3 to 18. Mark, it takes a lifetime of work with hundreds of children if not thousands of children to create such a thing. These things evolve over many years. They can't be created by building a beautiful campus and then saying 'ok children, here's your Paradise, go and flourish'. If you were an experienced teacher you would know this.
You mentioned a 'medium' sized school but then say you want to incorporate a pre-school, primary and secondary. Look, I've been teaching children for nearly twenty years and I've seen first-hand, just as an ordinary teacher, the practical difficulties of managing and funding even a relatively small school (the smallest I taught in was a State primary school with only 100 children). You're effectively talking about setting up, managing and funding three schools at once. You need suitably qualified and experienced staff for each and a director/principal for each but that's the least of your worries. How many children in each and how many staff? What will the fees be and what will the staffing costs be? Schools are not generally profit-making businesses and the possibility of repaying millions in loans/giving investors a profit-share whilst still covering your running costs is most unlikekly.
Here's an example of how people really do these things. The Hershey Montessori school in the USA is one of the few in America that offers Montessori through from pre-school to secondary. It started in 1978 with just a pre-school and finally added the secondary level over 20 years later. It's non-profit making. Another example is the first Montessori secondary school in America, the Montessori Farm School. It was founded by Dr Ursula Thrush in the 1970s, only after she'd established a pre-school and primary/elementary school and they had become fully self-funding with no grants or state assistance. Although she was an amazing educator neither the secondary nor the elementary schools survived although the pre-school she founded still remains.
So Mark, what I'm saying is, modify your dreams somewhat, reduce the scale of the proposed project to manageable size, read about what other people have done and how they've gone about creating their schools, learn from the experiences of others. When you have a realistic plan and a good tight business plan, then give it a go by all means.
