For more than two decades, School of Rock has been teaching kids and adults how to channel their inner rock stars. You may already be familiar with the movie that bears its name. Even if you’re not familiar with the history of the School of Rock the franchise, or School of Rock the Broadway musical, chances are you’ve heard of School of Rock the 2003 movie starring Jack Black.
There is a shared name and a rock ‘n’ roll spirit with the movie, but the music education franchise is also so much more. Traditional music education approaches rarely teach students how to perform with other musicians, focusing instead on teaching music only through one-on-one lessons and private tutoring. The patented School of Rock MethodTM is different. It combines one-on-one instruction with group rehearsals featuring a broad range of instruments with live performances. Students start on their musical journey by learning the songs that inspire them and began their passion for music, be they classic rock music or today’s hits. This integrated SongFirst® approach teaches students techniques and theory while also helping them apply those skills when performing with other musicians. This method results in remarkable musical proficiency.
As an education franchise, School of Rock provides an immense level of satisfaction in seeing young people change their lives through music and embrace their inner rock star, whether they step into the music industry or take their new skills elsewhere.
It uses a patented SongFirst® and performance-based music education programme. That means it teaches by doing. School of Rock teaches theory by teaching students how to play songs that have that theory in them. That means students are playing faster and playing with other people. In this way, its teaching method is much more along the lines of how you would traditionally teach a language.
School of Rock finds that taking a song-first and performance-based approach causes students to become much more proficient much faster than traditional music lessons and this message is catching on. School of Rock has more than 500 schools open or in development in 15 different countries. It has seen a large increase in desire for its programmes as it has been dealing with the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The franchisor added 20-plus units in both 2020 and 2021, respectively and has reached 50,000 students worldwide and fully expects to reach 100,000 and beyond.
It is currently actively attempting to engage business partners in the UK for a master franchise agreement in which it would award development rights to entire regions (countries, areas) with the understanding that such a partner would develop multiple units within that area. In Europe, School of Rock currently has master franchise agreements in Ireland, Spain, and Portugal with more on the horizon.
As with any new business opening, especially in a new country, there are many issues and barriers to work through – legal, cultural, economic, operational, technological, and more. The partnership with the corporate team is supportive and flexible.
School of Rock also offers local market mapping and assessment with CDO; full support with opening the first unit with its NSO (New School Opening) team; access to its global partner manual, which is an extension of its operations manual, that is specific to master franchisees, the resource of dedicated director of operations that supports all international markets and a master franchise training session that takes place after opening the first unit and before sub-franchising begins. This will cover a wide range of topics, including best practices in sub-franchising, operational support and other departments.
Typical traits of a successful franchise partner are, and what School of Rock is looking for can be summarised as follows:
• Strong management skills (and/or an established structure to provide these)
• Strong sales and marketing skills (and/or an established structure to provide these)
• Strong operational management skills (and/or an established structure to provide these)
• Experience in the music industry is a benefit but is not a deal-breaker
• Experience in franchising is also a benefit, but not necessarily a deal-breaker
• Ability to train new unit-level franchisees to build and run a successful business to ensure the greatest return for all parties.
