Business Times reports that AdvTech, one of the biggest private education groups in SA with brands such as CrawfordSchools and Trinityhouse, says it is feeling the effects of the fallout from the Covid-19 lockdown.
The group is about 20% behind on school fee collections for April, compared with April last year. CEO Roy Douglas commented that those figures were "indicative of the potential problems and the environment we are in". He indicated that AdvTech was well aware of the crippling effects of the economic disruption and it had "undertaken to engage with individuals to understand the extent of the problems and the consequences", but it was "impossible" for AdvTech to "do across-the-board deep discounting" on fees. He said the group's schools have been "very successful" in shifting operations online, and its teachers were "very much at work". "We are watching things closely - our goal is to move through this with a limited amount of disruption to our staff and stakeholders. If the situation worsens then we look at across-the-board salary reductions, but in a graded manner. The staff at lower levels we would want to impact as little as we can, and those at higher levels we would pull back more,” Douglas indicated. Curro Holdings said the lockdown has had "an enormous impact on the sector", with strategies from learning to business plans having to be reconsidered.
- Read the full original of the report in the above regard by Nick Wilson at Business Times
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