Why This Matters More Than You Think

Once you have a premise, it’s important to look after it. This might sound obvious, but I’ve seen too many tuition centre owners overlook this fundamental principle. After all, you don’t want to get on bad terms with the facilities team. You’ve used the premise on a Sunday, and the normal school teachers return on a Monday. The last thing they want is a mess in their classroom.

What happens when standards slip? Teachers make complaints to the school facilities team, which means we get into trouble. And trouble, in this context, can mean anything from awkward conversations to losing your venue entirely. When you’re building a tuition business, your reputation extends beyond your students and parents — it includes every stakeholder who enables your operation.

A Lesson I Learned the Hard Way

Once, I was called in by the facilities manager. The reason? To show us damage caused in one of the classrooms we’d been using. Here’s the thing — it wasn’t us. We explained this clearly, but the accusation had already been made. The trust had already been questioned.

That experience taught me something valuable about running a business in shared spaces. Being innocent isn’t enough. You need to be able to prove it.

Since that day, we’ve started taking pictures of every classroom before we leave. Not just occasionally, but every single week without exception. We photograph the state of the room — the arrangement of furniture, the cleanliness of the whiteboards, the condition of the floors. Then we email these images to the facilities team with a brief note confirming we’ve left everything in order.

Why go to this trouble? Because this simple practice creates trust and builds credibility. It’s a way to protect yourself and your business from accusations you can’t defend against. Documentation transforms your word into evidence. When someone claims there was damage or mess, you have timestamped photographs proving otherwise.

The response we receive has been overwhelmingly positive. We get emails in return with appreciation and acknowledgement. The facilities team knows we take our responsibilities seriously. They know we respect their building and their staff. This goodwill has proven invaluable — when small issues do arise, we’re given the benefit of the doubt because we’ve established ourselves as reliable tenants.

Getting Your Hands Dirty

I want to be direct about something that might surprise you: we get classrooms ready by vacuum cleaning them. And I myself have done it countless times.

Some business owners might hesitate at this. They might feel it’s beneath them or outside their responsibilities. I understand that perspective, but I don’t share it.

It’s your business, after all. Sometimes you have to do what needs doing. There’s no task too small when your reputation and your relationship with your venue are at stake. The willingness to clean a classroom yourself demonstrates something important —both to your team and to yourself. It shows that you’re not above the practical realities of running your operation.

We also clean whiteboards thoroughly, rubbing off any writing so that teachers find the room exactly as it was on Friday afternoon. We arrange chairs back into their original positions and align tables properly. These details matter. A teacher walking into their classroom on Monday morning shouldn’t be able to tell that anyone else has used it over the weekend.

What does this require? It requires attention, care, and a few extra minutes at the end of the day. It requires building this expectation into your team’s routine until it becomes automatic. It requires occasional spot-checks to ensure standards aren’t slipping.

Understanding Your Agreement

Here’s a practical consideration that catches many new tuition centre owners off guard: some schools include an admin charge for cleaning within their rental agreement. Others don’t. Before you sign anything, check whether your agreement includes cleaning services or not.

If cleaning is included, understand exactly what that covers. The specifics matter because they define where the school’s responsibility ends and yours begins.

If cleaning isn’t included — and in many cases it won’t be — then I’m afraid it’s your responsibility to leave classrooms exactly as you found them. This isn’t optional. This isn’t something you can negotiate after the fact. It’s a fundamental expectation that comes with using someone else’s space.

Building Long-Term Relationships

The facilities team at any school wields more influence over your business than you might initially realise. They control access. They handle complaints. They make recommendations to senior leadership about whether external organisations should continue using their premises.

Why would you risk that relationship over something as manageable as cleanliness? The effort required to maintain a tidy classroom is minimal compared to the effort required to find a new venue, negotiate a new contract, and rebuild your reputation from scratch.

I’ve seen tuition businesses lose their premises over exactly this issue. Not because they were terrible tenants, but because they were careless. They left marker pens uncapped. They didn’t notice when students moved furniture. They assumed someone else would handle the details. These small oversights accumulated into a pattern that the school eventually decided they couldn’t tolerate.

My Philosophy on This

Running a tuition business involves countless responsibilities, and it’s tempting to view classroom cleanliness as a minor administrative detail. But I’ve learned that there are no minor details when it comes to the relationships that enable your business to function.

Taking photographs, sending weekly emails, vacuum cleaning floors yourself — these actions might seem excessive to some. To me, they’re investments in stability. They’re the small disciplines that prevent large problems.

The peace of mind that comes from knowing you’ve done everything right is worth the extra fifteen minutes at the end of each session. The trust you build with facilities teams, compounds over time, making every future interaction smoother.

Final thought

Your premise is the foundation of your tuition business. Without a physical space, you have no classroom. Without a classroom, you have no students. Protect that foundation fiercely, even when it means pushing a vacuum cleaner yourself. The small efforts you make today will safeguard your business tomorrow.