Enrolment Decision And Perceived Quality In Language Training Schools

This paper focuses on a private school that will be called D School.The company is one of the major players in the Italian language teaching market in China.In the present study,it stands up as the representative model of all the other Italian language training private institutions operating in the country.Besides its scope,another reason to justify this status,is that,according to the author's research and observation,D School's situation does not differ much from that of other companies since they compete in a relatively small market.Similarly,interviews held at different schools reveal that they all face similar basic concerns.For a deeper comprehension of the company,reference will be also given to the bigger external environment in which D school operates.This includes an analysis of a key concept,fundamental to understand the overall situation,i.e.the introduction of bilateral agreements between China and Italy for promoting studying abroad among Chinese students.Since one of the biggest problems for D School dwells in the customers' mind.,i.e.the students'perceived quality of the service,a further analysis involves the studies about perceived service quality(PSQ).The inspiration and motivation for this paper is that the number of Chinese students going to study to Italy has been increasing since 2005.In fact,data show that in the period 2005-2018 a total of almost 32.000 students went to Italy to pursue their studies.The final aim of-this paper is to find first-hand data,through the analysis of D School situation,that relate perceived quality to school enrolment.Hence,also contribute to give an answer to D School proble ms and the research question.To some extent,the present paper addresses two big gaps in the available literature.First of all,there is a lack of research about the market for teaching Italian in China,as most of the information that can be found is in Chinese language and it is related to the market possibilities for teaching English as a second language.Similarly,most of the papers that have been written about private education in China are not concerned about private language training institutions,but only about private schooling as an alternative to the state-controlled system.The paper consists of five chapters.The firs-t chapter introduces the research object,the importance of service qLuality and D School.The second chapter lists the related literature.The third chapter introduces the theoretical background.Chapter four concerns the questionnaires design.data collection and analysis.presents the findings and answers the reseairch questions.The last chapter concludes the paper offering suggestions for D School and for further research.