English

One English teacher in Thailand made 336 million baht in a single year. That's almost ten million dollars from teaching grammar. Her name is Aisara Thanapakit. Thai teenagers call her Khru Pi Nan. She teaches English by setting grammar to pop songs her students sing back to her. Her brand, Enconcept, runs 36 branches across Thailand. For comparison, an entry-level English teacher in a Thai public school makes about 18,000 baht a month, around 540 dollars. Aisara's one-year revenue is roughly fifteen centuries of that salary. A single one of her courses, two hundred students at 54,500 baht a head, grosses 46 years of an entry teacher's pay. Because she isn't really a teacher. She's a pop star. Thailand has a whole category for people like her: star tutors. Their faces are on buses. Students rank them the way you would rank a band. The title is ครูพี่, which means cool older sibling, not authority figure. And also like pop stars, fans buy their merchandise. A parent can't judge whether a teacher is actually good. So fame becomes the substitute. The famous face is collateral on a promise the buyer has no way to verify, and the face has everything to gain from.