Press Release
CONTACT: ROSSANA L. LLENADO
426-0029 to 30/920-4492

Go to any school zone in Metro Manila today, and you’d surely pass by at least a couple of tutorial and review centers along the way.  In the last three years or so, centers offering tutorial and test review services have gained increasing popularity.  What used to be more of a home-based operation has now become an emerging industry, with thousands of students enrolled in after-school and summer enrichment courses.

Taking the lead in tutorial and review service is AHEAD Learning Systems, invariably the most visible.  Its billboards are everywhere that matters—EDSA, Alabang, North and South Expressways.  With celebrity endorsers like Maxene Magalona and Andrei Felix, it is bound to attract attention, positive or negative.

Interestingly, AHEAD’s founder and managing director is not a teacher by profession.  Rossana Llenado, although presently taking her masters in educational administration at the Ateneo, sees teaching as such a responsibility.  “I really admire teachers.  In fact, I always encourage people to try teaching, especially when I know they’re very smart and good with people.  Unfortunately, teaching isn’t one of my gifts.  I think it takes a special kind of person to be a teacher.  I’m not that kind,” she says with candor.

Instead, Llenado likes to think of herself as a service entrepreneur, who uses her business smarts to further a cause—quality education.  “You don’t normally see business and education in one sentence,” she observes. “But I’ve discovered that the two can actually work together. In my case, I apply practical business sense so that we can constantly improve our services and meet the needs of our students.”

Llenado’s strategy has obviously served well.  She now has four centers in Metro Manila and plans to franchise AHEAD for provincial branches.  She is also the first to locate tutorial and review services in shopping malls with her branches in SM Megamall and Robinsons Galleria.  Their college entrance tests reviews are conducted in at least four other venues in the metro.

“I resisted the idea of franchising for a long time,” Llenado says.  “I was afraid that quality would suffer if the franchisee doesn’t want to work hands-on, or if we don’t agree on the method. Kaya lang, more and more students from different provinces are requesting us to set up near them.  Right now, they travel from Bataan, Baguio, Bicol, Cebu, and Davao just to attend our UPCAT review. To serve clients outside Manila, I’d really have to franchise.”    

It is with a bit of luck and a lot of hard work that Llenado has arrived where she’s at.  In 1995, AHEAD was merely a three-man operation, with Llenado as manager, accountant, and backup tutor.  For the first six months, she survived on two hours of sleep every night and started working at 3 AM each day. 

“No matter how tempting self-employment may seem, I’d be the first to discourage you to go into business,” she says.  “It can be very stressful.  You’d worry about the next payroll, difficult clients, etc. Your work will never be 8 to 5.  You’d sacrifice weekends, holidays.  For example, last December I had my first Christmas break in nine years!” she laughs.

Llenado’s potential in business was already evident at a young age.  She was five when she first organized a caroling group.  To distinguish themselves from the other carolers in the neighborhood, Llenado made her friends wear their best clothes and memorize the songs.  She believed that if their neighbors saw how pretty they looked and heard how well they sang, they would give more than the usual amount.

A few months ago, Llenado shared this particular childhood experience in a forum for young entrepreneurs.  Marketing expert Ardy Roberto, who was also a guest at the forum, took interest in her story and published excerpts of her speech in his weekly PDI column Marketing Rx.  A vice president of Metrobank clipped out the article to circulate among the bank’s staff as “inspiring reading.” 

Llenado continued with her entrepreneurial activities in high school and college.  As a communication arts student in the University of the Philippines Los Baños, she tried her hand in shirt printing, mushroom growing, and even commercial subleasing.  All this as she was president of two campus organizations, an active member of other service groups, staff writer of the campus paper, and student assistant at the vice chancellor’s office.

It was probably from these experiences that she developed a concept of quality, which she upholds to the present.  “While other centers always compete on price, we emphasize quality,” Llenado says.  “I believe in value for money.  People would rather pay P2 for a product that works than waste a peso on something defective.” 

This premium on quality is one of the things that make Llenado’s company stand out.  Many other tutorial centers fill up their rooms with students for group instruction.  One or two tutors go around to “supervise” their homework.  For a little more, AHEAD guarantees one-on-one instruction—the undivided attention of the tutor. 

It was also just recently that other centers started offering review classes for specific tests, what Llenado has been providing clients for nearly nine years now.  She calls their review courses “test-based,” meaning they prepare students on what will actually come out on entrance exams.  Llenado further explains, “Our review isn’t a run-down of the things the students should have learned in high school.  It’s a guide on how they should go about answering questions that they are most likely to meet in the test itself.”

Llenado’s interest in education started when she wrote a campaign speech for then senatorial candidate Alberto Romulo when she was eighteen.  The speech revolved around the role of education in nation building.  The research she made on it awakened in her a true appreciation of teachers and academic pursuits.  She even came up with the idea of putting up a foundation that would send students to teacher-training colleges for free.  To this day, she harbors that dream.  It is something she would like to pursue when she’s 40, five years from now.

This idealism of hers invariably influences her company’s operations.  Every year, AHEAD takes in scholars for their UPCAT review.  Last year, in cooperation with Ateneo’s Alay ni Ignacio and Pathways, AHEAD prepared selected students for college entrance tests for free.  This 2004, AHEAD is coordinating with the San Juan Jaycees to give out more review scholarships. Llenado sees this as a way to give deserving public school students competitive advantage in their college applications.  Having been an iskolar ng bayan herself, she knows what a solid education can do in a person’s life, “So many parents want to send their kids to the best schools, but they just can’t afford to.  We try to help these kids get into good state universities or get scholarships by offering them the same service paying clients are given.”

Llenado believes that tutorial and review centers help four different groups of people.  First, they help students get better grades, enter the best schools, and eventually prepare for future careers.  Second, they help the parents who can’t find the time in their busy schedules to tutor their kids.  “With schoolwork left to professionals, parents have the time and energy to engage their children in more enjoyable activities like storytelling, family games, and bonding,” AHEAD’s tutorial manager Rona Lorenzana says. 

College students and fresh graduates also benefit from the booming tutorial and review business.  AHEAD prefers young tutors and reviewers, believing they can relate better with students than their more senior counterparts.  In turn, young people get relevant work experience which they can eventually use for employment in bigger corporations.  Review courses likewise allow professionals to take on part-time teaching jobs.  Llenado’s pool of lecturers includes several doctors, lawyers, and engineers who find the desire to teach while developing their practice.

“I feel blessed to be in a line of work that helps so many people,” she shares.  “Many may still have their biases against tutorial and review centers, but I think we will continue to rise because of the service we give.  We are parents’ ally in their children’s education.  We provide good and noble jobs, and we help kids realize their potentials.”

Llenado is indeed blessed.  She is virtually an outsider in education, and yet her center is making a growing impact on the metro’s academic climate.  Her other attempts to venture unfamiliar terrain also bear fruit.  In 2001, she sponsored a staged event at Glorietta with MTV Philippines in celebration of her review students’ entry to college.  The following year, the project bagged a Gold Quill from the International Association of Business Communicators for its effective marketing strategy.  AHEAD was the only company that didn’t belong to the top 50 Philippine corporations to join the competition.  The company’s victory is a double feat because until now, it doesn’t have a formal marketing department.  Recent recipients of the Gold Quill include giant corporations like ABS-CBN, GMA 7, and Petron.

Although not a marketing outfit, AHEAD’s active advertising has undeniably generated a lot of attention on tutorial and review courses.  What was a little-known auxiliary service has now become a trend, especially among the A and B classes.  “I like to think we helped make review classes and tutorials as basic as texting, internet connection, and bottled water,” Llenado says.  “Changing the negative perception of tutorials as only for underachievers has been our goal ever since.”