TEFL by numbers Feb 2008

78 pounds

How much capital you need to set up an English school in Ho Chi Minh City. Wouldn’t rush out there to set up your own, though, as there are already 474 (!) registered language schools there. At least they don’t have to cope with…

Russell Brand, who I’m sure surprised no one by saying that he’d been a teacher in one of the notorious Oxford Street language schools in London. He managed to get himself sacked though, not so much because he passed a joint round his class but because when he tried to train them all in their alibi “I was such a shit teacher that none of them understood me”

Both stories from the front page of this month’s EL Gazette, which is not only available for free but is also the latest edition (it used to be a month behind online). Click here to register for free and benefit from some real TEFL journalism. You’ll never go back to Guardian TEFL again…

Other stories worth reading:

- British Council Accreditation given to a school called UKHelp4U Academy of English Language, part of a group including UKHelp4U Financial Services and UKHelp4U Immigration Services. Is that combination of companies not obvious enough by itself?? When they inevitably went bust and then got bought up by the exact same person but with the debts liquidated (see here for the File on 4 programme on how that is possible), the British Council rushed into make sure the unpaid teachers got their money and that an owner with some obvious business similarities to people running visa mills was checked out very carefully. Oh no, I must’ve been thinking of Superman. The British Council have refused to get involved in any way and have confirmed that the school continue to be accredited by them without them needing to do any kind of further check.

- A Korean student who spotted his English teacher in a porno video and reported her to the police. Apparently, both appearing in and watching porno are illegal in Korea, so what with the yearly drugs and AIDS tests you’d think you were in…

- Saudi, where a couple of years ago 2 female TEFL teachers were chucked out of the country for drinking coffee together in Starbucks. Well, they aren’t alone in teaching foreigners like scum because there is…

- The UK, which is going to be fingerprinting our foreign spouses soon for having the cheek to think they are good enough to marry someone British

Anyhow, that is enough stealing from just one publication (blogging is all about stealing little bits from different publications), so go ahead and read it yourself. Even better, volunteer to write for them as I have done before and TEFL.net book reviewer Dave Allen has done this month.

Tags: Stats

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 at 1:54 pm and is filed under British Council accreditation, EL Gazette, Guardian TEFL, Oxford Street schools, Teaching English in Korea, Teaching English in Saudi Arabia, Teaching English in Vietnam, TEFL in the UK. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.