Get TESOL certified world-wide with IEERA

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Always do background checks on any TESOL courses that are being offered overseas or on-line, and hesitate again before parting with your money. Professional organisations use a professional credit card gateway page on their own websites for secure on-line payments, you are then guaranteed a refund if something goes wrong.

Read this TESOL course scam warning

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Indeed, I agree. This is lamentable, particularly for organizations such as ours which are very much professional and genuine, but who, despite this, aren't trusted because of Internet scams.

Yes, I fully sympathise. It's a shame your website design is slightly confusing and does not instil the right degree of confidence. Maybe you should consider an alternative web development team to ensure that your organisation meets with the trust it deserves.

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Nice try GB, and nearly right. Actually they do indeed build and host our school group websites for free in exchange for some of our language services, so they deserve the occasional plug. One of our current projects, as you will have gathered, is to research, collate and disseminate reliable information on TESOL certification. I did find your site rather confusing, I did not feel that IEERA courses featured prominently enough on the home page and found a lot of dead links on some of the others - but who am I to argue against 5 million satisfied users
You can rest assured that the hundreds of Catholic schools in the region have no reason not to accept certificates gained through study with IEERA partners .

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You can rest assured that the hundreds of Catholic schools in the region have no reason not to accept certificates gained through study with IEERA partners .

I'm not entirely convinced that there isn't a hint of sarcasm clandestinely concealed within the above sentence.

You will have to accept the semantics as 'gospel' and in good 'faith' I'm afraid. We subscribe wholly to Christian precepts and have no hidden agendas. The fact that they might not all figure on our internal list of universities and TESOL institutes is no indication that they are not accepted, just that they are not known to us (and they can easily rectify that). We are not an accrediting agency (none exist for TESOL) and we make no recommendations, it is just an indication for our member schools and colleges that the TESOL organisations do exist, are wholly legal, and are not diploma mills, travel firms, or job agencies masquerading as course providers.

Our programs are likewise available to individuals of all faiths...

There was also nothing in my posting that even hinted otherwise
Far more to the point are the opening lines of one of our websites:...largest provider of independent primary and secondary education in Thailand. The curriculum is secular - teaching posts are open to applicants of all faiths.

We have a Franchise and Strategic Alliance Program you will find very appealing.

I know you do, and that is where the initial confusion arose - my first impression was that your site was focussed primarily on the sale of franchises than of TESOL Teacher Training courses, but fortunately your connections with i-to-i convinced me otherwise.

Let me know if you're willing to put your money where your mouth is.

The EDBA has its own Faculty of Teacher Training which includes internal TKT and TESOL programmes exclusively for the 4,000+ staff of its own schools; it does not and can not engage in any commerce.
I would venture to suggest however that there is scope aplenty in Thailand and your programme may well appeal to anyone wishing to inject - with the backing of a professional organisation - some healthy competition into the high street landscape; the situation of TESOL courses in Thailand is partly in disarray and sadly the country is, by all accounts, the epicentre of some of the most serious scams in the industry.

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I don't mean to go off on topical tangent and such a discussion is unlikely appropriate within the space of this particular forum,

I don't think that really matters here, there are not a lot of people following the thread, but for anyone that is, it is a healthy discourse, entertaining, and informative.
Again you have a very suspicious mind and try to interpret too much between my lines What I meant is that my personal morals are based on Christian ethics, even if that may sound old fashioned in the modern world of agressive marketing methodology. When I have something to say, I tend usually to be embarrassingly direct and not hide behind linguistic tools. The education in ours schools is indeed nevertheless secular. The schools are Catholic only in their governance and management. 87% of the admin staff and teachers are Buddhist, and our programmes follow the Thai Ministry of Education's national curriculum. Far less gospel is preached in our schools than Buddhism is in the state schools, Christian devices, icons and statuary are absent from our classrooms, and native EFL teachers are expressly forbidden to proselytize. We do however give nearly 1/2 million kids and staff a couple of days off for Christmas to the envy of the populations of the state schools

Again, I can't see where I was 'bashing' anyone for selling franchises - franchising itself is a perfectly acceptable and well established form of commerce - but I'll be the first to bash anyone who sell a franchise - or anything else in the name of education - purely and solely for the sake of making a quick buck. The founder of one large chain of high street English language institutes freely admits to doing it, he studied the franchise system first, as a focus of his MBA, then returned to his native Thailand to look for a niche market to milk - but they do provide an honest product. Another chain (a rather large and tentacular global one based, I believe, in northern Europe), in contrast, has a rather disgusting adjenda, but the very fact that the franchisees are alone responsible for what goes on makes it difficult to put anyone behind bars, and that is of course one of the advantages of the system.

Your non-commercial status (which in its purest form is, with all due respect, hardly feasible)

Almost right again, but it is a one way commerce, its costs us money to run, we don't make any out of it, and it is not our intention to do so. It may, as you say, not necessarily stand in the way of a possible collaboration.

I'm sure you have a network of partners and/or reliable contacts who offer English training services to the public.

We don't, but 'partnerships' in the past have been considered and that is precisely why, with the gracious help of one of the world's leading establishments of higher education, we created our own department of English in our training faculty, and why I spend a lot of time in most of the countries of southeast Asia, India and Australia organising exchange programmes for teacher development.
Any suggestions you may have for leading Thailand out of the wilderness of corruption, would now indeed be unapropriate here and must needs be pursued unter vier augen