NOVEMBER is ACCREDITATION MONTH on the TEFL TRADESMAN!

Yes, yes, YES!! This month I shall be bringing you a whole range of exciting information about the UK's EFL school accreditation process, kindly presided over by the British Council and English UK. As you probably know, these two organisations represent the greedy bastards known as employers, and really enjoy their task of shafting EFL's most important resource - the humble EFL teacher. Oh, and there's also a poll on the right (or rather, there will be when I get round to it), so you can make your own opinion known - interactive or what, eh?!

First off though is a recent submission from Agent D, currently doing battle with the Tefl bastards in London. This below is what he had to say the other day about his attempts to understand Britain's whacky Tefl Trade...

I am finding it hard to take this Tefl thing seriously at present. It seems that organisations expect teachers to be highly conscientious, always open to self improvement, and prepared to read up on or attend the gut-wrenchingly dull methodology seminars/literature (often apparently created by people on the autistic spectrum), while most companies /schools for are just in it for cash - and the British Council has no intention of including teachers' conditions in its protracted accreditation process.

I put this last point to a woman on the English UK stall at the language show today. She said she had no reply to my question. It was worth going to though, for the free pencils and high contingency of young females present.

Fair point, Agent D. I'm glad to see that your priorities were spot on too - I guess the young lady at the English UK looked a bit of a go-er, eh? And let's face it - wouldn't a good shag be a fuck sight better than a job in EFL right now!?!

Anyway, before I get a little too carried away with matters that are really not at all connected to Tefl, let me open Accreditation Month on the Tefl Tradesman with a posting of mine from a couple of years or so back. I mean, if I can't pillage my own back catalogue of rantings, what's the bloody point of hanging on to all this stuff?

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English UK - They Don't Care, You Don't Matter

Or should that be ‘you don’t care, they don’t matter’? We’ll come back to that later, anyway, if I can remember to.

Actually, I’m presuming you’ve all heard of English UK, the Cosa Nostra of the British EFL scene? They ensure that EFL teachers get low wages and minimal job security through being an employers’ cartel, basically, although they themselves wouldn’t put things quite so bluntly.

Quite how they do put things is evident in this month’s issue of the EL Gazette, where they have responded at length to a reasonable enough request from a disgruntled Tefler (just how many of those are there in the UK, I wonder?). The teacher asked English UK just what they were prepared to do to resolve the parlous situation that British EFL teachers find themselves in regarding pay, conditions, low morale, etc. He ends his letter with the entirely practical question ‘are you part of the solution or part of the problem?’, which I seem to recall from the 1960s as a radical yippie slogan.

Of course, he could have saved himself the wasted ink and the stamp, not to mention the effort of writing in the first place. The replies, from Sue Bromby and Michael Wills, the two joint chairs of English UK, were Mandelson-like in their blandness and refusal to be committal in any way. In essence, they ain’t gonna do nuthin’, but the manner in which they put this across is a real triumph of marketing-speak.

Mr Wills makes the cringe-inducing statement that ”the guarantee of quality (presumably the British Council kitemark) costs the industry a lot”. That may be so, but who ends up paying for it? And what sort of guarantee is BC accreditation, anyway? In my experience, most schools just pay lip-service to the BC, especially when it’s inspection time. Otherwise, it’s back to normal – charge as much as you can, and offer the minimum, thus fleecing both the customers and the teachers.

What’s worse, he offers this glimpse of Teflerian logic: “the UK is probably the most expensive EFL destination in the world” – which is why the pay’s crap, apparently. So, should we all shoot off to third-world countries to get a better salary? Yes, Mr Wills, Britain is an expensive place to live in; that’s precisely why the teachers need a proper salary!

Sue Bromby offers a bit more window-dressing, but makes the outstandingly disingenuous comment that more trade unions in the private EFL sector would help to resolve things. Yes, Sue – have you ever tried to get unions recognized at a private EFL outfit? The boss would just laugh, very loudly, right in your face, and then show you the door.

Amazingly, she also states that what English UK can do to push things along a bit is “to continue to promote the accredited British ELT sector as the best in the world”. Pure marketing bollocks, in other words – more spit’n’polish, more glossy brochures, but nothing of any real substance.

Like I said, they don’t care – and neither do you, probably. It’s just a job, after all. Only the likes of Michael Wills, Sue Bromby, and other similar-minded snake-oil salesmen can look forward to making a well-paid career out of it. And they’re well away from the classroom now, aren’t they?

First published: 11 February 2006

PS: The suggestion that the 'letter' from that 'disgruntled Tefler' was in fact an e-mail from no less a person than a certain Sandy McManus himself is entirely without foundation - just like SM's teaching style!