What is Ethical TEFL?
About Us
Social Enterprise
Ethical TEFL is the specialist TEFL division of English Language Centre Yorkshire CIC - a registered Community Interest Company. What that means is that we are a social enterprise with a legal duty to reinvest all profits into providing training and employment opportunities for those who would not otherwise be able to access them.
Experience
Our senior team all have at least 25 years experience in TEFL training and consultancy, successfully training more than 6,000 TEFL teachers over that period. We have worked with schools, businesses, government departments and third sector organisations throughout the world. This work has ranged from assisting a tiny local refugee charity, to training hundreds of teacher/trainers for blue chip companies, and our students have gone on to teach in dozens of countries worldwide.
Quality
Over the last 25 years there have been many changes in TEFL training, including a concerning increase in the number of sub-standard TEFL courses being sold, and a disappointing focus on quick profit rather than the quality of the student experience.
Training good TEFL teachers by distance-learning can be challenging, and requires knowledgeable, experienced tutors if it is to be done properly. All of our tutors are fully qualified professional teachers with a minimum of 15 years TEFL and distance-learning experience.
Our students also have access to our expert Careers Service, which has relationships with reputable schools and agencies (state, private, and third sector) throughout the world - particularly in China, Japan and Southeast Asia. If a student prefers to find their own position, the Careers Service can offer advice on where/how best to look, tips for cover letters/interviews etc, as well as answer any general questions about living and teaching abroad. When, where, and how long a student goes to teach is entirely up to them, and the Careers Service is there to provide guidance, and facilitate in any way it can.
Our Mission
Teaching English is a fantastic way to see the world and experience different cultures, at the
same time as earning a decent income and building professional skills, contacts and experience. We strongly believe that the opportunity to teach abroad should be available to as many people as possible, and this belief is the cornerstone of our organisation.
"TEFL has been a wonderful part of our lives, and Ethical TEFL is our way of paying that good fortune forward - to make quality TEFL training accessible and affordable for as many people as possible."
Gerard Deeney (M.Ed TESOL)
Senior Director
The two main barriers people can face when considering teaching English abroad are the accessibility and the affordability of quality TEFL training. Our aim is to do everything we can to reduce both of these barriers:
Accessibility:
To make our TEFL programmes as accessible as possible, all of our courses are delivered by distance-learning, which means that they can be studied anywhere in the world with an internet connection. They are also carefully designed so that each student can work at their own pace, allowing our students to fit their TEFL training around existing work/study/family commitments.
Affordability
As a social enterprise we are not fixated on profit - our success is instead determined by how many people we can help train, and help find meaningful employment. This gives us a unique freedom to tackle the affordability issue, and has led to pioneering initiatives like our Scholarship Programme and subsidies for students and unemployed graduates, as well as a consistent focus on quality and fair pricing for all of our students.