Arguably the best deals for summer school teachers in the UK are at universities
From EL Gazette, February 2009
UK University EAP programmes are generally regarded as a much better deal for suitably-qualified teachers than the traditional private summer school EFL market, and EFL teachers who want to aim higher should look into teaching on a higher education English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programme. EAP providers, especially in the public sector, where the workforce is unionised and the contracts are regulated, are much clearer than the traditional ‘straight’ English language summer schools onthe actual number of hours you will end up working for your money. This reputation for clarity in stating the deal up-front is confirmed below.
Jonathan White, deputy head of campaigns at the University and College Union (UCU), which represents higher education lecturers, told the Gazette that ‘salaries are obviously important, but we would advise anyone looking to work in the university sector to also consider the full range of terms and conditions, including… the place of EAP courses within the overall academic programme of an institution… Our view would be that once all this is considered, there is no question that you would be far better off working as an employee of a university rather than of a private company.’
Although our questions were specific to summer course employment, most respondents’ replies didn’t restrict themselves to summer courses, and told us about year-round EAP programmes or teaching Applied Linguistics. The lecturer’s trade union sent comments that were aimed more at comparing permanent posts in the public sector with the private sector. While all universities that replied still have EAP summer school vacancies every year, this pre-occupation with year-round, permanent posts may mean that there’s more reliance on permanent staff and less call for temporary teachers for the summer. (We noticed a flurry of activity on job sites for permanent UK EAP lecturing jobs in December, at the time of writing.)
The Gazette emailed 19 full BALEAP members as well as a random selection of our existing EAP contacts, and contacted the press offices of the big private sector EAP providers. At the time of writing, only six providers had responded, all in the public sector. Several others, including Kaplan, had promised to get back to us, but no reply was with us come the deadline. To be fair, several universities excused themselves for being too busy preparing for marketing visits in the run-up to Christmas.
Two universities, both in the Russell Group, agreed to respond on the basis that replies were not attributed to them. Such coyness about salaries, terms and conditions seems a little odd, given that that the details mostly don’t vary too much from those already published for last years’ summer schools, providers are mostly planning to put comprehensive details of their vacancies up on job sites and on their own websites within the next couple of months.
One university asked for an ‘internationally recognised TELF diploma,’ we think they meant to type ‘Tefl diploma.’ There are some universities that offer a way into EAP for the newly qualified.
Several universities asked for a Delta and an MA, which given the global shortage of Dip (DELTA)-qualified teachers and the expense of getting either qualification, never mind both, is pushing their luck. More than one university mentioned a disparity in what qualifications they wanted by way of qualifications, and what they actually got.
Teachers abroad who are returning to the UK to teach EAP in the summer should note that only two out of six respondents did offer subsidised on-campus accommodation at half the normal rent, with one other saying accommodation was available, but at market rents. One anonymous campus university said ‘accommodation is provided if teachers live beyond commuting distance,’ rent was not mentioned.
All universities say that responding to ads on their own website’s vacancies page, as well as jobs.ac.uk and the Education Guardian newspaper (out every Tuesday) is the way to apply for EAP summer jobs. Some of these, of course, will also be advertised on the jobs listing on the EL Gazette website. One respondent told us they ‘wouldn't necessarily discourage well-qualified applicants from sending in their CV at any time of the year, though: we sometimes need extra staff in January.’ Prospective summer EAP teachers should keep an eye out, as vacancies are announced from January all the way through to April.
Tim Marr and Janet Enever, senior lecturers in Applied Linguistics London Metropolitan University said their minimum qualifications were an MA Tesol or similar plus Delta, although they ‘believe that currently a university is able to 'carry' a small percentage of Celta qualified staff.’ Hours are 35 hours a week full-time, of which 15-18 are contact teaching hours. Short term, long term or permanent contracts are available.
Some London Met part-time posts are paid hourly-rate, full-time ones are as per their annual contract. The lecturers we contacted were ‘not aware of current rates’ of pay, and forwarded our enquiry on this to English Language Services. London Met did say that holiday pay a legal requirement.
A Russell Group university that preferred not to be named, said they advertise summer vacancies ‘if they need to in March and April.’. The university’s minimum qualifications were a Degree (‘foreign languages preferred’)and Delta or equivalent – Celta plus a relevant MA being regarded as Delta equivalent. They also need three years’ experience, preferably with some of this in EAP. Hours for their summer courses are ‘up to 18 a week,’ (presumably this means 18 contact teaching hours), with contracts of seven or 11 weeks to cover six-week and 10-week pre-sessional courses. Accommodation is not part of the deal, but university halls of residence are available at around £80 a week. Rates are ‘expected to be £650 a week in 2009,’ including holiday pay.
Liz Austin, pre-sessional programme leader at Essex University, says her programme requires a Delta or equivalent, with an MA ‘desirable’. Essex requires ‘extensive Tefl experience’ and prefers EAP teaching experience in ‘a British HE setting.’ Contracts are 10-11 weeks from mid-July to mid-September. There 24 contact hours a week, including
‘class, tutorials, attendance at lectures, long assignment marking.’ They expect teachers to do ‘class preparation and homework marking’ on top of that.
Essex’s 2008 salary was £5,350 (presumably for the 10-11 weeks) plus 8 per cent holiday pay and a bonus paid to tutors who’ve taught there before. The package includes several days’ induction and workshops during the course as part of salaried hours, and teachers can on free course trips and attend course social events if they want to. Liz describes the Essex pre-sessional as a ‘good starting point for experienced TEFL tutors looking to move across to EAP teaching.. Tutors with less experience in EAP are well-supported by senior staff.’
Another Russell Group university that didn’t want to be named said their minimum requirement is a Celta, though they’ve only ever taken on teachers with a Dip or an MA in ELT and at least three years’ experience in EAP. ‘We pay for 20 hours per week but in fact teachers have 15-17 hours of classroom contact.’ Rates are £3032 per five week phase (including holiday pay).
Ros Richards, Director of the the school of languages and European studies at the University of Reading said advertising starts in February, and advised that ‘quite a few institutions use the jobs section of the BALEAP website.’ Reading needs at least a Dip Tefl or equivalent, ‘but we seek to appoint with relevant MA plus EAP teaching experience.’ Reading’s contracted teaching hours ‘average 19 per week.’ Depending on the nature of the pre-sessional block they’re engaged to teach on, Reading have 11-week, 8-week and five-week courses. They offer 50 per cent off specified University hall accommodation. Their rates for 2008 were £542.55 to new teachers and £558.81 to returning teachers, and these will go up by 5 per cent next summer. An extra 9.21 per cent is paid out in holiday pay.
Showing posts with label ELT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ELT. Show all posts
Thursday, 12 March 2009
Euro helps UK EFL buck doom and gloom trend
Not all language schools in the UK are doing so well. This one, at 145 Oxford Street, London W1, appeared to be locked, with mail piling up in the doorway. A notice of eviction served by the property's owners, Prudential, was sellotaped to the door as of early March.
From EL Gazette, February 2009
Mario Rinvolucri, founder of Pilgrims School of English - in Canterbury in the South East of England - told that Gazette that Pilgrims’ own latest figures, and the intelligence he’s getting from across the UK EFL industry, show that ‘receipts are extremely good’ in the UK industry as a result of the record rise in the value of the Euro against the pound. Pilgrims has been picking up a lot of end of season executive courses from the Eurozone (the 15 EU states currently using the Euro currency) in a development which is bucking the general trend towards ‘doom and gloom’ in the recession-bound UK economy.
Mr Rinvolucri conceded that corporate clients were still on 2008 budgets, and it remains to be seen whether the 2009 budgets of corporations will maintain that level of spending in the current global economic climate. The success in recruiting from the Eurozone is also helped by the increasing use of ‘teacher agents, ’ according to Mr Rinvolucri. These are practising teachers in, for example, large comprehensive schools in Germany, who persuade some of their colleagues to come on Comenius courses, or teachers in private EFL schools that offer free taster courses for summer schools at Pilgrims. Teacher agents have all been on Pilgrims summer courses, and ‘are much more teachers and much less agents.’
Vietnam EFL 'out of control'
ENGLISH language schools in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC, formerly Saigon) are now proliferating so fast that its private English as a Foreign Language (EFL) sector is ‘out of control,’ according the English language Vietnam news website Vietnam Net Bridge. Nguyen Van Cuong, of the city’s Education and Training Department says that there are now 474 registered private EFL schools under its supervision, and that ‘the task of controlling the quality of English education centres in HCM City is quite a challenge.’
Setting up an ‘international centre’ teaching EFL under an ‘international’-sounding brand name is relatively cheap, and Mr Cuong said that it’s possible with an investment of as little as 2 million dong (£78) in a prime location. Opening another branch of an existing school requires much less bureaucracy than setting up a new school from scratch, so that most schools have two or three branches in the city, with some schools operating as many as 20 branches.
Operating multiple branches means that chain schools can send their existing teachers into several schools, rather than having to spend money on hiring new teachers. Students sign up in the expectation of being taught by ‘highly qualified native-speaking teachers’ only to find that these are often backpackers who are very thinly spread around many different branches of a school. One student complained to Vietnam Net Bridge that he had signed up on the promise of four days a week out of five, but now he gets to be taught by a native speaker only once a week.
Other sharp practices in Ho Chi Minh City’s mushrooming private EFL sector include frequent unsubstantiated claims that schools’ certification is internationally recognised. And complaints about false advertising go beyond claims about native-speaker teachers. One school projected a ‘luxurious appearance’ to a student, named as Minh Nghia,’ when he came to enquire about enrolling, but put that student in ‘small and stuffy’ classrooms. A staff member at the centre gave assurances that his class would have a maximum of 20 students, but the class turned out to have 30 students, with new students constantly added as they enrolled. "The class is too crowded and it’s really hard to listen to the teachers’ words,’ said Nghia.
A language centre director, speaking to Vietnam Net Bridge on condition of anonymity, said that ‘English centres owned by Vietnamese universities inside their campuses, which in the 1990s were very popular, and whose payments were only several 10,000 dong, (just under $4) can barely survive,’ as ‘low-cost English centres are now losing ground to the ones whose fees are in the millions of dong or even in US dollars,’ fuelled by a popular belief that teaching using a high proportion of native speaker teachers automatically translates into higher quality.
Setting up an ‘international centre’ teaching EFL under an ‘international’-sounding brand name is relatively cheap, and Mr Cuong said that it’s possible with an investment of as little as 2 million dong (£78) in a prime location. Opening another branch of an existing school requires much less bureaucracy than setting up a new school from scratch, so that most schools have two or three branches in the city, with some schools operating as many as 20 branches.
Operating multiple branches means that chain schools can send their existing teachers into several schools, rather than having to spend money on hiring new teachers. Students sign up in the expectation of being taught by ‘highly qualified native-speaking teachers’ only to find that these are often backpackers who are very thinly spread around many different branches of a school. One student complained to Vietnam Net Bridge that he had signed up on the promise of four days a week out of five, but now he gets to be taught by a native speaker only once a week.
Other sharp practices in Ho Chi Minh City’s mushrooming private EFL sector include frequent unsubstantiated claims that schools’ certification is internationally recognised. And complaints about false advertising go beyond claims about native-speaker teachers. One school projected a ‘luxurious appearance’ to a student, named as Minh Nghia,’ when he came to enquire about enrolling, but put that student in ‘small and stuffy’ classrooms. A staff member at the centre gave assurances that his class would have a maximum of 20 students, but the class turned out to have 30 students, with new students constantly added as they enrolled. "The class is too crowded and it’s really hard to listen to the teachers’ words,’ said Nghia.
A language centre director, speaking to Vietnam Net Bridge on condition of anonymity, said that ‘English centres owned by Vietnamese universities inside their campuses, which in the 1990s were very popular, and whose payments were only several 10,000 dong, (just under $4) can barely survive,’ as ‘low-cost English centres are now losing ground to the ones whose fees are in the millions of dong or even in US dollars,’ fuelled by a popular belief that teaching using a high proportion of native speaker teachers automatically translates into higher quality.
Own Brand of teaching
BRITAIN'S most controversial stand-up comedian Russell Brand is currently best known for a recent scandal involving a ‘prank’ phone call in which he left obscene phone messages on the answering machine of a well-known veteran actor. The incident forced his resignation from his BBC Radio 2 show and cost the jobs of several senior BBC executives. Brand’s lower profile in the US didn’t stop him putting a lot of backs up in a rare US appearance at the MTV Video Awards last September, where he taunted the celibate lifestyle of clean-cut teen pop act the Jonas Brothers (from High School Musical).
More of interest to Teflers though, is Brand’s recent revelation on his Russell Brand’s Ponderland TV show that he was previously an EFL teacher on London’s Oxford Street for a year. Using a four-letter scatological reference to describe the quality of his teaching, he admitted that he was the ‘cool, popular teacher’ who, following a time-honoured Oxford Street private EFL sector practice, would occasionally take his students for lessons in a nearby park on sunny days. When Brand started passing a ‘joint’ (marihuana cigarette) among his students, however, he was betrayed by ‘some evil student who actually wanted to learn English!’ The management came to question Brand’s class about this, and Brand recalled desperately preparing his class by getting them to collectively agree an alibi for him. This stratagem failed however, because in Brand’s own words, ‘I was such a s*** teacher that none of them understood me.’
More of interest to Teflers though, is Brand’s recent revelation on his Russell Brand’s Ponderland TV show that he was previously an EFL teacher on London’s Oxford Street for a year. Using a four-letter scatological reference to describe the quality of his teaching, he admitted that he was the ‘cool, popular teacher’ who, following a time-honoured Oxford Street private EFL sector practice, would occasionally take his students for lessons in a nearby park on sunny days. When Brand started passing a ‘joint’ (marihuana cigarette) among his students, however, he was betrayed by ‘some evil student who actually wanted to learn English!’ The management came to question Brand’s class about this, and Brand recalled desperately preparing his class by getting them to collectively agree an alibi for him. This stratagem failed however, because in Brand’s own words, ‘I was such a s*** teacher that none of them understood me.’
Thumbs down - Korean student who shopped his teacher
From EL Gazette, February 2009
THUMBS DOWN to the male teenage student of an English school in Seoul, Korea, identified only as ‘Master Kim’, who shopped his English teacher to the police for appearing in a porn video, and who seems to have himself escaped prosecution for doing something which is also illegal in that country.
According to Seoul newspaper Kukmin Ilbo, a Korean English teacher at a hagwon (English language crammer school) in Seoul was fined 10,000,000 won (£4,600) for appearing in a pornographic video after one of her students recognised her on a website.
The teacher, identified only as Ms Kim, (a surname shared by a sizeable proportion of the Korean population) had featured several years ago in several porn videos starring herself and her boyfriend while studying in a postgraduate Sociology course in Canada, after running into difficulties keeping up payments on the tuition fees. Appearing in and watching pornography are illegal in Korea, and Ms Kim was unaware that the law includes performance by Korean nationals in pornographic material recorded abroad in countries where such activity is not illegal, such as Canada.
Ms Kim’s vigilant teenage student, named as ‘Master Kim,’ ‘just happened to be surfing porn sites’ when he came across a woman whose face looked strangely familiar. A ‘closer inspection’ revealed it was his English teacher. He tipped off the Seoul Metropolitan Police website, who began an investigation resulting in English teacher Ms. Kim being fined. Commentators on the case on English-language blogs pointed out that the (male) student Master Kim, who was also engaged an activity illegal in Korea by viewing pornography in the first place, received a very different treatment from the police, with no action taken against him.
THUMBS DOWN to the male teenage student of an English school in Seoul, Korea, identified only as ‘Master Kim’, who shopped his English teacher to the police for appearing in a porn video, and who seems to have himself escaped prosecution for doing something which is also illegal in that country.
According to Seoul newspaper Kukmin Ilbo, a Korean English teacher at a hagwon (English language crammer school) in Seoul was fined 10,000,000 won (£4,600) for appearing in a pornographic video after one of her students recognised her on a website.
The teacher, identified only as Ms Kim, (a surname shared by a sizeable proportion of the Korean population) had featured several years ago in several porn videos starring herself and her boyfriend while studying in a postgraduate Sociology course in Canada, after running into difficulties keeping up payments on the tuition fees. Appearing in and watching pornography are illegal in Korea, and Ms Kim was unaware that the law includes performance by Korean nationals in pornographic material recorded abroad in countries where such activity is not illegal, such as Canada.
Ms Kim’s vigilant teenage student, named as ‘Master Kim,’ ‘just happened to be surfing porn sites’ when he came across a woman whose face looked strangely familiar. A ‘closer inspection’ revealed it was his English teacher. He tipped off the Seoul Metropolitan Police website, who began an investigation resulting in English teacher Ms. Kim being fined. Commentators on the case on English-language blogs pointed out that the (male) student Master Kim, who was also engaged an activity illegal in Korea by viewing pornography in the first place, received a very different treatment from the police, with no action taken against him.
Renaissance of the Gulf
From EL Gazette, February 2009
The numbers of Arabian Gulf nationals studying around the world continue to rise, with little sign of the global recession
Matt Salusbury
Writes
Where are students from the Gulf states of the Middle East going to study? The ‘Gulf states’ are members of the Cooperation Council for Arab States in the Arabian Gulf, which are Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, the states of Kuwait and Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE, which including Abu Dhabi and Dubai.)
Some countries have no statistics for enrolments from individual Gulf countries, and lump students from there together as ‘Middle East,’ which includes Turkey and North Africa. Australia is one such country. English Australia’s figures for the EFL sector lists 5,500 from ‘the Middle East’ in 2007, up 60 per cent on 2006. Within this group, enrolments from Saudi Arabia doubled in that year, totalling 7,300 Saudis studying in Australia as of October 2008.
Australia takes recruitment of Gulf students so seriously that a Parliamentary Sub-committee covered the issue back in 2005, urging Australia to capitalise on ‘recent restrictions to student visas and perceptions of the US and the UK as being "unsafe" and "unwelcoming" destinations for students from the Middle East and Gulf’.
New Zealand, helped by a low exchange rate for its currency and the perception of the country as a safe place, is enjoying a surge in Saudi enrolments. There were only 76 Saudi students in New Zealand in 2006, but by 2008 these had almost tripled.
Ireland’s latest (2005) figures show 300 Kuwait students, many of whom were studying in Ireland’s five medical schools. Eight per cent of all medical students are from Kuwait and four per cent of them are from the UAE, making them the fourth and fifth biggest groups in medicine by nationality. There were over 150 Emiratis in Ireland in 2005, with Emiratis outnumbering Saudis.
Ireland has seen a recent increase in Saudis on the King Abdullah Scholarship Programme, Nearly 90 per cent of these are male, and they’re mostly on part-time ‘non-degree’ business or English language courses.
The Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada (AUCC) told the Gazette that the number of students from all Gulf countries on student visas on Canadian campuses has grown rapidly, with nearly 70,000 fulltime students in 2006. The AUCC said that Arab students are especially numerous at McGill University and the universities of Ottawa and Toronto. The latest (2005) figures show that 23 per cent of Gulf states students in Canada were female, this proportion is 10 per cent more than a decade earlier.
In Spring 2008, Canada relaxed immigration rules on student visa-holders who settle there after a course of study, and Gulf News reported that Emiratis in particular are taking advantage of this change.
Back in 2006, the American Council of Education warned that ‘students from the Gulf States… are choosing to study in Europe, the Middle East, or Asia rather than coming to the United States.’ Their report cited year-on-year declines in enrolments from the Gulf – by one fifth in Oman’s case - and concluded ‘this is part of a larger pattern of decline among Muslim countries’ in the wake of 9/11 and the Afghani and Iraq wars. The recent ‘Obama bounce’ seems to be improving global perceptions of the US, which may encourage Arab students back there.
America’s efforts to entice students from the Gulf states include the State Department’s education arm in the region, AMIDEAST, which opened bigger accommodation with a separate teaching centre in Muscat, Oman, in the summer. Before the move, AMIDEAST’s Muscat operation was already handling 130 visitors and 200 calls a month, all enquiring about studying in the US.
AMIDEAST will open an office in Qatar soon, and is already marketing State Department-sponsored Youth Exchange and Study Program scholarships for Qataris to study in a US high school for a year. Qatar’s ‘Education City’ outside the capital Doha includes five US university campuses, compared to one British university (Herriot-Watt) and one Australian university (Wollongong) in the Gulf, both in Dubai.
America’s 1991 liberation of Kuwait means Kuwait has close ties to the US. The National Union of Kuwait Students said that in 2008 there were ‘1,500 Kuwaiti students studying at universities in the US, Egypt and the UK on scholarships from the Kuwait Embassy. Another 500 Kuwaiti are enrolled privately in American universities.’
Saudi Arabia’s gigantic King Abdullah Scholarship Programme (KASP, see here) is focused on the US, with a target for 25,000 Saudis to be studying in the US by academic year 2009-2010.
The Gulf states don’t just send students to American universities, they (especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) are the biggest donors to US university endowment funds. This facilitates more of their nationals coming to study there.
In the UK, the latest figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show over 3200 Saudi higher education students in the UK in 2007, up 18 per cent on the previous year. Kuwaiti and Qatari numbers were up by about the same proportion, with well over a thousand students from each state, and there were 600 Qataris. Emirati recruitment was more modest (seven per cent up, to over 2200) and Bahraini enrolments were down.
The British Council Kuwait is now starting training and accreditation for local educational agents. UK Trade and Investment recently identified ‘financial and professional education’ in Saudi Arabia and Qatar topping the list of ‘opportunities’ for export to these countries.
Scottish universities seem particularly adept at marketing to the Gulf. Glasgow’s website markets its diverse home city’s large Muslim community, with the most mosques of any city in Scotland. (The University of New South Wales also markets its tolerant and cosmopolitan home city of Sydney, Australia, and its university mosque where 400 Muslim students attend Friday prayers.) Meanwhile, London’s EFL providers are telling the Gazette they're having trouble coping with the influx of King Abdullah Scholarship Programme Saudis.
South African EFL providers report that they’re receiving more Saudis of a younger average age, helped by relatively easy visas. As we go to press, a South African mission to the Gulf states is arriving in Dubai, with the Gulf States acting in concert on agreements with South Africa on tourism, hospitality, leisure and nuclear energy technology transfer, but no mention of education yet. Talks are also about to start on a pan-African trading bloc with the Gulf states, with South Africa as a senior partner.
In Gulf countries that have no elections, national leaders are acutely aware of the need to constantly drive ‘reforms.’ Several Gulf states are committed to reducing their dependence on an expatriate workforce, and on training up their own nationals to replace them. All this will mean continued investment in English-medium education. All Saudi primary schools will teach EFL from 2009, for example, with English as the medium of instruction for all mathematics and science in the Kingdom from 2011.
But there’s still a chance that increased demand from the Gulf could stall. At the end 2008, Saudi Arabia was, according to the Guardian newspaper, ‘expected to cut back on both current spending and adjust ambitious long-term development plans in the light of the slump in (oil) prices.’ Qatari and Emirati government run investments funds have taken a pounding through exposure to US and European share price crashes. Boomtown Dubai is starting to see a slowdown, while Kuwait recently took the extreme step of closing its stock exchange for several days to stop share prices ‘haemorrhaging.’ But the same report re-assures us that even in a global recession, the existing assets of the Gulf states will ‘remain massive.’
The numbers of Arabian Gulf nationals studying around the world continue to rise, with little sign of the global recession
Matt Salusbury
Writes
Where are students from the Gulf states of the Middle East going to study? The ‘Gulf states’ are members of the Cooperation Council for Arab States in the Arabian Gulf, which are Bahrain, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Oman, the states of Kuwait and Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE, which including Abu Dhabi and Dubai.)
Some countries have no statistics for enrolments from individual Gulf countries, and lump students from there together as ‘Middle East,’ which includes Turkey and North Africa. Australia is one such country. English Australia’s figures for the EFL sector lists 5,500 from ‘the Middle East’ in 2007, up 60 per cent on 2006. Within this group, enrolments from Saudi Arabia doubled in that year, totalling 7,300 Saudis studying in Australia as of October 2008.
Australia takes recruitment of Gulf students so seriously that a Parliamentary Sub-committee covered the issue back in 2005, urging Australia to capitalise on ‘recent restrictions to student visas and perceptions of the US and the UK as being "unsafe" and "unwelcoming" destinations for students from the Middle East and Gulf’.
New Zealand, helped by a low exchange rate for its currency and the perception of the country as a safe place, is enjoying a surge in Saudi enrolments. There were only 76 Saudi students in New Zealand in 2006, but by 2008 these had almost tripled.
Ireland’s latest (2005) figures show 300 Kuwait students, many of whom were studying in Ireland’s five medical schools. Eight per cent of all medical students are from Kuwait and four per cent of them are from the UAE, making them the fourth and fifth biggest groups in medicine by nationality. There were over 150 Emiratis in Ireland in 2005, with Emiratis outnumbering Saudis.
Ireland has seen a recent increase in Saudis on the King Abdullah Scholarship Programme, Nearly 90 per cent of these are male, and they’re mostly on part-time ‘non-degree’ business or English language courses.
The Association of Universities and Colleges in Canada (AUCC) told the Gazette that the number of students from all Gulf countries on student visas on Canadian campuses has grown rapidly, with nearly 70,000 fulltime students in 2006. The AUCC said that Arab students are especially numerous at McGill University and the universities of Ottawa and Toronto. The latest (2005) figures show that 23 per cent of Gulf states students in Canada were female, this proportion is 10 per cent more than a decade earlier.
In Spring 2008, Canada relaxed immigration rules on student visa-holders who settle there after a course of study, and Gulf News reported that Emiratis in particular are taking advantage of this change.
Back in 2006, the American Council of Education warned that ‘students from the Gulf States… are choosing to study in Europe, the Middle East, or Asia rather than coming to the United States.’ Their report cited year-on-year declines in enrolments from the Gulf – by one fifth in Oman’s case - and concluded ‘this is part of a larger pattern of decline among Muslim countries’ in the wake of 9/11 and the Afghani and Iraq wars. The recent ‘Obama bounce’ seems to be improving global perceptions of the US, which may encourage Arab students back there.
America’s efforts to entice students from the Gulf states include the State Department’s education arm in the region, AMIDEAST, which opened bigger accommodation with a separate teaching centre in Muscat, Oman, in the summer. Before the move, AMIDEAST’s Muscat operation was already handling 130 visitors and 200 calls a month, all enquiring about studying in the US.
AMIDEAST will open an office in Qatar soon, and is already marketing State Department-sponsored Youth Exchange and Study Program scholarships for Qataris to study in a US high school for a year. Qatar’s ‘Education City’ outside the capital Doha includes five US university campuses, compared to one British university (Herriot-Watt) and one Australian university (Wollongong) in the Gulf, both in Dubai.
America’s 1991 liberation of Kuwait means Kuwait has close ties to the US. The National Union of Kuwait Students said that in 2008 there were ‘1,500 Kuwaiti students studying at universities in the US, Egypt and the UK on scholarships from the Kuwait Embassy. Another 500 Kuwaiti are enrolled privately in American universities.’
Saudi Arabia’s gigantic King Abdullah Scholarship Programme (KASP, see here) is focused on the US, with a target for 25,000 Saudis to be studying in the US by academic year 2009-2010.
The Gulf states don’t just send students to American universities, they (especially Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) are the biggest donors to US university endowment funds. This facilitates more of their nationals coming to study there.
In the UK, the latest figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency show over 3200 Saudi higher education students in the UK in 2007, up 18 per cent on the previous year. Kuwaiti and Qatari numbers were up by about the same proportion, with well over a thousand students from each state, and there were 600 Qataris. Emirati recruitment was more modest (seven per cent up, to over 2200) and Bahraini enrolments were down.
The British Council Kuwait is now starting training and accreditation for local educational agents. UK Trade and Investment recently identified ‘financial and professional education’ in Saudi Arabia and Qatar topping the list of ‘opportunities’ for export to these countries.
Scottish universities seem particularly adept at marketing to the Gulf. Glasgow’s website markets its diverse home city’s large Muslim community, with the most mosques of any city in Scotland. (The University of New South Wales also markets its tolerant and cosmopolitan home city of Sydney, Australia, and its university mosque where 400 Muslim students attend Friday prayers.) Meanwhile, London’s EFL providers are telling the Gazette they're having trouble coping with the influx of King Abdullah Scholarship Programme Saudis.
South African EFL providers report that they’re receiving more Saudis of a younger average age, helped by relatively easy visas. As we go to press, a South African mission to the Gulf states is arriving in Dubai, with the Gulf States acting in concert on agreements with South Africa on tourism, hospitality, leisure and nuclear energy technology transfer, but no mention of education yet. Talks are also about to start on a pan-African trading bloc with the Gulf states, with South Africa as a senior partner.
In Gulf countries that have no elections, national leaders are acutely aware of the need to constantly drive ‘reforms.’ Several Gulf states are committed to reducing their dependence on an expatriate workforce, and on training up their own nationals to replace them. All this will mean continued investment in English-medium education. All Saudi primary schools will teach EFL from 2009, for example, with English as the medium of instruction for all mathematics and science in the Kingdom from 2011.
But there’s still a chance that increased demand from the Gulf could stall. At the end 2008, Saudi Arabia was, according to the Guardian newspaper, ‘expected to cut back on both current spending and adjust ambitious long-term development plans in the light of the slump in (oil) prices.’ Qatari and Emirati government run investments funds have taken a pounding through exposure to US and European share price crashes. Boomtown Dubai is starting to see a slowdown, while Kuwait recently took the extreme step of closing its stock exchange for several days to stop share prices ‘haemorrhaging.’ But the same report re-assures us that even in a global recession, the existing assets of the Gulf states will ‘remain massive.’
Friday, 29 August 2008
New uni head in Iraq was British commander at battle of Basra
AN EL GAZETTE EXCLUSIVE
This article first appeared in English Language Gazette, August 2008
THE NEW head of Iraq’s first English-medium university is the British former commander who captured Basra in the coalition invasion of the country five years ago, reports Matt Salusbury.
At the start of the spring holiday, staff and students at Kurdistan University Hawler (KUH) – in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region – were introduced to their new rector, Lieutenant General Robin Brims (retired).
Although Brims has no academic degree, he does have an impressive CV in the field of leadership. In addition to capturing Basra in 2003, his other achievements include being deputy head of all coalition forces in Baghdad, army chief of staff in Northern Ireland, commander of an air mobile brigade in Bosnia in the 1990s and commander of the field army in the UK before retiring from the army in 2007. Brims won the Distinguished Service Order medal for his role in the battle of Basra.
Brims replaces Kurdish academic Professor Abbas Vali, KUH’s rector on its foundation with Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) funding in 2006. The university, the first founded in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, awards degrees accredited and monitored by the UK’s University of Bradford.
It primarily caters for Iraqi Kurdish students, but has kept to its quotas for Arab students from the rest of Iraq. Vali’s reputation as an academic at the UK’s University of Wales at Swansea and then at Bogazaci University in Istanbul helped attract many Kurdish and English speaking academics to work at KUH in the region’s capital Hawler (also known as Erbil). See the Gazette of July 2006 for a report on KUH’s foundation.
Dr Sarah Keeler, formerly of the KUH social sciences faculty, told the Gazette that she was among seven faculty members to resign in protest at what she saw as the sudden appointment and the questionable way the change of leadership was brought about. Brims said he was appointed on orders from the KRG prime minister’s office.
In his inaugural speech at KUH Brims admitted, ‘I am not an academic; indeed I did not attend a university myself... So why am I considered suitable for this task? The answer is simple. I have not spent the last 38 years leading the charge at the front of the troops. I have led by analysis, idea, planning and implementation.’ Other ex-military men have gone to become highly effective leaders in education, as in other areas of civilian management. But it’s not know whether there is a precedent for a commander of invading army to progress to running one of the country’s universities, especially after a command role in a conflict which, arguably, has still not ended.
© English Language Gazette 2008
This article first appeared in English Language Gazette, August 2008
THE NEW head of Iraq’s first English-medium university is the British former commander who captured Basra in the coalition invasion of the country five years ago, reports Matt Salusbury.
At the start of the spring holiday, staff and students at Kurdistan University Hawler (KUH) – in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region – were introduced to their new rector, Lieutenant General Robin Brims (retired).
Although Brims has no academic degree, he does have an impressive CV in the field of leadership. In addition to capturing Basra in 2003, his other achievements include being deputy head of all coalition forces in Baghdad, army chief of staff in Northern Ireland, commander of an air mobile brigade in Bosnia in the 1990s and commander of the field army in the UK before retiring from the army in 2007. Brims won the Distinguished Service Order medal for his role in the battle of Basra.
Brims replaces Kurdish academic Professor Abbas Vali, KUH’s rector on its foundation with Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) funding in 2006. The university, the first founded in Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein, awards degrees accredited and monitored by the UK’s University of Bradford.
It primarily caters for Iraqi Kurdish students, but has kept to its quotas for Arab students from the rest of Iraq. Vali’s reputation as an academic at the UK’s University of Wales at Swansea and then at Bogazaci University in Istanbul helped attract many Kurdish and English speaking academics to work at KUH in the region’s capital Hawler (also known as Erbil). See the Gazette of July 2006 for a report on KUH’s foundation.
Dr Sarah Keeler, formerly of the KUH social sciences faculty, told the Gazette that she was among seven faculty members to resign in protest at what she saw as the sudden appointment and the questionable way the change of leadership was brought about. Brims said he was appointed on orders from the KRG prime minister’s office.
In his inaugural speech at KUH Brims admitted, ‘I am not an academic; indeed I did not attend a university myself... So why am I considered suitable for this task? The answer is simple. I have not spent the last 38 years leading the charge at the front of the troops. I have led by analysis, idea, planning and implementation.’ Other ex-military men have gone to become highly effective leaders in education, as in other areas of civilian management. But it’s not know whether there is a precedent for a commander of invading army to progress to running one of the country’s universities, especially after a command role in a conflict which, arguably, has still not ended.
© English Language Gazette 2008
Wednesday, 21 May 2008
So farewell then, Tefltrade.com
Lines on the demise of English language teaching's sweariest blogosphere rant
Matt Salusbury
This article first appeared in the English language teaching industry trade paper English Language Gazette, April 2008, as an editorial
Despite numerous attempts by school owners to get it shut down, the Tefl trade blog beloved by put-open English language teachers everywhere, has finally had its last post. It was ended not by libel writs but by the desire of its blogger, ‘Sandy McManus’ (not his/her real name) to ‘turn my attention to something a little more uplifting.’
The revelation that convicted peadophile James Fraser Darling (see September 2007’s Gazette) had been taken on by several EFL schools in Indonesia was just one of the useful bits of intelligence coming the Gazette’s way thanks to McManus and the Tefl trade blog. As well as turning its spotlight on serial malpractice in the industry in the style of UK investigative and satirical magazine Private Eye, Tefl trade was also consistently hilarious and its tirades against the industry could be guaranteed to contain plenty of swearing. Its Crap Jobs column (‘£7.50 an hour, anyone? Don’t all jump at once’) was a shocking but true barometer of Tefl’s race to the bottom for teachers’ pay, and the tendency of teachers to whinge rather than doing anything about it.
‘Sandy’ told the Gazette ‘I do have an MA to finish, as well as some other vague plans for continuing writing of some sort or another, but I need some free time to collect my thoughts, without the self-inflicted pressure of keeping Sandy’s UK Tefl blog going.’ You can still see the now static Tefl trade blog online, and more of the same on The TEFL Blacklist, which ‘Sandy’ admitted was his/her baby, but that he/she ‘passed the reins over early last year.’
We reproduce here in full Sandy’s last blog, expletives deleted:
‘So that’s it then - I’ve decided. There’s no point at all in my keeping this blog running, so this will be my last posting.
I mean, why should I waste my bloody time tilting at windmills, and to such little effect? If there are ‘teachers’ back in the UK who want to work for nine quid (£9) an hour and think of themselves as professionals, then let them - it’s their problem, not mine. Or maybe they just don’t give a s*** about the ‘profession’, and are quite happy to stagger into class and deliver a heap of s**** day after day. Again, that’s not my problem, is it? Why should it be my bloody concern?
Fact is, I’m not doing my health, both physical and mental, a whole lot of good by spouting so much negativity about a job that so few people really care about, anyway. ‘Never has so little been done by so many for so few pounds’, you might say.
And let’s face it - why should I spend hours every week hunched over a second-hand laptop, seeking out shysters (unscrupulous practitioners), and spouting my half-baked venomous drivel, when I’ve got my kids to play with, dozens of books to read, and crummy old videos of Mind Your Language (1970s sitcom about an English class for migrants) to watch - just why? There’s a life out there - something positive - and I need to start embracing it before I go completely crackers.
So that’s it, then. The rent on this site will be up for renewal soon, and I shan’t be paying it. Soon afterwards, the cyber curtains will fall, and TeflTrade will become part of history - or just forgotten. And to be honest, I don’t really care whether ‘Sandy McManus’ is looked back upon as a legend or a lout.
If I ever go back to working in English as a Foreign Language teaching in the UK (God forbid!), I might consider reviving the site - but I can’t really see that happening. Of course, if there’s anybody out there right now who’s keen to take over the site and do its dirty work, - well, just set up your very own ‘TeflTrade’ on blogger.com. I won’t be complaining.
In fact, I won’t even be looking.’
While the Teftrade homepage seems to be down, there still seems to be some Tefltrade activity continuing here , and McManus posts out alerts of occasional new postings to his/her invite only email list.
Matt Salusbury
This article first appeared in the English language teaching industry trade paper English Language Gazette, April 2008, as an editorial
Despite numerous attempts by school owners to get it shut down, the Tefl trade blog beloved by put-open English language teachers everywhere, has finally had its last post. It was ended not by libel writs but by the desire of its blogger, ‘Sandy McManus’ (not his/her real name) to ‘turn my attention to something a little more uplifting.’
The revelation that convicted peadophile James Fraser Darling (see September 2007’s Gazette) had been taken on by several EFL schools in Indonesia was just one of the useful bits of intelligence coming the Gazette’s way thanks to McManus and the Tefl trade blog. As well as turning its spotlight on serial malpractice in the industry in the style of UK investigative and satirical magazine Private Eye, Tefl trade was also consistently hilarious and its tirades against the industry could be guaranteed to contain plenty of swearing. Its Crap Jobs column (‘£7.50 an hour, anyone? Don’t all jump at once’) was a shocking but true barometer of Tefl’s race to the bottom for teachers’ pay, and the tendency of teachers to whinge rather than doing anything about it.
‘Sandy’ told the Gazette ‘I do have an MA to finish, as well as some other vague plans for continuing writing of some sort or another, but I need some free time to collect my thoughts, without the self-inflicted pressure of keeping Sandy’s UK Tefl blog going.’ You can still see the now static Tefl trade blog online, and more of the same on The TEFL Blacklist, which ‘Sandy’ admitted was his/her baby, but that he/she ‘passed the reins over early last year.’
We reproduce here in full Sandy’s last blog, expletives deleted:
‘So that’s it then - I’ve decided. There’s no point at all in my keeping this blog running, so this will be my last posting.
I mean, why should I waste my bloody time tilting at windmills, and to such little effect? If there are ‘teachers’ back in the UK who want to work for nine quid (£9) an hour and think of themselves as professionals, then let them - it’s their problem, not mine. Or maybe they just don’t give a s*** about the ‘profession’, and are quite happy to stagger into class and deliver a heap of s**** day after day. Again, that’s not my problem, is it? Why should it be my bloody concern?
Fact is, I’m not doing my health, both physical and mental, a whole lot of good by spouting so much negativity about a job that so few people really care about, anyway. ‘Never has so little been done by so many for so few pounds’, you might say.
And let’s face it - why should I spend hours every week hunched over a second-hand laptop, seeking out shysters (unscrupulous practitioners), and spouting my half-baked venomous drivel, when I’ve got my kids to play with, dozens of books to read, and crummy old videos of Mind Your Language (1970s sitcom about an English class for migrants) to watch - just why? There’s a life out there - something positive - and I need to start embracing it before I go completely crackers.
So that’s it, then. The rent on this site will be up for renewal soon, and I shan’t be paying it. Soon afterwards, the cyber curtains will fall, and TeflTrade will become part of history - or just forgotten. And to be honest, I don’t really care whether ‘Sandy McManus’ is looked back upon as a legend or a lout.
If I ever go back to working in English as a Foreign Language teaching in the UK (God forbid!), I might consider reviving the site - but I can’t really see that happening. Of course, if there’s anybody out there right now who’s keen to take over the site and do its dirty work, - well, just set up your very own ‘TeflTrade’ on blogger.com. I won’t be complaining.
In fact, I won’t even be looking.’
While the Teftrade homepage seems to be down, there still seems to be some Tefltrade activity continuing here , and McManus posts out alerts of occasional new postings to his/her invite only email list.
All change for ESL? - US presidential candidates on English as a Second Language issues
Matt Salusbury
This article first appeared in the English language teaching industry trade paper English Language Gazette, May 2008
Candidates in the US presidential race have all taken positions on the English language.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton says English should remain the ‘unofficial spoken language’ but should not become the official language if such a designation would permit all official documents to become English-only, as this would disenfranchise some Chinese who had lived in New York for 50 years, for example. Senator Clinton drafted the Federal Access to Employment and English Acquisition Act, which aims to help individual states meet the growth in demand for English language courses.
Republican front-runner John McCain says a requirement to learn English must be one step on ‘a path toward citizenship for illegal immigrants’. At the same time, he backs allowing state schools to continue teaching some subjects in languages other than English, a view unpopular with his party’s more conservative elements.
Clinton’s Democrat rival Barack Obama, has pledged his support for bilingual education and promises to help ‘limited English proficient’ students progress by making schools accountable for ensuring they complete their education.
Copyright: English Language Gazette
Update, May 2008; Obama supporter Senator Edward Kennedy has proposed extending the No Child Left Behind Act, which compels the 50 States to reach minimum targets for achievement for all school students, regardless of whether English is their first language or not. He proposes that all 'English Language Learners' (children whose first language is not English) be taught be certified ESL-qualified teachers at pre-school kindergarten classes as well as primary and secondary schools. Very few ESL-qualified pre-school teachers exist.
This article first appeared in the English language teaching industry trade paper English Language Gazette, May 2008
Candidates in the US presidential race have all taken positions on the English language.
Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton says English should remain the ‘unofficial spoken language’ but should not become the official language if such a designation would permit all official documents to become English-only, as this would disenfranchise some Chinese who had lived in New York for 50 years, for example. Senator Clinton drafted the Federal Access to Employment and English Acquisition Act, which aims to help individual states meet the growth in demand for English language courses.
Republican front-runner John McCain says a requirement to learn English must be one step on ‘a path toward citizenship for illegal immigrants’. At the same time, he backs allowing state schools to continue teaching some subjects in languages other than English, a view unpopular with his party’s more conservative elements.
Clinton’s Democrat rival Barack Obama, has pledged his support for bilingual education and promises to help ‘limited English proficient’ students progress by making schools accountable for ensuring they complete their education.
Copyright: English Language Gazette
Update, May 2008; Obama supporter Senator Edward Kennedy has proposed extending the No Child Left Behind Act, which compels the 50 States to reach minimum targets for achievement for all school students, regardless of whether English is their first language or not. He proposes that all 'English Language Learners' (children whose first language is not English) be taught be certified ESL-qualified teachers at pre-school kindergarten classes as well as primary and secondary schools. Very few ESL-qualified pre-school teachers exist.
Irish evolution
The market for business English courses in Ireland continues to grow and evolve
This article first appeared in the English language teaching industry trade paper English Language Gazette, May 2008
The business English market in Ireland is growing. But, as Adrian Cummins of the Irish national association for English language schools MEI-Relsa told the Gazette, Ireland is keen to ensure that there’s a good mix of general business English courses and more ‘high-end’ intensive courses for executives, and a mix of nationalities on those courses.
Thirty per cent of the employees in Dublin’s International Centre free trade zone are reportedly non-Irish nationals, and most language schools in Ireland now offer business English courses, usually ‘combination’ programmes, with, for example, general English in the morning and business English in the afternoon. Students on combination business English courses are a mixture of executives, those relatively new to business and a new type of customer – longer-term students from international companies sent to Ireland.
The executive sector is a growth market which is being actively targeted, especially executives from Spain, who take advantage of Spanish government MEC grants to study English. Few EFL schools in Ireland offer business English exams. Some run courses that end in the Cambridge Esol Business English Certificate (BEC). Adrian says some business English students ‘like to be certified’ at the end of their course, and thinks these tend to be university students at the pre-experience end of the business English market.
Work experience programmes have always been a strong point in Ireland and continue to grow, with students from Germany, France and Italy particularly well represented. These are typically four to six weeks long and ‘cross sector’, with stints in all sorts of industries. A lot of work experience people find placements in IT or administration. Some schools offering work experience specialise in certain markets, with one school having won a contract with a Korean company for business English courses followed by an internship.
Current target markets are ‘those where visas are easier’, countries whose nationals don’t need a visa to study in Ireland for a stay of up to three months, like Korea or Japan.
With the relatively sudden influx of migrants to Ireland, there’s an embryonic public- sector Esol industry, with further education colleges offering general Esol to migrants, most of whom come from the EU. Adrian says that privately owned business English providers are already encountering competition from this new sector.
Gary Tennant, director of business English courses at Dublin’s Atlas Language College, says that when he came to the UK five years ago he found that in ‘quite prominent schools, business English was topic-based with a heavy reliance on textbooks’. Now schools like Atlas are emerging as business English specialists. Atlas now offers tailored programmes, with clients choosing from a menu of skills-based mini-course options.
Kilkenny School of English in the south-west of the country also seems to be branding itself as a specialist business English school, with tailored in-company business English classes, and by moving into the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) market.
How are teachers recruited for Irish business English courses? According to Adrian, ‘teachers recruited through the usual means’ usually have a the initial Celta qualification or the higher Delta or equivalent but not a specific business English qualification. Adrian wasn’t aware of any course provider in Ireland that offered specialist courses in teaching business English. He admitted that there were not a lot of business English teachers and that there’s a demand for ‘teachers with proper criteria… We’d like to attract more native speaker teachers, although work permits are an issue.’ Gary says that the quality of training courses has improved vastly over recent years, with accrediting body Acels ‘upping the standard every year’.
Glossary:
Celta - Cambridge Certificate in English Language Teaching for Adults
Delta - Diploma in English Language Teaching for Adults
Matt Salusbury, news and features editor English Language Gazette
Copyright: English Language Gazette
This article first appeared in the English language teaching industry trade paper English Language Gazette, May 2008
The business English market in Ireland is growing. But, as Adrian Cummins of the Irish national association for English language schools MEI-Relsa told the Gazette, Ireland is keen to ensure that there’s a good mix of general business English courses and more ‘high-end’ intensive courses for executives, and a mix of nationalities on those courses.
Thirty per cent of the employees in Dublin’s International Centre free trade zone are reportedly non-Irish nationals, and most language schools in Ireland now offer business English courses, usually ‘combination’ programmes, with, for example, general English in the morning and business English in the afternoon. Students on combination business English courses are a mixture of executives, those relatively new to business and a new type of customer – longer-term students from international companies sent to Ireland.
The executive sector is a growth market which is being actively targeted, especially executives from Spain, who take advantage of Spanish government MEC grants to study English. Few EFL schools in Ireland offer business English exams. Some run courses that end in the Cambridge Esol Business English Certificate (BEC). Adrian says some business English students ‘like to be certified’ at the end of their course, and thinks these tend to be university students at the pre-experience end of the business English market.
Work experience programmes have always been a strong point in Ireland and continue to grow, with students from Germany, France and Italy particularly well represented. These are typically four to six weeks long and ‘cross sector’, with stints in all sorts of industries. A lot of work experience people find placements in IT or administration. Some schools offering work experience specialise in certain markets, with one school having won a contract with a Korean company for business English courses followed by an internship.
Current target markets are ‘those where visas are easier’, countries whose nationals don’t need a visa to study in Ireland for a stay of up to three months, like Korea or Japan.
With the relatively sudden influx of migrants to Ireland, there’s an embryonic public- sector Esol industry, with further education colleges offering general Esol to migrants, most of whom come from the EU. Adrian says that privately owned business English providers are already encountering competition from this new sector.
Gary Tennant, director of business English courses at Dublin’s Atlas Language College, says that when he came to the UK five years ago he found that in ‘quite prominent schools, business English was topic-based with a heavy reliance on textbooks’. Now schools like Atlas are emerging as business English specialists. Atlas now offers tailored programmes, with clients choosing from a menu of skills-based mini-course options.
Kilkenny School of English in the south-west of the country also seems to be branding itself as a specialist business English school, with tailored in-company business English classes, and by moving into the English for Specific Purposes (ESP) market.
How are teachers recruited for Irish business English courses? According to Adrian, ‘teachers recruited through the usual means’ usually have a the initial Celta qualification or the higher Delta or equivalent but not a specific business English qualification. Adrian wasn’t aware of any course provider in Ireland that offered specialist courses in teaching business English. He admitted that there were not a lot of business English teachers and that there’s a demand for ‘teachers with proper criteria… We’d like to attract more native speaker teachers, although work permits are an issue.’ Gary says that the quality of training courses has improved vastly over recent years, with accrediting body Acels ‘upping the standard every year’.
Glossary:
Celta - Cambridge Certificate in English Language Teaching for Adults
Delta - Diploma in English Language Teaching for Adults
Matt Salusbury, news and features editor English Language Gazette
Copyright: English Language Gazette
Head for the Highlands
Scotland’s distinctive higher education system is increasingly attracting international students from around the world
Matt Salusbury writes
This article first appeared in the English Language teaching industry trade paper English Language Gazette, May 2008
Scotland’s education system is widely regarded as the best in the UK. It has traditionally had proportionally more university places than the rest of Britain. Some of its universities are much older institutions than even Oxford or Cambridge, with one group of Scottish universities known collectively as ‘ancient universities’.
Figures supplied by Scottish Universities for students in higher education in Scotland put the total number of students (both UK and international) at 223,000. Of these, 12,500 were overseas students from other EU countries and 24,000 were from outside the EU. Some overseas students may find their school-leaving qualifications actually put them at an advantage when applying for Scottish universities compared to other UK entrants. This is because Scotland has a different system, with ‘Highers’ school leaving exams leading to a four-year degree in a Scottish university, compared to A-levels leading to a three-year degree in the rest of the UK. Susannah Lane, a researcher with the Scottish Universities association says the ‘perception of the four-year degree as the gold standard in education serves as a pull factor. Another big draw is Scotland’s ‘research base which is known internationally to be world class’. A comfortable majority of international students are in Scotland on postgraduate courses, and half of these are on research-based rather than taught ones.
Kelly Ferguson of Education UK Scotland suggests a ‘vast array of reasons’ why students chose Scotland, including ‘friends or family connections… safety and security on campus (and) culture - traditional and modern.’ She also cites the range of scholarships available for study there.
The most popular subjects for overseas students are business, which just beats engineering, then computing, biological sciences and ‘medicine-related.’ The ‘Watt’ in Heriott-Watt University commemorates Scottish engineer James Watt, and Napier University is named after a mathematician. Both of these universities pull in a lot of international students in these subjects, with Heriott-Watt recruiting many overseas architecture and business students too. Glasgow University seems to specialise in attracting overseas biologists. Strathclyde University had over 700 international students on its business courses in 2007.
But two less well-known universities seem to have carved out niche markets for foreign students. The Paisley-based University of the West of Scotland has the most business students from outside the EU, while Robert Gordon University has the most non-EU students in engineering, architecture and computer sciences. Dundee University seems to be doing rather well in recruiting non-EU students taking a variety of subjects.
The number of overseas students on further education (FE) vocational courses is surprisingly low. Of the 50,000 students who do FE courses in Scotland in 2005, only 310 are from other EU countries, and there are only 1,045 non-EU FE students. Non-degree FE courses are a growth market all over the English-speaking world, so this number can be expected to rise, especially given Scotland’s long-held reputation for excellence in technical subjects.
In 2001, there were students from over 100 countries studying in Scotland. The top ten countries of origin for sending students to Scotland as of 2006 were, in numerical order, China with just over 5,000, the US, India with nearly 4,000, Malaysia with over 3,000, Hong Kong with almost that number, closely followed by Ireland, then Canada with 2,000, Germany with 1,980, Greece with 1830. France is tenth, with1,500 students at Scottish universities.
The UK Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) has its own 2005–2006 figures for students from outside the EU studying in Scotland, and these list Norway, Nigeria, Taiwan and Japan as the biggest non-EU countries of origin after Canada.
There has been a steady rise in the total number of international students in Scottish universities. HESA figures list India and Nigeria as showing the biggest growth.
Non-EU international student numbers are rising much faster than for students from the rest of EU outside the UK. ‘Other EU’ student numbers have seen only a slight rise overall since the 1990s. While funding arrangements differ slightly in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK, the bigger increase in non-EU admissions could be partly down to the fact that universities can charge these students a lot more, so they become a marketing priority.
And let’s not forget higher education distance learning courses based in Scotland. Scottish Executive figures for 2006 put the total number of distance learning students based overseas at 18,000, and they outnumber the 14,400 who are based in the UK. Most of these distance learning students are postgraduate, with less than a thousand overseas students doing undergraduate first degrees by distance learning.
Matt Salusbury, news and features editor, English Language Gazette
with additional reporting by Michael Bowden
Copyright: English Language Gazette
Matt Salusbury writes
This article first appeared in the English Language teaching industry trade paper English Language Gazette, May 2008
Scotland’s education system is widely regarded as the best in the UK. It has traditionally had proportionally more university places than the rest of Britain. Some of its universities are much older institutions than even Oxford or Cambridge, with one group of Scottish universities known collectively as ‘ancient universities’.
Figures supplied by Scottish Universities for students in higher education in Scotland put the total number of students (both UK and international) at 223,000. Of these, 12,500 were overseas students from other EU countries and 24,000 were from outside the EU. Some overseas students may find their school-leaving qualifications actually put them at an advantage when applying for Scottish universities compared to other UK entrants. This is because Scotland has a different system, with ‘Highers’ school leaving exams leading to a four-year degree in a Scottish university, compared to A-levels leading to a three-year degree in the rest of the UK. Susannah Lane, a researcher with the Scottish Universities association says the ‘perception of the four-year degree as the gold standard in education serves as a pull factor. Another big draw is Scotland’s ‘research base which is known internationally to be world class’. A comfortable majority of international students are in Scotland on postgraduate courses, and half of these are on research-based rather than taught ones.
Kelly Ferguson of Education UK Scotland suggests a ‘vast array of reasons’ why students chose Scotland, including ‘friends or family connections… safety and security on campus (and) culture - traditional and modern.’ She also cites the range of scholarships available for study there.
The most popular subjects for overseas students are business, which just beats engineering, then computing, biological sciences and ‘medicine-related.’ The ‘Watt’ in Heriott-Watt University commemorates Scottish engineer James Watt, and Napier University is named after a mathematician. Both of these universities pull in a lot of international students in these subjects, with Heriott-Watt recruiting many overseas architecture and business students too. Glasgow University seems to specialise in attracting overseas biologists. Strathclyde University had over 700 international students on its business courses in 2007.
But two less well-known universities seem to have carved out niche markets for foreign students. The Paisley-based University of the West of Scotland has the most business students from outside the EU, while Robert Gordon University has the most non-EU students in engineering, architecture and computer sciences. Dundee University seems to be doing rather well in recruiting non-EU students taking a variety of subjects.
The number of overseas students on further education (FE) vocational courses is surprisingly low. Of the 50,000 students who do FE courses in Scotland in 2005, only 310 are from other EU countries, and there are only 1,045 non-EU FE students. Non-degree FE courses are a growth market all over the English-speaking world, so this number can be expected to rise, especially given Scotland’s long-held reputation for excellence in technical subjects.
In 2001, there were students from over 100 countries studying in Scotland. The top ten countries of origin for sending students to Scotland as of 2006 were, in numerical order, China with just over 5,000, the US, India with nearly 4,000, Malaysia with over 3,000, Hong Kong with almost that number, closely followed by Ireland, then Canada with 2,000, Germany with 1,980, Greece with 1830. France is tenth, with1,500 students at Scottish universities.
The UK Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) has its own 2005–2006 figures for students from outside the EU studying in Scotland, and these list Norway, Nigeria, Taiwan and Japan as the biggest non-EU countries of origin after Canada.
There has been a steady rise in the total number of international students in Scottish universities. HESA figures list India and Nigeria as showing the biggest growth.
Non-EU international student numbers are rising much faster than for students from the rest of EU outside the UK. ‘Other EU’ student numbers have seen only a slight rise overall since the 1990s. While funding arrangements differ slightly in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK, the bigger increase in non-EU admissions could be partly down to the fact that universities can charge these students a lot more, so they become a marketing priority.
And let’s not forget higher education distance learning courses based in Scotland. Scottish Executive figures for 2006 put the total number of distance learning students based overseas at 18,000, and they outnumber the 14,400 who are based in the UK. Most of these distance learning students are postgraduate, with less than a thousand overseas students doing undergraduate first degrees by distance learning.
Matt Salusbury, news and features editor, English Language Gazette
with additional reporting by Michael Bowden
Copyright: English Language Gazette
Cultural conversions
English as a Foreign Language teachers tired of the same old grind make ideal candidates for conversion to cross-cultural trainers
Matt Salusbury talks to cross-cultural training experts
This article first appeared in English language teaching industry trade paper English Language Gazette May 2008
There is a lucrative industry in cross-cultural training (also called intercultural training) currently opening up, and English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers have obvious transferable skills that can help them benefit from a move into this area. (See pages 16–17 of the March 2008 Gazette for an introduction to the subject.) But what does the job entail, and how do EFL teachers go about becoming cross-cultural trainers?
Neil Payne, of Kwintessential Ltd Cross Cultural Solutions says that trainers come from all sorts of backgrounds. The majority have worked internationally and understand the complexities of working across cultures, are Tefl teachers, have been expatriaes or have grown up in foreign countries and gone into training, and then you also get people nowadays who have taken the academic route into training through an Masters Degree.
Recent graduates of cross-cultural training courses at International House (IH) London include Yu Sun, who teaches Mandarin and trains businesses to work with China, Bryony Kate Howard, who used the cultural training course to convert her language clients in Germany to cultural clients and to get new business, and Rie Ota, a teacher of English and Japanese. Neil feels that EFL is an excellent way into intercultural training as you’ve already had exposure to working and living in a foreign country, and can then become an ‘expert’ in that culture. And through teaching you develop a lot of training skills including confidence in how to manage a group of people.
Barry Tomalin, director of the Business Cultural Trainers Certificate at IH London, also feels that teachers can make good cultural trainers. ‘They used to say in the BBC that it was easier to turn a teacher into a producer than the other way round. It’s the same with cultural training but we need to recognise the differences.’
English teachers, says Barry, have the techniques to help students learn. Cultural trainers are judged by whether they meet the client’s agenda. The clients control the agenda and their agenda is improving business performance in overseas markets or working with overseas teams.
This agenda has to be delivered in blocks of one or two days or half a day, as business managers are extremely busy. It is much closer to management training than to language training. and can be a lot more stressful.
In cultural training the aim is to find out what people need to know to achieve a particular business aim, learn what the business issues are likely to be and then find the right way to address them. The feeling and approach in the training room is very different to the English Language Teaching (ELT) classroom.
What have EFL teachers got to offer? We are trained to be aware of and to be able to conceptualise differences in language. We are also trained to teach by activities. We follow the learning cycle of activity, debrief, conclusions and implementation. Cultural trainers tend to talk; language trainers tend to get people to do things. Most language trainers have lived and worked abroad so they understand what it is to live and work in a different environment and have experienced some of the psychological challenges of doing so. This is experience that we can use to the benefit of the managers we are training. We also gain, as a result of living and working abroad, a host of stories that we can use as part of our work.
Barry believes there’s a lot of ‘smoke and mirrors in cultural training. Most trainees have no interest in the culture they are dealing with as such, or if they are interested it tends to be a by-product rather than the aim of their work. Cultural training also has a number of business models, principally those presented by such theorists as Hofstede, Trompenaars, Lewis, Mole and Bennett. You need to know these and to be able to teach a system that your trainees can apply.
Ultimately, what you are teaching is life skills. When working with overseas partners and clients the rules change. Understanding the key communication and business cultural differentiators such as attitudes to time, relationships, decision-making and organisation are crucial to making the right business judgements with foreign clients and partners. What you are doing is teaching these skills and initiating an international mindset which will make your trainees more responsive to international business requirements.
There are three main kinds of course. One type is cultural briefing, exploring what is it like to work in or with people from another country. Then there’s mobility – training people to live abroad, training people to live in the UK or training people to settle in back home after a secondment overseas. And there’s international team building – working with a team which may be a virtual team that communicates through email, phone and video conferencing.
Cultural training and coaching can pay better than language training. Barry says that companies may charge between £1,500 and £2,000 per day and sole traders tend to charge £1,000-plus. Neil says trainers are paid anywhere from £500 to £1,000 per day, and 95 per cent are freelances who work for a number of consultancies. Very few would go into permanent employment as a full-time trainer although some consultancies do have in-house trainers too. Barry says, ‘Your clients initially will probably be companies you know and have previously worked with in the language field, although converting them from language clients to culture clients can take time.’
A number of training companies offer in-house training courses, and companies such as LTS Bath run five-day train-the-trainer courses for aspirant cultural trainers. The IH London Business Cultural Trainers Certificate offers a three-day intensive course in how to research, design, market and deliver courses for managers. There’s also highly rated seminar in Oregon, USA, which takes place at the Intercultural Communication Institute, Summer Institute, run by Milton and Janet Bennett.
Glossary
ELT - English Language Teaching
EFL - English as a Foreign Language
Tefl - Teaching English as a Foreign Language
Matt Salusbury, News and Features Editor, English Language Gazette
Copyright: English Language Gazette
MA - Master of Arts, Masters Degree
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