It's an old story, but ...

[MadridTeacher.com]

If it's in the newspaper, if must be true, right? Heck if I know, but why take chances?

http://www.praguepost.com/P03/2004/Art/1223/news2.php

Stay out'a trouble guys!

Steven Starry
MadridTeacher.com

[doogie]

Well, this is a first. So far, I thought TELF course providers were doing a good job. But don't forget, no matter what industry you are in, there is a certain probability that customers will complain no matter what you do.

For the use of readers, I have pasted the start of that news report:

Angry students claim a Prague-based training company left them stranded in
Spain after canceling their course and then -- for months, despite repeated
promises -- failed to refund the fees they had paid to train as
English-language teachers.

The owner of ITC International TEFL Certificate s.r.o., Iva Brozova, denies
she defrauded clients. She insists that students who were owed money have
been repaid, and that her firm has had a good record for a decade.

However, her company has had its membership canceled by the College of
Teachers, a professional body that says ITC has not complied with rules
requiring integrity and conduct that does not bring the profession into
disrepute.

[MadridTeacher.com]

Here in Spain around 200 English schools have closed in the past 4 or 5 years including around 100 Wall Street Institutes, who knows how many Openings, Oxford English watchyamacallits, etc. etc. and just this last week another chain went down of "Studyo"s. I don't think these guys had many English classes though (a few I'm sure), but a lot of other teachers got caught out. (Some got holding the bag for Social Security payments, which the school neglected to pay for quite some time apparently.)

All in a days work for an experienced teacher.

Cheers,

MadridTeacher

[doogie]

Seems like a real mine field in Spain. Is the ESL industry really that unstable in Spain? In Asian countries, the demand for English teachers always is higher than supply.

In places like Korea and Japan, it's quite straight forward to open a school and profit. In fact, places like Shane School of English and Smiths English School actually sell their winning ways as a franchise.

[MadridTeacher.com]

There's always work to be had here, but you know what they say, the big fish ... and teachers are awfully small fry. There are plenty of schools here that have been here "forever", but competition and bad luck can kill a school or organization. Most if not all of the schools I mentioned above all had one thing in common: the funky way they made students pay up front for a whole year via financing. I think that over-eager sales staff were inadvertently forgetting to mention little details like the fact that their new students were signing for bank loans, etc. In some cases, when word got out of some of this stuff, it caused a run. In other cases, sales staff and owners lived high on the hog throwing big parties, etc. (i.e. overspending) until they suddenly closed down. Who knows what motivated them to do that?!?

In any case, the main warning here is about a certain type of school that overdoes the sales work and underdoes the class work. Know what I mean? It can happen anywhere and it does, but Spain may be especially prone to it because of how unregulated the industry is.