Blog piece by Cactus TEFL

Cactus TEFL works with a wide range of TEFL course providers, all with very differing amounts of associated industry prestige.

At one end of the scale are the TEFL industry megaliths, like International House and St Giles for example. Then there are the relative newcomers to the market, many of which offer shorter, or more flexible training options than the more traditional four-week, full-time courses.

The TEFL industry is about 60 years old, and born of the epoch when it was fine to wander into a Commonwealth country, order people about and insist they be 'educated'. This inevitably starting by trying to improve their "shocking" English.

The twist on teaching English in the 50s was that the methodologies applied to TEFL suddenly became less grammar based and shifted to a more communicative approach. The likes of John Haycraft and Paul Lindsay (founders of International House and St Giles respectively) started talking to people, and training in an altogether less theoretical and more dynamic way. It was still early days, but out of these approaches came more eclectic teaching techniques which are akin to today’s accepted TEFL methodologies.

The corpus of information on "how to teach in this way" formed the basis of the now standard 4-week intensive courses. It was International House’s teacher training course which actually became the CTEFLA course, now known as the Cambridge CELTA. The Trinity CertTESOL is a variation on this, supported by another exam board.

These 4-week qualifications have become the certificates for newly qualified teachers in the eyes of many English language schools throughout the world.

The early pioneers, like early drivers of cars, didn’t have any sort of licence. The very people who came back to the UK to found English schools in the 60s, had built up their experience and gamut of techniques by having a go at teaching English, and learning by their mistakes. These same school group, 50 years on, are the ones insisting the CELTA is their minimum accepted qualification: the equivalent to having passed your driving test. Any shorter qualification only gives you the provisional licence in their eyes.

Away from home, the massive global demand to learn English has been met by a huge increase in the numbers of people willing and financially able to take time out, to travel and teach English as a way of earning some money along the way.

Where the numbers of teachers looking for work outstrips demand for English lessons schools have been able to pick and choose their teachers. It is this which has given rise to requirements for better levels of TEFL qualification. Thus, it comes to be that in a lot of the large groups of English teaching schools in Spain, for example, teachers of English are required to hold not just a CELTA or CertTESOL (4-week course) but also a more advanced Diploma-level qualification, gained after a good couple of years’ teaching.

Simultaneously, in countries where the local demand for native English teachers is growing so quickly that it’s the teachers who can pick and choose where they work, schools will be more inclined to grab anyone with fluent English, a degree and the right motivations to teach.

The purveyors of fine 4-week TEFL courses don’t seem willing to publicly acknowledge this dichotomy. And this is why, arguably, they don’t want to accept the fact that there are providers of “lesser qualifications” which are doing very well thank you out of selling their much cheaper courses AND guaranteeing people a teaching job abroad afterwards.

In reality, there are plenty of people who only want to teach for a year or so. For these people, the combination of basic training and a free job placement abroad for 6-12 months is ideal.

So what do we think of the companies that provide these opportunities? Well, these clever, commercially driven organisations have found a fantastic niche in the market, got their elbows in and expanded the niche to make a massive market for themselves.

At Cactus, we’re big believers in giving people what they want, and they have got this right. People who want the very best qualification, and want to feel properly skilled to start teaching English might not choose one of these more basic courses, but with their TEFL course + guaranteed job combos, we’re possibly seeing TEFL return to its roots, spawning a new generation of TEFL pioneers that are having a go, and learning by their mistakes.