Compulsory EFL Accreditation

EFL in the UK can be a volatile business, but it is basically adaptable and dynamic. Things happen in the world, and EFL moves quickly to meet the new challenges, whether brought about by technology, demographics, political or economic factors, or such curses as BSE or (God forbid) Avian Flu. Organisations that fail to keep up with technology or changes in demand in the market place are quickly marginalized, while the more fleet of foot find their niche, and so things move forward. Now compulsory accreditation (for the private sector) is on the agenda, and that could be a big mistake.

The deepest flaw of all in this apparently monopolistic plan lies in the spurious link that some have attempted to establish between mandatory EFL accreditation and a reduction in illegal immigration. Every organisation that hosts overseas students, accredited or not, will have had the experience of a no-show, or an early unannounced departure, when the student has – presumably – taken off to do something else, legally or otherwise. And those institutions which conscientiously contact the authorities with news of these developments will know how hard it is to get anybody interested, while government policy appears to be to do nothing. That vacuum creates a favourable environment for crooks, inside and outside the country, who would operate visa “scams”, and thus, the logic goes, the way to deal with this is mandatory accreditation of language schools. Wrong analysis, wrong solution.

Imagine the huge crowds at a major premiership match. Empty the stadium ten times and fill it afresh and you have a picture of the official estimate of the numbers of illegal immigrants in Britain today. A few of them will have come on student visas and just didn’t leave, and a few of them in turn will have actually been brought in by crooks using an EFL front. The number in that category must be small in both absolute and percentage terms – but let us assume for the sake of argument that this number is judged to be “serious”. Does it make sense as a response to set about specifically accrediting English language schools (or schools that, among other skills, teach English), and is the British Council model (the pretentiously dubbed “Accreditation UK” scheme) appropriate? We think not. The British Council scheme, which has evolved from the old DFES model married to the old FELCO model, is essentially an opt-in device for highly sector-specific qualitatively differential marketing - for the public and private sectors. With formal inspections every four years, typically carried out by benign academics with a special interest in language teaching, programme management and student welfare, the model cannot be used for control purposes as neither the purpose of the scheme, nor the inspectors who implement it, nor the organisation that oversees it are designed for or suited to such a purpose.

As an EU national I can, without recourse to the authorities, set up a school to teach computer skills, hairdressing, yoga, ballet, the electric guitar, Welsh, Chinese or Latin to all-comers. I can set up as a chiropractor, or masseur, or undertaker, or dog trainer, or start a new church. Is there now a serious suggestion that some Whitehall commissars should be informed, and their permission sought, and that as an entrepreneur with my own views about how things should be done, I should go through an expensive, prescriptive process with ongoing interference and additional overhead just because I wish to teach the language that is spoken in this country? The idea is, of course, so daft that it even if implemented it would fail at the first legal challenge.

I am in favour of accreditation, and have always been so, as the record shows. But accreditation should be voluntary, and institutions whose clientele consists of consenting adults should be able to choose not only whether to be accredited or not, but also by whom they wish to be accredited. (And where they are not adults, but juniors and the case for accreditation is arguably stronger, will it also apply? Where organisations based in, say, Italy or Spain bring students to colleges or boarding schools or church halls for the summer, will they too have to be British Council or otherwise accredited? How? And how will it be monitored? Will that involve police enforcement? And what if the course is operated by the external revenue generating arm of a state-funded college or university? Or would they be immune from this discrimination?) The British Council accreditation scheme evolved for a different purpose, as did the British Council itself (even though there appears to be doubt in government about what that purpose might be; nobody however appears to believe that it exists to control any aspect of British society or commerce). For the industry now to shackle itself with mandatory accreditation and so create yet another gravy train for the British Council would be folly. Even if the organisation had the confidence of the industry itself, in an enterprise economy to put any part of our educational services under the control, including even the freedom to trade, of an organisation identified faute de mieux by the Home Office but which is accountable to nobody, not to the Home Office, not to the DFES and not even to the Foreign Office from which it operates “at arm’s length” (and which in any case is unlikely to be interested in UK language schools even if somebody thought they should be), and so to make the sector have to depend on a cumbersome unaccountable bureaucratic organisation which has a record of poor service, exhorbitant charges and lack of transparency, not least in its dealings with the British education sector, makes no sense. Do not go gently...

Comments

[Paul Grady]

Dear Mr. Blackie,

I just read the top two blogs. Well written, informative, and entertaining. The lads at the BC must be delighted every time a new one comes out. I typed in David Blackie on Google and your blog comes up first. (I started out by typing in study in california on google and found it to be listed as number three but then it could be that google can determine that I check the thing myself.)

Happy Palm Sunday!

Yours truly,

Mr. Boll (the American and not the Chermin one with the umlaut)

[IAN JOSEPHS]

Not everybody,and indeed not many bodies admire the British Council inspection system with its insistence on "tefl teachers" trained to make lesson plans and to teach in a rigid stylised manner.
I have been running language teaching schools and organisations for 50 years and the tefl "certificate "is obtainable after one month by anyone, even those with an excruciatingly heavy foreign or regional British accent ! It is in my opinion valueless and no more than a racket for the British Council and others to make money !
One person staying with a well educated but unqualified British family can probably make more progress through simple unstructured conversation than a student receiving formal lessons in a class of 15 or more with mixed nationalities in an "accredited language school" Would the unqualified family be arrested under the proposed new scheme?Innovation and radical new teaching ideas would be stifled under the dead hand of government bureaucracy.
When the State intervenes in the private sector, entrprise is inevitably stifled and standards gradually deteriorate.
I am sure the language industry will be no exception !

[IAN JOSEPHS]

At last the tax fiddling British Council have been rumbled,in Russia of all places!
They are supposed to be independent of the government and like any other British business operating abroad should not be supported by the british government when caught breaking the tax laws of their host country in the same way that they have been doing for years in the UK !