Loving and hating the Cambridge CELTA

The story of my three and a half years of blogging is one of a movement from attacking the Cambridge CELTA (a qualification with ridiculously low standards that is bringing the whole industry down) to spending more and more time defending it (at least a basic minimum that can help us fight the weekend and online courses). So nowadays my usual reply to TEFL course questions is just “Do the CELTA”.

I’m not a huge fan of Cambridge and certainly don’t want to make them even more smug and comfortable by putting them back in a monopoly position, but at least that is a clear enough message for people who know nothing about the industry and come to TEFL forums looking for advice. Cambridge is also still the most popular and by far the most well recognised course. They also do standardise things and uphold certain basic standards, and more and more so as the years go by. For example, I know of plenty of TEFL courses that have started out offering much less well-known certificates and then converted them into Trinity courses. Try doing that with Cambridge!

As that example maybe suggests, though, many of the restrictions and standardisations that Cambridge have come up with are just pointlessly bureaucratic or inflexible. For example, none of my teacher training experience would count if I wanted to jump start a CELTA trainer career, and I’d probably have to start by shadowing someone with far less experience just because they happen to have gone through the Cambridge system. This therefore makes it easier to become a Cambridge DELTA tutor (which I’ve done) than become a Cambridge CELTA tutor (which I gave up on because I’m too old to jump through hoops). I’ve also spent many a happy hour sitting next to Cambridge trainers who are doing their paperwork, thanking my lucky stars that I never got that ICELT teacher trainer job.

I also partly blame Cambridge for the situation we are in now with a proliferation of dodgy TEFL courses. If they had been a bit more dynamic and flexible, they could have helped set up an outside accreditation body that would check up on Cambridge, Trinity, and whoever else was up to standard. They then could have spread the word about those real minimum standards in TEFL. I guess the fear is/ was that this process would legitimize competitors more than boost their own position. So instead they just tried to protect their own position and basically treated CELTA courses like a cash machine.

Cambridge skims off a huge amount of money from CELTA courses. This sometimes means that they are the only people who make money from a course, and with zero financial risk and a lot less work that the actual training centres. If they put some of that money into really setting minimum standards for the whole industry, explaining to potential students what my CELTA qualification means, and spreading into countries that might be trickier to make money in but really need the improvement in teaching standards (e.g. Japan), I might be able to wholeheartedly support them. But as they already have me saying “Do the CELTA” (with a half-hearted “or the Trinity” thrown in sometimes to appear fair), I guess they have no need to change. Maybe those dodgy TEFL courses will eventually force Cambridge to adapt, making me love/ hate them too…

For other looks at the CELTA, see:

CELTA failure rate

The CELTA Ten Commandments

Cambridge to introduce 24 hour teaching ordeal

Don’t do the CELTA