Having trust that your TEFL provider will offer a good quality teaching experience is vital, but it can be hard to come by.
Trust is an important thing. Any time you buy something, especially online, you trust that the product or service will be delivered to the standards promised. Unfortunately, while ecommerce has boosted choice it has also made trust a difficult commodity to come by. A rise in online fraud and unscrupulous operators means buyers have become wary. Telling the difference between a reputable company and a potential scam can feel almost impossible. Unfortunately, the rise of fraud erodes trust across the landscape, which means everyone – even the most reputable of companies will suffer.
The World TEFL Accrediting Commission (WATEFLAC) was set up to bring some of that trust back and in doing so it sought to raise overall standards across the spectrum.
Verifying standards
The primary goal of the WTEFLAC was to provide oversight within the TEFL and TESOL sectors by serving as an accreditation body. It assessed providers and verified the quality of the courses they offered. They made sure each provider met minimum standards as set out in its code of practice and that their marketing material provided an honest reflection of the true course content.
Only when a provider had met all the WTEFLAC standards was it allowed to display the WTWFLAC logo on its website and marketing materials. First and foremost, therefore, the WTEFLAC badge became a sign of trust – a verification that any provider allowed to display it had been assessed and verified.
Providing information
The WTEFLAC also provided information and guides for all potential students. These provided insights into the current state of the TEFL sector, advice on developing a successful teaching career and tips on teaching skills.
These guides could provide support for people throughout their training journeys and beyond while also supporting them to become better teachers.
Supporting providers
For providers, the WTEFLAC was a chance to differentiate themselves from fraudulent and disreputable companies. The WTEFLAC accreditation gave them something others could not match – a clear verifiable accreditation that told customers this provider could be trusted and was safe to use.
In doing so these companies could stand out from the crowd and claw back some of the trust that lower-quality competitors had compromised.
Self-assessment
In addition to that the accreditation process itself helped companies improve their own services. The process forced companies to look closely at its own processes and compare how they stood up against a clear code of practice.
This was a chance to perform a self audit and find ways in which they could improve. This enabled them to go beyond merely meeting the standards of the WTEFLAC code of practice but to go even further and excel.
The result of this work was to improve the quality and reliability of courses in general. By doing so it protected students and providers while restoring trust in the sector as a whole.