Centre Authorisation and Moderation by Cambridge ESOL

To run CELTA courses, a centre must go through a very rigorous induction and approval process. The same is true of all tutors/teacher trainers teaching on CELTA courses. 

CELT Athens  (which hosts this CELTA WIki) is also an Approved Cambridge ESOL Teaching Awards Centre.

Each and every course is also moderated by a Cambridge approved external assessor.

The assessor's role is not to just to assess the candidates but to evaluate the course as a whole and to make sure that the centre has provided a quality programme to its trainees.

You may have heard of the term 'quality assurance". Well, this is exactly what Cambridge is determined to do to ensure that wherever you decide to take your CELTA course, your centre will have made every effort to abide by the syllabus and administrative guidelines so that your course is of high quality and every effort has been made to guide you through to a successful outcome.

Where to find Authorised Cambridge Teaching Award Centres

A good place to start looking for a CELTA course located near you or in any country of your choice, is the Cambridge ESOL Teaching Awards Centres search page where you can search by country and find the website link of all the centres offering courses.

Each centre will have its own policy regarding applications and payment of tuition so your decision will probably be made on the basis of where you want to be during your course, whether the centre offers you job support and what resources are available at each centre.

A good place to find out feedback about various CELTA centres around the world are Teachers' Chat Rooms and Discussion forums for teachers. However, you should be warned that many centres are registered members in these forums and, therefore, it is very difficult to be quite certain that the praises to heaven of a particular post are genuine ones!

Facebook is a very good place to find information by searching for CELTA groups and contacting ex-trainees by sending them a personal message.

Although every centre has to start somewhere, it is a good idea to choose a well established teacher education centre, dedicated to running courses throughout the year and not just one or two summer courses with guest tutors, particularly tutors who have not got a lot of training and teaching experience.

Newly trained up course tutors or tutors with little teaching and training experience will

• have less experience at supporting adults
• have a more limitied range of suggestions/ideas/solutions to help you with your planning.
• have limited experience of using a wide range of materials
• tend to be less open to different ways and approaches of teaching
• probably have little experience of offering constructive feedback and may focus only on weaknesses

What you can (and should) expect from your chosen centre

Most centres should be able to offer you

• Free photocopying for your teaching practice lesson plans and lesson materials
• Printing facilities which you would usually have to pay something for
• Free use of PC's and a fast internet connection
• Free Wi-Fi in case you are carrying your own laptop
• A room or space where you take your breaks, have a snack or a drink
• An Overhead Projector
• Television or wide screen TV
• A data projector for powerpoint presentations or to show a DVD or video clip from the web or hard drive
• A well stocked library with all the necessary language and methodology titles you will need for your background reading during the course
• A range of Teacher Magazines and Journals on Teaching that the centre subscribes to
• A range of recently published coursebooks used in the classroom, grammar books, and other supplementary materials for vocabulary, pronunciation, reading, listening, writing, speaking, exam preparation classes
• Audio visual materials needed to use the above published materials

Most centres will also offer some job support; in fact many centres have specilal sessions during the last week of their courses where you will be adivsed where to look for jobs, how to conduct yourself during a job interview, how to write your CV (resume) and will probably put you in touch with schools in their own network.

Related Article

Things to find out about a TEFL Certificate course, by Alex Case, of TEFL.net