Page 26 - ELG2210 Oct Issue 482

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UK RANKINGS 2022-23

It can pay to go mainstream

These educational institutions often attract the best teachers, says Melanie Butler
t’s fashionable in British EFL to view language schools as part of the
hospitality industry and to prize student satisfaction over learning
outcomes. However, the inspectors don’t appear to agree. The data
Ishows that, when it comes to reliable quality, the sectors involved in PHOTO SHUTTERSTOCK
mainstream education outperform the EFL specialists.
Why?
The category Teaching and Learning covers only five areas out of a
possible 15. As long as schools meet the basic standards for these areas,
they should be able to pile up enough areas of strength in the other
categories, like Management or Premises and Resources, to become a
Centre of Excellence.
As long as a school scores satisfactory in the area of Teaching and
Learning, it’s perfectly possible to perform well. Our best-performing large
chain, EF, scores no strengths for Classroom Observation or Academic Staff for Academic Staff Profile. Worth keeping in mind is that mainstream
Profile in any of its eight schools. But all eight meet the satisfactory standard education attracts more qualified and experienced teachers because it pays
in both and they all score strengths in Academic Management and Course more.
Design, which both promote the learning the inspectors want to see. High-performing centres do satisfactorily in all areas. No school in the
Mainstream educational institutions do well across Teaching and Kaplan chain has been given a single Need for Improvement. They are
Learning. In state sector further education (FE), for example, half of all also rarely given to mainstream education. No FE colleges has more Needs
colleges are awarded an area of strength in Teaching and 20% score one for Improvement than areas of strength, but 23 EFL-only operations do.
On average, mainstream providers perform better than EFL
1. East Sussex (13) specialists. The mean average score of FE colleges, the least prestigious
FE 2. Perth, Guildford (11) of the mainstream sectors, is 6.5 in areas of strength. For EFL
Centres of 3. Belfast, Chichester, Hilderstone, New specialists it’s 5. FE’s most common score is 7, for EFL this drops to 2.
College Durham, Nottingham (10)
Some EFL specialists are brilliant. The very top of our rankings is
Excellence 4. Cardiff and Vale, Itchen Sheffield (9) dominated by well-established language schools and summer school
Key The numbers given in brackets refer to net areas of strength organisations, but private language schools also dominate the circa
awarded at inspection. All further education colleges admit over- 10% of centres that score zero or lower on inspection.
16s and are inspected on all 15 areas. If you’re choosing an accredited course at random and don’t know
anything about it, go for a boarding school, a university or an FE college.
Uni numbers drop but scores stay high

Melanie Butler explains the numbers

wenty-nine British universities are currently accredited by
the British Council, down nine since the beginning of Covid, PHOTO WIKIMEDIA
a drop of 23%. Since September 2019 they are down 11.
TAltogether, 27.5% of its higher education centres have been
lost to the scheme in the last four years.
None of these universities have closed down and, as far as we can
see, their language centres are still open. All 11 have opted to leave.
Some have their courses accredited by the British Association of
Lecturers in English for Academic Purposes (Baleap), a more specialist
scheme which now has 25 accredited members, four of which are also
opted in to the British Council.
This loss of so many universities is a shame. They vie with the
boarding schools (see opposite page) as the top performing sector in De Montfort University, Leicester
the UK industry. Unsurprisingly, universities top the table when it
comes to Teaching, with 67% of university language centres awarded 1. Manchester, Edge Hill, Sheffield (12)
an Area of Strength in this category, twice as high as the percentage in University 2. .Leicester, Salford, KCL (11)
the industry as a whole. 3. Chichester, Dundee, De Montfort,
Although no universities have yet achieved a perfect score on Centres of Aberystwyth, Birmingham, Brunel (10)
inspection, only three of them score below the industry mean average Excellence 4. Manchester Metropolitan, Nottingham
of five net areas of strength. Their standard deviation, at 3.3, is lower Trent, Sheffield Hallam. Teeside,
than that of the industry as a whole, showing they have less variation Nottingham (9)
in quality. The most common score for a university, the mode, is 10 and Key The numbers given in brackets refer to net Areas of
their median score is 9, which is also the cut-off score for our Centres Strength awarded at inspection. Names given in italics show
of Excellence. As a result, more than half of all accredited university universities which admit under 18s and are inspected on the
language centres appear in our rankings (see box for full list). full 15 areas. Universities which do not admit under 18s are
Their mean average, however, has dropped a little to 8, bringing them in inspected on 14 areas and appear a little higher on our ranking
just below the boarding schools. However, EFL in mainstream education, than those with the same score who do admit them.
in this case higher education, remains the most reliably excellent option.
26 October 2022