How to Choose the Right CELTA Centre

Video transcript - The Truth About Choosing a CELTA Centre

Can you recommend a good CELTA centre?

I get asked this all the time and I’m afraid I’m going to give you a slightly unsatisfying answer. No. I can’t.

But before you roll your eyes and click away, there is a good reason for that and I can tell you how to choose a course that’s right for you.

I’m Jo Gakonga. I’ve been a CELTA trainer and assessor for over 25 years and I help teachers get started and feel more confident in the classroom. If this kind of thing is useful to you, like and subscribe because I make videos like this every week.

So, let’s talk about how to choose a CELTA course without relying on random recommendations from people on the internet.

The first thing to say is this:

All CELTA centres are accredited by Cambridge.
Every course is externally assessed to check it’s been run in the approved way.
All tutors go through a rigorous training programme and have to go through regular standardisation.

So in terms of quality control, there is a system. It isn’t just a free-for-all where anyone sticks a CELTA sign on the door and hopes for the best.

Now, are some tutors better than others? Of course they are. Just as some teachers are better than others.

The problem with asking someone like me to recommend a centre is that you can’t guarantee which tutors you’ll get.

Tutors move around. Timetables change. People go on holiday.

So even if I said, 'Oh yes, go to this centre, it’s fantastic', you might not even get the tutors I had in mind.

There’s another issue as well. Learning to teach is very personal.

Some trainees really like very direct feedback. They want somebody to tell them very clearly what’s wrong and what to do differently. Other people find that style completely overwhelming and do much better with a gentler approach.

So much of what makes any kind of teaching great is the relationship you have with the teacher and no one can guarantee that.

What I can tell you is that CELTA is a very standardised product and I say that with some confidence because I’ve assessed in many, many centres over the years and seen hundreds of courses. The system is designed to keep things fairly consistent and it does.

So instead of asking: Which centre is best?

I think the better question is: Which course fits my life, my goals and my circumstances?

That’s the real question.

So here are the things I’d be thinking about.

First of all:

1. Online or face-to-face?
Do you want the in-person experience, or do you need the flexibility of doing it online?

And think ahead a bit here.

If you want to teach online afterwards, then doing an online CELTA makes very good sense.

If you’re hoping to teach in physical classrooms, then a face-to-face course may be more useful.

Neither is automatically better. It depends what you want and what suits your life.

And on a very practical level, if it’s face-to-face, choose somewhere you can actually get to every day. if it’s online, make sure it’s in a time zone that works for you. You do not want to be doing teaching practice at two in the morning.

2. Full-time or part-time?
This matters a lot more than people sometimes realise.

CELTA is intense. Properly intense.

So you need to think honestly about your schedule, your energy, your family responsibilities, your work commitments and whether you actually have space in your life to do it.

Some people are absolutely fine with an intensive full-time course.

Others would do much better spreading it out over a longer period.

It’s not about what sounds more impressive. It’s about what gives you the best chance of coping well and doing decent work.

3. The key question is: What will make this manageable for me?
Not: What do people online say is the best centre? 

Because that will have a much bigger effect on your experience than chasing some mythical perfect centre.

So just to reiterate, because this is what I always say when people ask me this question:

You can be reassured that CELTA tutors are trained, monitored and working within the same system. You are not taking a wild gamble whatever centre you choose as long as it’s accredited. You can find all the CELTA Centres on the Cambridge website- the link is here.

What will make a bigger difference is whether the format, timing and demands of the course actually fit your life.

And I’d also say this. One of the best things you can do, whichever centre you choose, is get yourself well prepared beforehand.

That won’t remove all the challenge but it can make the course feel much less stressful and help you get far more out of it.

So if you’d like help with that, do have a look at my CELTA preparation materials, too. The link is here.

Good luck with whatever you decide and I’ll see you in the next video.