pearsonb

There have always been Americans working in the 'black economy' in TEFL in France and you'll no doubt find some private work. But you won't get anywhere with companies as the formation continue system is extremely complicated and requires loads of the right paperwork. The Wall Street Institute in Paris has been advertising that it can get work permits for US citizens so you could contact them to see what they are suggesting. I've been trying and failing for more than 20 years to get work permits for US citizens that I wanted to employ so I'd be intereested too to find out how they are managing this.   Pearson

Telephone teaching isn't really new - we've been doing it for well over 20 years and others were doing it before us. However, there are some new factors that have come into the equation. 1. The use of on-line teaching materials to supplement the weak areas of telephone teaching. 2. The use of VOIP which reduces long distance rates and makes it reasonable for a teacher to live in rural France and 'teach' in Paris or Lyon.   However, this same VOIP is creating new competition. We are now faced with a 'school' which is in fact a call-centre in Manila staffed by Philipinnos (spelling?) who work at incredibly cheap rates. Yet another example of jobs being 'outsourced' from Europe.   Pearson ([email protected] if you want some more advice)     

Well that depends how it is integrated into the overall course planning. Most of our students would have one module of face to face, one intensive week and one module of telephone per year. Of course, for the telephone teaching we also integrate our own private online elearning modules.   Pearson    

One thing nobody has mentioned is the growing importance of telephone teaching. With this, it doesn't really matter where the teacher is based. Some of my competitors are now using overseas call-centres based in the Philipines or in the US (for cost reasons) but schools such as ourselves are recruiting our telephone teachers from qualified teachers nased in the UK or in France.   Pearson Brown English International Lyon 

Hi there, Nice forum. Wish I'd come across it earlier. It would have saved me many problems over the years. My wife and I own a successful EFL school in Lyon with about 12 employees and a turnover of about 750,000 euros. My health has gone downhill quite rapidly over the summer and we've decided that I'm not really up to continuing to run the Lyon school. My wife would like to continue running our smaller school in L'Isle d'Abeau but let go of the Lyon school. I have a good income from my Internet activities. We've had a good income from the Lyon school for over 20 years and we have a strong emotional attachment to it. We want to ensure that our clients and our staff are well treated by the new owners. This means that we would rather sell to younger, fitter versions of ourselves than to a big group. We know that this will result in a lower price but that really isn't a consideration for us. However, the advantage of selling to a big group is that we can make a quick sale. For my own personal reasons but also for operating reasons, I would like the sale to take place by the end of October. Can anybody give me any advice on the best way of contacting potential buyers in the UK in this short space of time? I imagine that the production delays in a monthly magazine would be too long to consider advertising in this particular excellent publication. Thanks, Pearson Brown