TBI (The British Institute) is an English language training course provider for adults, teenagers and children, which uses a communicative, task-based approach to learning and teaching. TBI was first registered as an Educational Foundation on 18 February, 1984. Since then, more than 50,000 public students have studied at TBI schools. In addition to public students,…
Nowadays, there can’t be many people in the Jakarta TEFL industry who haven’t heard the whispers about TBI Bekasi, the school which has earned itself the dubious honor of being TBI’s most disreputable franchise school. During 2012 and 2013 we spoke with no less than 5 previous expat teachers who had worked for Binsar, the…
Over the past few weeks there have been occasional news reports about a clash between Indomaret (a local chain of mini-mart) and the administration of Banyumas, a regency in Central Java. While the fate of 19 condemned Indomaret stores in Banyumas might not appear to be of great interest in and of itself, the case…
One of the issues we have raised in recent weeks is the rampant age discrimination which is evident in TBI job ads, and even on the TBI website itself. Worryingly, their very own website stated that they were only interested in interviewing managers who were 35 years or younger. When it comes to service staff,…
There’s a new dance craze sweeping the TEFL world of Jakarta: it’s known by some as the TBI Flip Flop; others prefer to call it the TBI Knee-Jerk Reaction; but here on this blog, we call it the TBI Backflip, because every time someone points out how immoral, greedy and unprincipled they are on a…
Never let it be said that TBI has any deeply-held values. Yes, they are incredibly greedy (in a short-term way) but that is surely a vice, not a value. There are no moral beliefs that I can see that have ever trumped short-term expediencies or the lure of an easy dollar. Respect for their customers?…
I was teaching Business English the other day to a Pre-Intermediate class and I came across a reading passage on ‘The Quality Circle’. This is a common term which is thrown around in business books these days and no doubt it is already last decade’s news on the corporate training circuit. But like most of…
Another week, another case of rampant age discrimination at TBI: the so-called British Institute, which is really about as British as a plateful of oily nasi goreng from a Jakarta street stall. We recently reported, based on a series of online job ads, that TBI is no longer accepting managers who aren’t youthful. The maximum…
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