The Indonesian TEFL Scene: The Ugly New Kids on the Block (Part 1 of 4)

Since 2013 there have been a number of high-profile newcomers to the TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) scene in Indonesia. Many of these have attracted large bodies of students, showing that there is ever more money to be made from offering English courses to Indonesia’s young population. We will focus on four language…

Language and Beyond Doesn’t Have a Curriculum (Tidak Berkurikulum)

Language and Beyond in Bintaro is not a serious or reputable language school, as the customer comment below indicates. Actually, it is closely related to Rumah Bahasa, which has closed its doors at multiple locations, cheating customers out of millions and millions of rupiah. The customer below makes allegations we have heard time and again:…

A Global Language Centre Teacher Speaks Out

A few days ago we requested inside information about Global Language Centre, a language school chain which has suddenly collapsed, leaving thousands of students out of pocket. One former teacher has kindly responded, offering a fairly bleak view of a mismanaged, rather desperate school. Here is what she had to say about the latest language…

GLC and the ‘Bicycle Business Model’ (Blog Reader Post)

This situation reminds me of NOVA in Japan in October 26, 2007 when NOVA closed its doors to 1,000 schools without warning, throwing 5,000 English teachers on the street and hundreds of millions dollars in pre-paid tuition was gone. I worked for the doomed English school at that time and after years of bad publicity…

Global Language Centre and the Trash Can of Bad Business Ideas

There isn’t much to cheer about for the former customers of Global Language Centre, a language school in Jakarta which has suddenly shut its doors. An incredible 3900 students of this defunct business are now out of pocket, stunned by the news that not only has the school closed forever, but its former managers have…

GLC Claims Several Thousand Victims

In the end it all came crashing down much faster than we had imagined. Just a couple of days after we started coverage of Global Language Centre (GLC) on this blog, the chain closed its doors forever. The trickle of complaints that we had received about the language chain were obviously just the tiniest part…