Head of Schools at Eurocentres, Michael Fullarton talks pathway programmes, French language learning and how quality reigns in the 69 year old Swiss group.
The PIE: As Head of Schools, what do you do?
MF: It’s really like a Chief Operating Officer role. Eurocentres is a Swiss company, as you know, and when I took on this role in 2000, I was the only senior manager actually located in the UK; all the rest of the management was in Zurich. That’s changed over the last few years as we’ve brought more functionality over here and the senior management is split between Zurich and London. We’ll always have a Swiss dimension and we’re very Swiss in the way that we operate and the way we approach quality.
“I was quite shocked after my first week to have a review session where the students told me what they thought of my teaching”
The PIE: So is there a reason as to why you’re shifting operations to London?
MF: One is cost, Switzerland is very expensive. But also it’s more than that; it’s really to do with the fact of trying to get people nearer to where the operation is. What tends to happen now is that the CEO, Michael Gerber, comes to the UK frequently.
The PIE: How did you start in the organisation?
MF: I came to Eurocentres in 1993 because I was one of a few people who knew how to teach CAE [Cambridge English: Advanced]. When I first came here, I was aware that there was something so different about this organisation compared to other schools I’d been in where there was no structured approach to quality. It was just ‘we know we’re good teachers so the students are getting good quality’, whereas at Eurocentres there was an accountability model. I was quite shocked after my first week to have a review session where the students sat in front of me and told me what they thought of my teaching.
The PIE: You operate in 39 destinations including your partner network, correct?
MF: Yes. At the very core of that are the five UK schools and three French schools which are owned and run by the Foundation completely.
The PIE: How does prioritising quality translate into what Eurocentres actually does?
MF: Every aspect of what we do is always being benchmarked against the standards we have in place. We have continuous evaluation. We have a tremendous teaching team who really like the framework. It’s the same in every Eurocentres around the world. You could walk into any one of our classrooms and identify them as belonging to Eurocentres.
“It’s the same in every Eurocentres around the world. You could walk into any one of our classrooms and identify them as belonging to Eurocentres”
Academically students give us great marks on our feedback – 93% of responses and above are “good” to “excellent”. Accommodation presents a challenge to everybody in our industry, but our good schools have about 90% satisfaction…
We don’t own our own accommodation but we have long-term arrangements with purpose-built residence providers.
The PIE: Finances are something that a lot of schools struggle with and many are turning to private equity to scale up. What are your thoughts on that?
MF: Money means you can move stuff along in the first year but after that year you’ve got to look at your books and see if you can maintain it. It’s certainly a quick way to make a big noise but the question is can you sustain it? Because at some point investors are going to want return on their money. Being a charity we need to follow a measured approach and ensure that high quality is sustained all times in order to meet our charitable mission.
Bringing in our partner network was one way we were able to expand quite quickly. At the same time, through our systematic approach, we were able to control our quality. I don’t think any other group schools can claim that. We can now roll out our quality model out anywhere. This group approach to quality is reflected in our recent spectacular British Council accreditation inspection results which mean that our Eurocentres UK schools are now the leading group in the UK with four out of the five schools scoring 13 areas of strength! No other chain of schools has managed that.
“Money means you can move stuff along in the first year but after that you’ve got to look at your books and see if you can maintain it”
The PIE: Does this quality evaluation process extend to non-academic staff as well?
MF: We tend to have more focus on the academic side but we do have a comprehensive set of standards for the administration side of the business as well. It’s mainly about host families, enrolments, and customer service. Quality goes right throughout the organisation.
The PIE: How do you maintain quality in your partner school network?
MF: We have a set up team that gets the partner schools up and running to deliver the Eurocentres service model. After set-up we go back for future visits.
The PIE: Many people might not know that Eurocentres was instrumental in establishing the Common European Framework of Reference for languages and continues to actively play a part in its development. How did that collaboration start?
MF: We were founded in 1948 and become an independent foundation in 1960. In 1968 we were chosen as the only non-governmental consultants for the Council of Europe for language learning. It was all done through Switzerland at the time. And that’s when Dr Brian North became involved. He and Dr John Trim were the people who really were at the heart setting up the CEFR. A lot of it was based on our quality standards that we were already using- about half of the descriptors in the CEFR are Eurocentres proficiency descriptors. We also became a founding member of EAQUALS.
“We’re a multilingual organisation and we want to maintain our links to continental Europe”
We’re a multilingual organisation and we want to maintain our links to continental Europe. The industry is so powerful in the UK but we teach a lot of other languages as well and we want to include that in our identity. So our involvement in CEFR and EAQUALS is one way of doing that.
The PIE: What’s next for Eurocentres?
MF: We’re further developing my.Eurocentres, our online learning platform. Students use it to prepare for their course before it starts, as well as while they’re on their course with homework for example We’re looking at more distance learning online as well. We launched it initially in the UK and with our partner schools and our French centres are now on board too.
The other area is UNICENTRES, our pathway programmes, which we’re slowly building up. It is early days, but in September this year we hope to see our first big cohort coming in. We’ve hooked up with six good universities in the UK and we’re happy with the arrangements we’ve got.
The PIE: How are you finding the transition from being a traditional EFL provider to a pathway provider?
MF: The way it’s sold is so different. In terms of the content of the course, that’s not a problem because we’re so strong on managing the academic side. But usual EFL selling channels don’t work for pathways. The market sees EFL as different from higher education so we’ve had to build up a completely different team of people.
” I think the core business of the EFL business is pretty stagnant in the UK even though there’s growth in the States and Australia”
The PIE: Why did Eurocentres decide to move into the pathway market?
MF: I think the core business of the EFL business is pretty stagnant in the UK even though there’s growth in the States and Australia. We streamlined down and consolidated during the early 2000-2010 and then we started looking at things that we could add on in a new way. So the main driver was accessing new sources of income. We’re in a really interesting place right now and we are developing the organisation to dynamically meet new challenges.
The PIE: What gets you out of bed in the morning?
MF: At the moment, I’m excited about focusing on our French schools and the challenge of duplicating some of the things we’ve done in the UK over there.
The PIE: Can you transfer what you’ve done at your English schools to your French schools?
MF: I think so. French teachers are career teachers because entry into becoming a teacher of French as a Foreign Language requires an undergraduate teaching degree… This means that they tend to focus completely on the academic side. They have amazing dedication so we’re bringing them into the business perspective.
