We're the longest-running independent review platform for TEFL courses. No school owns us, no school can buy a higher score, every review is read by a person before it goes live. That's been the deal for 17 years.
In 2008, prospective TEFL teachers had no good way to find out what a course was actually like before paying €1,500 to sign up. School websites all said the same things ("expert trainers, friendly environment, 100% pass rate"). The only honest signal was talking to a graduate — and almost nobody had the right connections to do that.
TCR was built to be that signal at scale. Real teachers, writing about real courses, rated against the same eight criteria, moderated by humans, available for everyone to read.
Schools can advertise on TCR — they can buy a Featured Listing or a banner ad on a category page. That's how we keep the lights on. But:
If we ever change any of those, we'll say so up here in writing first.
Every single review is read by a human moderator. We cross-check the IP, look for signs of plagiarism, verify the school in the review actually exists, and run it against our 9-point content checklist. Approved reviews go live within 1-3 working days.
Around 12% of submitted reviews don't make it through. Most rejections are for fixable reasons — using last names, including a phone number, accusations that can't be substantiated. We tell people why and invite them to resubmit.
TCR was founded by Christopher Anderson in 2008 and acquired by Richard Davie of TEFL Iberia in early 2024. Richard's other ventures — TEFL Iberia, Iberia Language Academy — sit inside the TEFL world but operate completely separately from TCR. We mention this here, openly, so you can decide what to do with it.
Schools advertise; they don't influence editorial.
Every approved review is read by a human, every reply is public.
Reviews from 2009 are still here. They will still be here in 2035.
Featured in:
The Guardian Education · TEFL.com Industry Report 2023 · Cambridge Assessment English newsletter · TEFL Org annual review
Public-facing contact form plus alternative channels.
For review moderation issues, school listing problems, advertising enquiries, or anything else. We answer within 2 working days, usually faster.
Faster for non-urgent topics. Goes to the same place as the form.
hello@teflcoursereview.comWant to amend, withdraw, or appeal a moderation decision?
Review guidelines & appeal process →Claim your listing or upgrade to Featured. Set up takes 10 minutes.
Advertise with TCR →The TEFL acronym soup, decoded. Searchable + alphabetical.
CELTA, TESOL, DELTA, Trinity, ESL, EFL, TBE… The TEFL world has more acronyms than the army. Here's what they all mean.
The most globally recognised entry-level TEFL qualification, accredited by Cambridge English. A standardised 120-hour course (typically 4 weeks intensive) with 6+ hours of assessed teaching practice. Available in-class, online, or as a hybrid. See all CELTA schools →
A TEFL course that mixes online theory with in-class teaching practice. Lets you complete the bulk of the coursework from home, then fly out for the practical component. Increasingly popular post-2020.
The universal 6-level scale used to describe language proficiency: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1, C2. As a teacher, you'll work with all six, and most adult students fall in B1-B2.
The next level up after CELTA — designed for teachers with 2+ years of classroom experience. Three modules covering theory, practical skills, and a specialism. Most teachers do it part-time over a year or two.
A teaching technique where you push students to give more accurate or extended responses than they think they can produce. Coined by Jim Scrivener & Adrian Underhill.
The umbrella term for teaching English to non-native speakers, usually in a country where English isn't the dominant language. Often used interchangeably with TESOL and ESL.
A methodology where students learn vocabulary by physically acting it out (point to the door, jump, sit). Used heavily with young learners and total beginners.
Trinity College London's entry-level TEFL qualification — directly equivalent to CELTA in scope and recognition. The two are basically interchangeable on a CV.
Legal pages with a sticky table-of-contents sidebar — same template for both Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.
What we collect, why, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us to do about it.
Our website address is: https://www.teflcoursereview.com.
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor's IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Any data submitted via a contact form including your IP address may be stored in our database.
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select "Remember Me", your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
We also use Wordfence (a security plugin) which currently sets one cookie to help secure this site.
wfwaf-authcookie-(hash) What it does: This cookie is used by the Wordfence firewall to perform a capability check of the current user before WordPress has been loaded.
Who gets this cookie: This is only set for users that are able to log into WordPress.
How this cookie helps: This cookie allows the Wordfence firewall to detect logged in users and allow them increased access. It also allows Wordfence to detect non-logged in users and restrict their access to secure areas. The cookie also lets the firewall know what level of access a visitor has to help the firewall make smart decisions about who to allow and who to block.
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracing your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
We use Google Analytics but do not track personally identifiable information. Read more about Google's compliance with international privacy regulations: https://privacy.google.com/businesses/compliance/
We use Google Tag Manager but do not track personally identifiable information. Read more about Google's compliance with international privacy regulations: https://privacy.google.com/businesses/compliance/
We use Embedded Google Maps but do not track personally identifiable information. Read more about Google's compliance with international privacy regulations: https://privacy.google.com/businesses/compliance/
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
If you leave a comment (example: school review, blog comment, etc…), the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.
You can contact us here: https://www.teflcoursereview.com/contact/
The replacement for the current "Reasons Reviews Are Not Approved" page. Numbered list, examples, and a clear path to fix & resubmit.
If you got an email saying your review didn't make it through, one of these nine reasons is almost certainly why. Most are quick to fix — resubmit and we'll re-moderate.
We allow first names only (with last initial at most). Specific accusations attached to a full name can be defamatory under EU/UK law — which we don't want exposure to, and which doesn't help the reader anyway.
"They scammed me out of €2,000" is a serious claim. If we publish it and the school sues for libel, we both have a problem. We need to either ask you for evidence or ask you to rephrase as opinion.
Reviews are not the place to plug your own service, promote a competitor, or include phone numbers. Anything that looks like marketing gets removed.
If we see 12 reviews of the same school from the same IP range, all submitted within hours, all 10/10, all signed off with "Best wishes" — we're going to ask questions before approving any of them.
We Google-check every review against the school's own testimonials, other review sites, and previous TCR reviews. Word-for-word duplicates get removed automatically.
"Loved it!" and "Avoid!!!" don't help anyone choose a course. We ask for at least ~40 words of substantive content — what you did, what was good or bad, who you'd recommend it to.
Reviews are for graduates of the course. If you didn't actually attend, we'll catch this on verification — usually because details about the course don't match (room locations, trainers' first names, course dates). Reviews from prospective students, competitors, or aggrieved third parties don't help anyone.
Strong opinions about a school are fine. Personal abuse against trainers or other students isn't. Slurs, threats, or doxxing get removed and may get your IP blocked.
Sometimes school owners write reviews of their own school. We can usually tell. If you're a school owner, please claim your listing instead — that's the legitimate way to add your school's voice.
If your review was rejected for a reason that doesn't fit any of the above, we'll re-review on appeal.
Appeal a moderation decision →Branded, helpful 404. Search bar + suggested popular pages so visitors don't bounce.
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