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British Council is an institution providing students with online and face-to-face English education. Since we mostly review online English learning sites, I will evaluate the online education of the platform. Before we start the evaluation, I want to tell you a bit about the platform.
British Council offers 3 different packages to its students; English Online Self-Study course, English Online: 100% online teacher-led course, and EnglishScore Tutors. These are all online courses and they vary according to the group lessons, private lessons, or no lessons you get. On the self-study course, you can use the materials provided by the platform and join online events where you can listen to the teacher. However, you cannot work on your speaking skills.
Therefore, I think it is illogical to spend money on this course since you can find materials online for free. On the second option, a teacher-led course, you can join group classes with 9 or 10 students and a teacher. However, none of the teachers are certified teachers. Also, these courses are divided into three silver, gold, and platinum according to the number of courses you take per month. Lastly, with EnglishScore Tutors, you can get private lessons with teachers who are available 24/7. Also, when you want to purchase a package, you purchase credits and 55-minute group lessons cost 1 credit while 25-minute private lessons cost 2 credits.
After learning all this information about the platform, I wanted to take a look at user reviews on Trustpilot, Quora, and Reddit. Here, I realized people complimented the platform saying the tutors and the platform is helpful. On the other hand, people criticized the platform saying it is too expensive, tutors are not native English speakers, they don’t refund your money, and the courses are not suitable for beginners.
Based on my experience, I think the best feature British Council has to offer is that you can study English wherever you want whenever you want. I prefer studying online rather than studying in a classroom. Therefore, I really like this feature. It gave me a sense of freedom and I could study when I was on vacation or at home in my PJs! However, I realize that this is not specific to British Council since all online English platforms provide this sense of freedom to their students. Still, I really enjoyed studying online with British Council.
Despite the freedom you get with studying English online, when a class is too crowded, even online, it can be overwhelming. Therefore, the worst feature of the British Council is the group lessons being too crowded. I think group classes are less effective compared to private lessons and when these classes are crowded, you can get overwhelmed and feel insecure easily. On British Council, group lessons include 10 students and a teacher. Since the teachers are not certified professionals, it can be difficult for them to manage that many students and keep track of every one of them. Furthermore, sometimes you can feel like your work is going unnoticed and you are not improving enough.
In my case, I wasn’t improving enough and could not participate in the classes enough. However, I could not take a lot of private lessons since they cost twice as much as the group lessons and last only 25 minutes. Shortly, the classes being too crowded caused me to not continue with British Council.
On Trustpilot, a global platform where you can rate brands, only 19 people made comments on British Council. Here, 32% of the reviews are positive, %5 are neutral, and 63% are negative. That is why the platform has a rating of 2.7 out of 5. I believe this shows the poor quality of the platform but let’s take a look at the reviews to get a better understanding.
“Hi good afternoon. This Azmat khan. I really think full to the british council the help me to improve my English. I'm very happy from Ms Oumri Imane. She is very professional and very helpful thanks so much for your support and help have a great day. Azmat khan. Best regards”-Azmat Khan, Trustpilot
“They only care about robbing you. Charge you GBP430 per hour for an exam and if you can't make it for an emergency they will only refund you 50% for giving you nothing. Utter robbing scallywags - use someone else, they don't care about you. Systematic robbery.” -Benedict Ke.t, Trustpilot
“Be careful to conditions term. They play with 14 days cancellation period and trial period: they will not give you back your money if you attend a class during the trial period or during the 14 days. Furthermore the cancellation period ends 14 days AFTER you START the Trial. So you don't have a real cancellation period. Then classes don't work. You speak with people who don't know English and teachers don't correct you and others. They stand there reading slides. I was tricked. I lost money that i really need for my career and now I have to wait a lot before finding a new chance.” -Jane Grèco, Trustpilot
On Quora, people ask questions and try to learn others’ opinions and experiences about anything. Therefore, I will share two questions and some of their answers with you. However, you should keep in mind that some of the answers are about the face-to-face programs of the British Council.
A user asked “How good do you think is the British Council?” and this question got 4 answers. Among these answers, the negative ones are about the prices of the platform being too high while the positive reviews are about the tutors being qualified.
“I think it's too expensive ! I wanted to join it too. But they demand roughly 2 lac for a month. That will be like 20 classes for 2 lac. I dropped the idea of joining it ! Plus I don't know whether it will be that good. Because , I have heard they rarely pass students.” -Kriti S Sharma, Quora
“British Council work professionally, and the teachers there are well qualified.” -Mai Nguyen, Quora
Another user asked “Are the British Council Courses worth it?” and the question got 24 answers. Among these 24 answers, besides useful comments, there are unrelated or unuseful reviews as well. Therefore, I will share 4 of them since I think these are enough to get a better understanding of the platform:
“one of my friend has attended this course and has paid 12k for the same course as he was preparing IELTS exam and he found it worth for the direction he was heading towards but its not worth for the people who just want improve their english. they work on people who knows english up to mark and help them to score good marks for the examinations like TOIFL ,IELTS” -Mánísh Gangwani, Quora
“This course states that it aims on improving your listening skills ,diction and confidence during public speaking.However I don't guarantee this to be the secret recipe to success.Improving upon these skills is a slow and gradual process. Practicing regularly reading regularly and adopting English as a medium of communication will prove to be more fruitful…” Dhananjay Dileep, Quora
“In my opinion.. NO! Although it may vary from person to person. For a person who wishes to learn something. NO! For a person who knows the value of money. NO! For a person who values his/her time. NO! For a person who wants to experience hell. YES! For a person who wants to waste time and money. YES!For a person who wants to get abused by teachers. FOR SURE YES!” -Akshit Gupta, Quora
Even though there are several entries about British Council on Reddit, I think only one of them is helpful. Therefore, I will share this entry with you. Here, a user named NimWreck expressed their feelings about the platform. Since the user titled this entry as “British Council AKA Gold Diggers (rant)”, you can understand they didn’t have a positive experience with the platform.
“First they make it hard for anyone giving composites to just retake A2 and not repeat AS along with it. Then if you get your paper rechecked they won’t push up ur grade(very rare if someone actually goes up a grade) and this isn’t me i’m talking about but my smart af classmate who got a C and even his teachers checked his papers and it was an A easily but british council being british council wouldn’t want to hurt their “brand image” by giving out a wrong grade and later fixing it after being paid so instead they keep the money and do nothing. Lastly they are copystriking online tutors on youtube because they are helping students in achieving a good grade which british council has made it obvious by now that they don’t want that with some students having upto 3 exams a day this year, they don’t even think for a moment about financially struggling students who are appearing privately because they can’t afford school fee and are only learning through youtube, they just want us fail or get a sh*t grade that won’t help us at all in university admissions and make us pay them again next session so we keep making them money while they keep making our lives miserable and harder” -NimWreck, Reddit
From this entry only, you can understand that the platform is not very reliable and doesn’t support or care about their students as much as they should.
Honestly, from the reviews we evaluated and my experience with the platform, I don’t think the courses are worth it. I think they are overpriced and not worth the money and the time you spent. The reason for this is the platform not working with professional teachers, most teachers are non-native, group classes are too crowded, and the prices are too high. Therefore, I suggest anyone who is considering subscribing to British Council is to go in a different direction.
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