10 years old and going strong !

Please note, this page has been archived and is no longer being updated.

Once upon a time, in the year 2006, there was a small group of 5 highly skilled, very dedicated teachers of English as a Foreign Language (TEFL), who after 20 plus years of service to Swansea University were informed that they were becoming too expensive to employ and whose services could possibly be more economically delivered via an external 3rd party!

Being TEFL teachers their ability to respond dynamically to challenge and their resilience in operating under difficult and demotivating circumstances spurred them into action and as a result English Language Training Services (ELTS) was born.

ELTS logo ‌Today ELTS is 10 years old and has put on a tea party to celebrate its growth, its contribution to the University’s many strategic agendas and its reputation for high quality delivery of teaching, learning, assessment and providing students with the necessary skills to properly succeed in this environment.

ELTS original team

ELTS is now recognised externally as a sector leader with British Council recognition and a high number of points of excellence in the most recent Accreditation Inspection and more recently an excellent British Association of Lecturer’s in English for Academic Purposes (BALEAP) inspection last year.

ELTS’ contribution is not only organisation wide but has also impacted on our local, regional and international communities, without the service we would possibly not have

  • Students going on to academic programmes that we can prove perform better and are more successful than those that come in via IELTS only
  • SWELT and STEAP as vital assessment & recruitment tools
  • The sector leading ASP Programme
  • The Centre for Academic Success
  • Embedded CELTA and MATEFL offering professional qualifications during academic study and fantastic employability opportunities for our students
  • Specific teaching methodology contribution to the PGCHE
  • Support programmes for our non-native speaker academic staff
  • Oversight of English language ability in Harbin University where we deliver academic Engineering programmes
  • Support of Asylum Seeker and Refugees through language teaching consultancy and training initiatives with OXFAM, EYST, SBASSG etc
  • Oversight of English Language Training to 4,000 Chinese teachers of English in the Hunan Province of China, impacting positively on over 300,000 Chinese children.

ELTS current team

Kevin Child, Head of Student Support Services said: “ELTS’ success is testimony to team loyalty, resilience, commitment and dedication. The team, which has grown from 5 to over 60 over 10 years, welcomes students from all over the world – over 500 students attended ELTS in the last year alone. 

“ Working across the 7 schools and colleges ELTS has delivered 8 different programmes from Academic English, teacher training to summer camps and in addition has, for 9 months, been delivering free English classes to refugees in the community.

“ The success story will go on and the end chapter hasn’t been written yet. I have no doubt that ELTS will continue to thrive because of the commitment of the team. I am completely confident that ELTS has all the skills, all the commitment and dedication and all the resilience it could ever need to meet any future challenges and continue to strive to improve the experience and outcomes for every one of the students that come through it and on to their chosen academic programmes at Swansea University.

“ I am sure that ELTS will be celebrating in another 10 years time and will have to hold a bigger birthday party for all those involved in marking its international student success.”   

Picture1: Original ELTS team

Picture2: Current ELTS team