CONTINUING TO GUARANTEE YOU A JOB WITH US

STREAMLINING CE INTO A NEW, LEAN MEAN FIGHTING MACHINE!

In August 2020, I took steps towards the decision that I have now made, without really realizing it. I run Canterbury English from our offices in Doctor Esquerdo and my brother runs Canterbury from his offices in Covarrubias. The Spanish program is run from my offices and the TEFL program from his. I founded the company between 1991 and 1994 and my brother came on board a few years later. We used to work in the same offices through the 1990’s until 2010. But because of major growth in our classes and our programs, we decided it would be better for the two queen-brother bees working in the same hive, to have different hives, and so we rented separate offices. 

However now, a decade later in stormy times, I decided that we needed to consolidate, as the upkeep of my CE HQ office in a capital European city in an upscale neighborhood required an exorbitant monthly payment. I have spent the summer months streamlining CE into a new, lean mean fighting machine!

Old habits die hard though, and even if the writing was on the wall, and my intuition was telling me that in a changing world CE needs to change fast to guarantee the same amount of hours of classes to our program students, as we have always done. The question was how, and I thought that I had come up with the answer by dropping the prices 2€, but needless to say, these are not the times for lukewarm marketing strategies.

So yesterday, October 15^th 2020, while I was discussing new classes with Mateo my new intern, and he said that it was my company, but if he was me, he’d turn the English teaching part of the company into a non-profit NGO for the good of the teachers and for the good of the clients.

CANTERBURY ENGLISH BECOMES MORE OF A COOPERATIVE

I was in a good mood, the sun was shining in the perennial blue skies of Spain and that was when the penny dropped. I had reduced costs so much over the summer that CE could turn the English teaching part of the company into an NGO.

After 30 years of earning an income from the English classes, I have decided that for the benefit of the teachers and clients, Canterbury English will forfeit a profit from the English classes and we will dedicate our efforts to getting the best schedules for our teachers and a great deal for our clients. We’ll charge 16€ (now 18€) an hour (exactly what we pay a CE teacher). 

This is a base price and goes up depending on the various factors, such as the number of students in the class and if there is a transport supplement (not included in the below table, but between 2-4€ extra per class), because a class is further away on the metro than normal, as well as an extra walking from the metro supplement (included below). 

In the past, except for the travel and walking supplement that goes entirely to the teacher, CE has made more profit with a higher margin on a class with more students (teacher’s price stays the same). 

But now we’ve decided to hand over the extra earnings to you, the teacher (CE Teachers will now be the highest paid teachers in Madrid with this new wage scale), as Canterbury English becomes more of a cooperative.