Come on you poms!

Australia, population 24.6 million.

Number of Italian language courses to choose from?

See the newly-refurbished:

Italian Course Finder: Australia

The ‘United’ Kingdom – population 66 million, so rather more…

Availability of Italian courses? Italy, after all, is just a couple of hours away on a 737…

Italian Course Finder: United Kingdom

Come on you poms!

While I’m on the topic, take a look at YOUR country in the Italian Course Finder and, if you see a gap where your beloved adult education course or friendly-neighbourhood-Italian-teacher should be, then email me the details.

N.b. I’m up to date with the info people have sent me about Australia and the UK, I’ve added a New Zealand page, as promised, but I haven’t yet started working through the mass of information that Bjarne sent in about Italian courses in Norway (yes, Norway!). I’ll get to it later today, mate, promise!

I also have a few changes to make for the USA, so any Yanks reading this, do take a look at ‘your’ page and send suggestions.

P.S.

I had this email overnight:

I don’t know if you know of this link (LINK DELETED, INTENTIONALLY)- it seems to be a ‘hub’ for organising courses and I found the advisor helpful in finding a school in (CITY DELETED, INTENTIONALLY), where I want to study next year. I don’t know if this is the best way to go – or to contact the school directly, but it seems to provide lots of advice and may be useful for your page of schools in Italy.

To which I replied:

It’s an agency, (NAME DELETED, INTENTIONALLY). They do publicity, find students (like yourself), then take 30% (or more) off the gross fee the students pay.

The poor schools (ours included) can’t live without this type of intermediary, but they bleed us dry. As such, you’ll understand why I’d prefer not to give them free publicity.

So next time you book a language course, go direct to the school – ask them for a discount if you wish – but that way, what you pay will go directly to the people providing your course rather than to some corporation with clever marketing.

The school listings on the club site, by the way, are free for the school and the students. No commission is asked for or paid.

The conversation continued:

Thank you so much. I wasn’t sure how these hubs worked – 30% is a lot! I will check out the schools in (CITY DELETED, INTENTIONALLY) on your site and book direct – I wasn’t sure if my Italian was good enough to contact directly but I imagine I can manage. Thank you!!!

and ended:

They’ll be only too pleased, I can assure you.
All schools have people who can speak English, don’t worry.

Conclusion? Use an agency if you must. It’s your choice. Or go direct to the school. But do one thing or the other.

One thing NOT to do, is to tell an agency that you’ve been in contact with that you have decided to book directly with the school. The agency will badger the school to pay their commission anyway, even though the school has done all the work. The school may be too weak (commercially-speaking) to resist.

It’s a cruel world…

A lunedì.