Eurospeak was founded in October, 1992 as a school of English as a foreign language to tutor visitors and au-pair girls and boys who had come to England to live with a British family. The first lessons were just in the evenings and on Saturdays. We soon assembled a group of competent, friendly teachers and more and more loyal and successful students and so the demand for lessons grew. Within a year we were organizing lessons every day in the morning, afternoon and evening as well as arranging activities and tours for our students. We even went to France for the day several times.
By 1995 students who had finished their work as au-pairs wanted to stay on as students and their friends wanted to come to the school directly from abroad and so we entered our next phase of development by accepting students who required a student visa. This meant that we needed to organize full-time timetables so that students could be accommodated for 15 hours or more of tuition each week. And so the numbers grew and the teachers became more numerous. Starting in the same year we began to organise summer classes and excursions for younger students (13+) with a full programme of excursions. Fortunately two of our teachers were happy to drive 17-seater buses for the smaller groups and we visited different parts of UK including several trips to Scotland. We also started entering our students for the Cambridge ESOL exams and by 1998 we had become a national exam centre recognized by Cambridge University.
During our first years all our English language classes and exams took place in the Greyfriars Centre in the very heart of Reading and in a rented room just across the road but by 2002, thanks to the hard work of the staff and the support of the students, we needed to find new premises to supplement our class rooms and we were lucky enough to find a building with some classrooms and an office just across the road from the Greyfriars Centre. With the extra space we decided to start computer (IT) lessons with the idea that all our students would be able to learn two of the basic, essential skills necessary for success in the work place of today. That same year we were recognized by OCR as an exam centre for IT studies and started a full CLAIT course at all three levels.
Now we are a school that is accredited by ASIC and recognized by the UK Border Agency as an international college with a Tier 4 sponsors license. Our aim is to continue to help our students in every possible way so as to give them a springboard for the future. With courses in business and hospitality and tourism we will be able to present students with a positive career opportunity in a world where jobs are not always easy to find if you do not have the skills that the job market requires.
