Here’s a story from The Guardian about the gigification of online English lessons provided by the British Council. It looks like the “British Council Teachers” who teach those lessons (including IELTS lessons) get a pretty raw deal.
Not a great headline at a time when the British Council is seeking a financial bailout from the UK government.
Now and then people ask me about pursuing a long-term career in TEFL. But since entry-level work seems shabbier and shabbier with every passing day, it is hard for me offer advice. More on that later.
Edit: One long-gestating idea of mine has been to join one of the many “gig based” tutoring platforms for a few weeks to see what that sort of work is like first hand in 2025. I think it would make for a nice long-form article (a la Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed“). But I’m afraid it will never come to be.