Established in 2000 as the first language school with 100% native level English teachers in Vietnam, ILA has trained over 300,000 students, with more than 40 language centers and 6 overseas education consultancies nationwide. What has brought such success and reputation to ILA throughout that 20 year journey? An exceptional woman, with a motto: “Do your best and respect the core values of education”.
Interviewer: These days, learning English has become more popular and easier thanks to the Internet. Also, more and more language schools are opening each day. How does ILA retain its unique values in such conditions?
If it is just to learn English, students have a wide range of resources to access other than ILA. However, the differences that ILA offers lie in:
1. A pioneering vision of modern education: It is not what we teach students but how we teach them that makes a difference. We have been continuously developing innovations in our teaching methodologies by studying how education is facilitated in the world’s leading countries. The rationale behind modern education is to facilitate the perfect harmony between individual ‘whole child’ personality development, soft skill improvement and knowledge acquisition of students, which is practiced in every lesson at ILA.
2. A serious investment in education: At ILA, we possess a 100% foreign team of directors and managers who are in charge of researching, developing programme content and teaching methods, as well as supervising quality control of learning delivery. Annually, we fly our staff to attend prestigious international conferences, study the best educational systems, to ensure the ongoing professional development of our academic workforce. In addition, we are investing in independent feedback to maintain objectivity about our teaching practices. To emphasize, this is not a minor investment, proven by the total expenditure of 60 billion VND funded in 2018. We do this in line with our long-standing and never-changing belief: investing in educational methodology forms the core of an educational organization.
3. The dedication and expertise of our teachers: ILA currently has more than 1500 highly experienced and dedicated native level English teachers and Vietnamese teaching assistants. They are all required to train in intercultural communications and teaching methodologies that suit Vietnamese students. This results in a deeper connection between teachers and students and accelerates the students’ learning progress. This is one of the main reasons why many teachers and teaching assistants are passionate about working at ILA despite the greater amount of time and effort for lesson preparation compared to other organizations.
Interviewer: Could you share a story that you find especially meaningful from your 20 year journey with ILA?
The greatest motivation of mine is to see our students’ success and maturity. Success is not only reflected in the scores but also in their ability to project themselves when they step onto a stage and deliver a presentation on a challenging subject with a level of confidence comparable to that observed in children educated in a world-class learning environment. Working in the education sector induces powerful emotions. It is very touching when seeing our students at the age of 11 or 12 knowing exactly what they want, sharing their aspiration to bring changes to their community and to the world, in fluent English to a large audience. There have been cases where children diagnosed with special learning needs, after learning at ILA for a while, have reached remarkable goals, above and beyond what others thought they can achieve. Such experiences are the real meaning of success to us and, no matter what challenges we faced and continue to face, they have inspired and driven us to keep focused on bringing the best possible life-changing educational outcomes to our students.
Interviewer: What is ILA’s future road map?
Our dream is greater than fostering a generation capable of adapting to changes in the future world. In fact, we dream that they, themselves, will also be the agent of making changes to that world. To actualize this, there are numerous actions that ILA is going to take in the coming years. In the short and medium term, we are concentrating on 3 major targets:
1. Continuing ongoing investment in learning programmes and studying world-class modern education trends. We are currently working on new pathways with new learning programmes which will enable our students to confidently enter a future workplace which demands a new, multi-skilled, 21st century workforce.
2. Further investing in ILA’s technology and human resources. This will maximize teaching efficiency and contribute to our commitment towards quality standards. By doing this, we want to repay the faith that parents and their children have in us.
3. Creating more chances for under-privileged children to change their future with education. For years, ILA has been a strategic partner of the majority of non-profit organizations and shelters in Vietnam. In 2018, we sponsored children in need who could afford neither public schooling nor English lessons at ILA to the amount of 15 billion VND. Also, other voluntary activities are carried out such as building more schools in remote areas or teaching English to children in homeless shelters. I believe the world will be a better place with such generous gestures.
Interviewer: Thank you so much, ma’am! We hope ILA will bring even more educational values to future generations of Vietnamese people.
