You may recall that in last week's edition of NEAS News, we reported that leading textbook supplier "Bookery" has donated 10,000 Texbooks to respected Cambodian welfare charity "Voice". 

The first challenge NEAS encountered was how to transport the 10,000 textbooks from Melbourne to Cambodia.  

"You may not be surprised to learn that 10,000 texbooks weigh quite a bit," stated NEAS Chief Executive Mark Raven. "Actually, it's close to 1.6 tonnes!". 

After a week of trying to find a transport company willing to accept the shipment on a pro-bono basis, NEAS is able to share that ICTE-UQ with the support of Director Julian Wilson has arranged to underwrite the cost of transportation!

Voice Executive Director Kristy Fleming is amazed at the response and is "heartwarmed by the unexpected contributions being made to help disadvantaged Cambodian kids learn English" from NEAS' members and sponsors.

To add your support for this amazing initiative, click here!  

For Immediate Release

“Language Quality Assurance Agencies Meet in Washington for the Third QALEN Symposium”

Representatives from five countries and eight language quality assurance agencies gathered in Washington, DC from September 8-10, 2016 for the Third Annual Symposium of the Quality Assurance in Language Education Network (QALEN).

Founded in 2014, QALEN’s objective is to “provide opportunities for participants and members from accrediting and quality assurance bodies in the language education sector to communicate and collaborate within a safe supportive environment.”  Outputs from this year's QALEN Symposium include:

• working to aggregate members’ best practice on the care and welfare of minors
• documenting appropriate teacher and academic manager qualifications.

Those in attendance included the host ACCET – the Accrediting Council for Continuing Education and Training (USA), NEAS – the National ELT Accreditation Scheme (Australia), ABLS - the Accreditation Body for Language Services (UK), the British Council (UK), English New Zealand (NZ), Languages Canada (Canada), and Orion Assessment Services (Canada). CEA – the Commission on English Language Program Accreditation (USA) participated as a non-member guest.  FELTOM – the Federation of English Language Teaching Organizations (Malta) and EDU SA (South Africa) are also QALEN members but were unable to attend.

The next QALEN symposium is scheduled for November 2017 in Auckland, New Zealand.

Last week's English Australia Conference in Hobart, included the presentation of a Lifetime Achievement Award for Associate Professor Seamus Fagan, and his contribution to English language teaching in Australia.

Seamus Fagan has been a leading light for the English Language Teaching sector in Australia for almost 25 years.  He has been Director of the Centre for English Language and Foundation Studies (ELFS) at the University of Newcastle for almost 14 years.

In that time Seamus has also held Board positions with English Australia and, for the past six years, has been a committed advocate of Quality Assurance through his participation on the NEAS Board.

The NEAS Board, Advisory Council, Staff and Membership of NEAS send their sincere congratulations to Seamus for this outstanding achievement!