British Side English Language School was set up with the aim of providing quality teaching to customers in Istanbul. The partners and many of the teachers worked at the British Council Teaching Centre until its closure in July 2006. We are situated on the European side of Istanbul, in the former British Council building; opposite the Conrad Hotel on Barbaros Bulvari in Besiktas, which is a commercial centre and at the same time one of the biggest student hubs of the city having Yildiz Technical University’s main campus. We also have a Professional Development Centre that provides tailor made trainings for companies. There are 14 classrooms, a Self Access Resource Centre, two meeting rooms with en suite multimedia and conference facilities. Media has shown great interest to British Side since its beginning, many articles/interviews with our teachers/partners appeared on local papers.
On average each term we have around 800 students at our Language School, attending all sorts of courses, including General/ Intensive/ Spoken English or Corporate programmes, we are also the only centre in Turkey offering IELTS preparation courses. At our ELT department we run a variety of trainings and seminars for teachers of English from several institutions from Istanbul and the neighbour cities. We are also an accredited centre for University of Cambridge’s CELTA programme and BULATS, ILEC, ICFE and TKT exams. British Side is the sole educational institution in Turkey to be accepted to Quality English; The best of independent English Language Schools Worldwide.
British Side Education Counselling Services was set up in February 2007, based at British Side premises we offer counselling services both for internal and external customers. We work with language schools, universities, boarding schools, further and higher education colleges and independent colleges from the UK. Our customer profile ranges from young learners starting from age 9 to many adult learners, executive managers and high school/ university students. We help our students in choosing the best course meeting their needs, process their applications, assist with their visas and organise pre departure briefings. We also offer support services to all our students throughout their stay in the UK.
As the local partners of UK institutions we work with; we aim to provide a full marketing assistance. We have bulletins on market updates, press and web scans from various education sites in Turkey and in addition to these we offer our facilities for visiting UK institutions assisting the arrangement of their inward visits. We circulate news on our partner schools programmes to our database consisting students, teachers and company contacts as well as press. We coordinate the translation of UK partners’ promotional materials and give advice on the current efficient advertising tools.
Our partners use British Side Premises for student meetings/ presentations and interviews or even social gatherings. We assist with the arrangement of cost effective and efficient adverts in Turkish media/press and the local institutions’ publications. We also help with arranging appointments with local academic and commercial contacts and organising alumni events/cocktails of UK institutions at British Side premises.
Student numbers from Turkey went up by 70% in 2006. Due to UK Visas statistics for Turkey 7209 student visas were issued in 2006 whereas this number was 4234 in 2005, which represents a 70% increase of students travelling to the UK to pursue studies at all levels from ELT to Post-Graduate. Please contact us if you are interested in hearing more about Turkish market and how we can cooperate to assist with your marketing plans for Turkey.
