How it all began

your Spanish language school

How it all began

From the Director Añade tu comentario Steven

I’ve always loved learning new languages but I never thought that one day, I would set up a Spanish language school. Yet, here we are. Last year (2008) we welcomed almost 2000 students to our four Spanish language schools in Spain (Barcelona, Madrid, Sevilla and Valencia) and we were voted “Best Spanish Language School” by the readers of Language Travel Magazine. On top of this, we also received accreditiation from Instituto Cervantes. It has been a rollercoaster six years since we opened our doors in January 2003! But how do we got there?

I moved to Barcelona in 2002, orginally for a gap year to improve my Spanish and have a career break. The selection of the Spanish language school was quickly made since I had studied Spanish before with that school in lovely Salamanca. This school in Barcelona was very large and it took me some time to literally find someone in the building who could help me. That started me thinking (a).

The other thing that tickled me was that I felt (but maybe I’m too sensitive!) that I was treated like a young teenager who needed to be told what was allowed in the school and what wasn’t. Moreover, I never felt that the school was happy to have me as their client (b).

I also noticed that teachers often complained in the class about their work environment, lack of labour contracts and low pay. My list was growing (c).

Before I knew it, I was writing down a list of things that I would do if I were to set up a language school of my own and some of the key elements that we try to achieve with Babylon Idiomas were already there namely a) make customer service as central to what you do as the quality of teaching, b) treat your clients as adults and as clients and c) build a rewarding work environment.

Nothing ground-breaking or revolutionary from my point of view but unheard of for most schools. The wish list has grown since and step by step we’re trying to build an academic institute of languages that serves its clients, staff and business partners with a quality that is second to none. We have a lot to do and we are far from perfect. In this blog I will share with you the good, the bad and the ugly of what we do. I hope you’ll enjoy these.