How to get an A on your CELTA

What grades can you get on a CELTA course?

There are three different grades that come on a CELTA certificate - Pass A, Pass B and Pass. There are other possible outcomes, which don't come with a certificate. These are: Fail, Withdrawn and Deferred. Happily, the vast majority of people who do a CELTA course get a certificate. You can see the most recent statistics available from Cambridge here. In general, about 95% of people who start a CELTA course get the certificate.

The pass grades aren't divided equally. The majority of people (about 65 to 70%) get a Pass, about 20-25% get a Pass B and the top 2% to 5% get a Pass A.

Does my CELTA grade matter when I'm looking for a teaching job?

No. I've been working in English language teaching since 2003 and in all that time, I've only ever once seen a job ad that asked for a specific CELTA grade. An A or B grade is impressive on a CV and it's certainly nice to have, but in terms of employment, what you see in ads and what happens in the jobs market is that it's having the CELTA qualification that's important and not having a specific grade!

What is the difference between the CELTA grades?

There are a number of differences. For example, in 'planning', someone who gets an A is able to plan a lesson with 'minimal guidance', someone who gets a B needs 'some guidance' and someone who gets a pass needs 'guidance'. In four weeks, it've very difficult to make that jump from needing guidance with your planning to needing minimal guidance with planning and that's why the A grade is relatively rare. It's OK to be a new teacher and to still need guidance when planning a lesson and so there is absolutely no shame involved in getting a 'Pass' and not a "Pass A' when it comes to this.

Similarly, when it comes to how you respond to your students in teaching practice, someone with a Pass shows 'some awareness of learners', while a B candidate shows 'good awareness' and an A candidate shows 'very good awareness' of them. Most people will naturally fall into that first category. They'll notice if students are finding an exercise difficult and will take their time and help students. This is what we would expect from someone who is passing a CELTA course. Not as many people fall into the category of having very good awareness of students and being able to differentiate between students who are working at different speeds and different levels in the class and are able to respond to this in the moment. Again, there is no shame in not reaching this standard by the end of your CELTA course.

What can I do to guarantee an A grade in my CELTA?

We wouldn't encourage anyone to start a CELTA course with this attitude. You can't guarantee an A grade, and as we said earlier, in terms of employment, people don't need to get an A grade and everyone in the industry knows that getting a Pass in CELTA is actually a real achievement in itself! If you start a course aiming to get the highest grade possible, then you're setting yourself up to fail!

That said, here are a few tips for making sure you achieve your potential:

• Make sure you've set aside enough time for the course. Writing lesson plans and assignments takes time and the number one piece of feedback we get is that the course is more intensive than people expect it to be, so make sure you really have at least 80 hours during the course that you can spend on lesson planning and assignment writing.

• Get ahead with lesson planning. If your tutor has already told you what area you'll be teaching, then you can come to Assisted Lesson Planning sessions with your tutor much better prepared and with much more focused questions. If you leave everything to the last minute, then you won't get the benefit of planning guidance.

• Assignments are important, but prioritise your teaching practice. Teaching Practice is the core of a CELTA course. If you have an assignment due and a lesson plan to prepare, I would always recommend planning your lesson first. The students deserve well-planned lessons and teaching practice is very time dependent. We can't move the times of lessons, but assignment deadlines could potentially be extended if necessary.

• Participate in and respond to feedback. The only way to demonstrate that you can (a) reflect on your own teaching and (b) develop as a teacher, is to actively participate in teaching practice feedback and to address action points from previous lessons in your next lessons.

None of this will guarantee an A grade, but it will help you to get the best grade you can get, and that's what really matters!

If you're not sure about CELTA and you've got more questions, you can book a Zoom consultation with us here.

About the author:

Dr Connor O'Donoghue hails from Ireland and he started teaching English as a foreign language in Poland in 2003 and he became a CELTA trainer in 2008. He has taught and trained in Ireland, the UK, France, Italy, Slovenia, Macedonia, Poland, Russia, Kazakhstan and Vietnam. Connor also holds a Masters and a PhD in Education from Trinity College in Dublin. He has previously managed large teacher training centres in Vietnam and in London before founding DC Teacher Training.