TTA The TEFL Academy | Fact-checked

Written by Mia Williams – co-owner of trustedteflreviews.com

It is said that a magician’s best friend is a drunk audience.

Well, please allow me to sober you up to the reality of the magic tricks of TTA The TEFL Academy.

FYI, this program also operates as Everything TEFL Ltd.

This article will peel away the facade of its accreditation claims, will question the legitimacy of its philanthropic work in the Nepalese community, will highlight its ongoing business operations in Russia, and will expose how this TEFL company uses its vast marketing budget to perpetuate the illusion that it has hundreds of thousands of TEFL graduates teaching all over the world.

There is, of course, also the question of its fake reviews – also covered in this article.

Let us begin this sobering-up process by looking at a few screenshots from its company website.

Btw, those reviews in the screenshot, listed under “Accreditation Partners”, are from reviews.co.uk. That site is infamous for deleting negative reviews in return for payment and letting fake positive reviews remain published without any quality control verification oversight.

Fake TEFL Accreditation

It claims that QUALIFI, DEAC, and AQC are its “Accreditation Partners”.

QUALIFI is a UK-based organization that APPROVES courses and institutions.

It approves hair, beauty, wellness, and aesthetics courses, and it also approves TTA The TEFL Academy’s courses.

“Approval” is not the same as “accredited”.

Even if it did (in another dimension somewhere in the universe) accredit its courses, would any employer really take its accreditation seriously when it also accredits hair, beauty, wellness, and aesthetics?

If an organization had the authority to accredit courses and institutions, don’t you think that it would use the term as often as it could on its company website?

QUALIFI uses the term “accreditation” zero times on its company website.

Instead, it uses the word “approved”.

“Approved” is NOT the same level of authority and recognition as “accredited”.

Are you sobering up a little now?

Let’s proceed!

DEAC DOES accredit courses and institutions.

I can sense that you are thinking that there may be a catch here because this article is exposing TTA The TEFL Academy for (among other infractions) false accreditation claims.

And, yes, you would be correct to be suspicious.

Two in a row!

All it takes is a few clicks to confirm that it is not accredited by DEAC.

Here is a screenshot from the DEAC website – its directory of accredited institutions:

The TEFL Academy is not in the directory, and is, therefore, not accredited by DEAC.

If it were, it would be listed in the directory.

AQC appears to be a sister organization of DEAC.

How can I know this?

Well, DEAC devotes a chunk of its website footer to AQC.

Does AQC accredit courses and institutions?

No.

How do I know this?

It is stated on the DEAC/AQC website:

And here is the listing for TTA The TEFL Academy, as an approved center, on the AQC website:

Three out of three strikes.

Bingo!

Trusted TEFL Reviews reached out to QUALIFI, DEAC, and AQC for comment.

DEAC promised to get back to us. This was two weeks ago.

AQC failed to respond to our request for further information.

QUALIFI had the gall to write that approval is the same as accreditation.

We had an email back and forth with QUALIFI for a week and we discovered that it could be very probable that QUALIFI and TTA The TEFL Academy are connected companies, which would be, if true, a textbook example of a clear conflict of interest.

When we asked whether QUALIFI is a sister company of the TEFL Academy, we were warned that no further emails would be answered.

Let’s now take a look at some more screenshots from the homepage of the TEFL Academy’s website:

Fake TEFL Awards

It is a bit ironic that the TEFL Academy has spent the latter half of this year complaining that teflonlinepro.com has won the Teachers’ Choice Award seven years in a row – 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 – and then miraculously, the TEFL Academy also (very recently) began promoting its “award wins” for the same years.

You should now be almost sober, so this explanation will be easier to digest – despite its underlying complexity.

goabroad.com and gooverseas.com are two TEFL course and TEFL travel websites that earn revenue by promoting TEFL programs and TEFL job placements on their websites – rarely can you trust any of the reviews published on either platforms.

Some Trusted TEFL Reviews reviewers have complained that their negative review of the TEFL program they took was deleted from either goabroad.com or gooverseas.com, so they chose to have it published on trustedteflreviews.com instead.

trustedteflreviews.com is a non-profit website and we publish every positive and negative TEFL course review that has been verified as having been written by a real TEFL course student/graduate.

goabroad.com and gooverseas.com are for-profit websites, and it is in their business model interests to publish positive reviews and hide negative reviews.

It, therefore, logically follows that any awards dished out by both these websites have a monetary motive – for both of the websites and for the TEFL program that won the award and which likely paid a substantial amount of money to “win” the award.

The Teachers’ Choice Award (https://trustedteflreviews.com/2023/12/04/the-teachers-international-online-tefl-tesol-certification-course-choice-award-winner/) on the other hand, is a non-profit award that is based entirely on merit.

Trusted TEFL Reviews asks language schools, universities, current English teachers, and recent Online TEFL/TESOL course graduates to take part in the Online TEFL/TESOL international certification course Teachers’ Choice Award, by voting for their favorite Online TEFL/TESOL international certification course program.

TTA The TEFL Academy (https://trustedteflreviews.com/category/the-tefl-academy/) likely won its awards by handing over a large bag of unaccredited TEFL course cash.

We are 100% certain that TEFL Online Pro (https://trustedteflreviews.com/category/tefl-online-pro-teachers-choice-award-winner-2024/) won its awards by being voted the best Fully Accredited Online TEFL/TESOL certification course provider.

Fake TEFL Reviews

We know with absolute certainty that the TEFL Academy is involved in the mass faking of its company reviews.

How can I be so certain of this?

Last year, and a part of the year before that – just after the TEFL Academy brought in a new Marketing Manager (Thomas Gibbons) Trusted TEFL Reviews began receiving an unusually large amount of reviews for this program.

In one week, we received something like 30 reviews for the TEFL Academy.

Out of those 30 reviews, just one (1) was verified as being written by someone who had taken the course.

The remaining 29 all came from the same IP address in Dublin, Ireland, where TTA The TEFL Academy has its headquarters.

The remaining 29 reviews were written by school staff and by its Brand Ambassadors.

This appears to be a pattern in TEFL Academy’s marketing campaigns online.

They show photos of people who work for them and claim that they are, instead, English teachers living the best time of their lives.

Btw, when you read a review that states that the TEFL course was “amazing” or “extraordinary”, you must know that it is a fake review or that the person writing the review has been paid for writing the review.

TTA The TEFL Academy incentivizes its graduates to write positive reviews – sending out a mass email each week to its recent grads – with the quid-pro-quo offer of a free mini TEFL course, such as a Teaching Business English course.

Such an example of a review that has been written by the TEFL Academy, or written by a graduate of the program that has been offered a free course for writing a review:

Russia TEFL Money | TTA The TEFL Academy

Now that you are fully sober, it might be time to have a shot because what follows makes me feel angry and repulsed.

TTA The TEFL Academy still makes money from its business operations and partnerships in Russia.

This Google Ads screenshot was taken earlier today:

Spending money on Google Ads to maintain its business operations and partnerships in Russia.

The Google Ad takes you to these pages on the TEFL Academy website:

As of May 19th, its Russian Jobs page and its TEFL Fact-Book Russia page are still live on theteflacademy.com site.

I have sent TTA an email, today May 19th, imploring them to take down both pages from the website.

May 20th, 2022 UPDATE

TTA The TEFL Academy has stopped its paid Google Ads for its TEFL courses in Russia.

It is, however, still promoting Russia as a teaching destination on its school website, where it states that it has a school located in Moscow.

TTA The TEFL Academy | Conclusion

Should this company be avoided for all of the above reasons? We will leave this up to you to decide for yourselves.

This is not financial advice, but we have received credible first-hand reports of TTA TEFL students getting full refunds on their course purchases because they were able to prove to their bank or PayPal that the course is not accredited.

1. You could contact TTA the TEFL Academy and ask to cancel your TEFL course and ask for a full course refund. It might take up to two weeks to get a reply from them, but you would need to provide proof to your bank that you have requested a refund. Take a screenshot of the refund request.
2. You could contact your bank or PayPal and instigate a chargeback. The reason you could give is that you didn’t receive the goods that you paid for. If pressed further, you can quote passages in this article and the financial institution could agree that the TEFL Academy is misrepresenting itself by claiming it is accredited.
3. You could choose a Fully Accredited TEFL/TESOL certification course that you can use for all online and in-person international teaching jobs.

Take a look at the Trusted TEFL Reviews TEFL Course Directory:

https://trustedteflreviews.com/tefl-course-directory/

The top-rated programs are top-rated for a legitimate reason.

For all accreditation questions:

https://trustedteflreviews.com/2023/12/03/best-tefl-accreditation/

https://trustedteflreviews.com/tefl-accreditation-guide/

June 10th, 2022 UPDATE

Who is your money going to when you pay for an Unaccredited TEFL course with this company?

Your money is, in large part, financing the lifestyles of two men who are originally from Brighton, England.

Andy Norman and Rhyan O’Sullivan.

Tom (Thomas) Gibbons is responsible for the day-to-day running of the business. I have read some of his online material – defamatory attacks against the TEFL Academy’s competitors – and I was immediately struck by just how badly written his posts were. Tom isn’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

I found this (two-page) press release online:

There is no evidence, whatsoever, that other TEFL companies “copied” Tom Gibbon’s TEFL webinars.

If you are convinced to take a course with this company, please do ask them exactly how much of your course fee will be donated to the charity that they promote so heavily on their program website.

Ask for proof (receipt) of the charitable donation.

Call me skeptical, but it is difficult to believe anything that is claimed to be true by this Unaccredited TEFL program.

August 23rd, 2022 UPDATE

Lo and behold! We stumbled across an About Me webpage for TTA The TEFL Academy, and it contains some very interesting information.

The TEFL Academy used to be “accredited” by WTEFLAC – a known fake TEFL accreditation website.

TTA The TEFL Academy has gone from having fake accreditation to having no accreditation.

Essential TEFL Tip!

Are you worried about being scammed? TEFL course scams are becoming more sophisticated, and (TTA) The TEFL Academy has been proven to be a scam!

Protect yourself from TEFL scams.

We strongly recommend choosing from one of the 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL certification course programs in 2026:

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By choosing from one of the 5 Best Online TEFL/TESOL Certification Course Programs, you are guaranteed not to be scammed.

Choose a fully accredited and internationally recognized online TEFL/TESOL certification course that you can use for all online and abroad teaching English jobs.

Mia Williams – Trusted TEFL Reviews

Related article: https://trustedteflreviews.com/2019/03/25/the-tefl-academy-certification-review/

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