Within a span of two decades, the business process outsourcing industry in the Philippines has grown by a milestone, thanks to the success of numerous companies who have chosen to outsource their call centre and other IT-related operations in the country. But outsourcing in the Philippines has not been limited to growth in these sectors.
The country has enjoyed a steady increase in educational outsourcing as well, in foreign students who have opted to study English as a Second Language (ESL) here. As a result of the student demand for English education, more and more international educational institutions have been making use of outsourced services to start their operations in the country. It’s not hard to see why students would choose to study English in the Philippines rather than in actual English-speaking countries like the UK or US though.
First and foremost is the cost of studying English here. Rather than spending large amounts of money to study English in Europe or America, foreign students tended to prefer sharpening their writing and speaking skills in the Philippines, where costs of living and studying are a great deal lower and the English literacy rate is high.
The Philippines recently ranked second highest for English proficiency in Asia, just next to Singapore who ranked first in Asia, according to a November, 2020 report by Philstar Global. Over 14 million Filipinos speak English. In fact, Filipinos will speak the country’s national language amongst themselves using about a 20-30% mix of English within their conversations. This style of conversing has come to be called Taglish (a mix of Tagalog as the national dialect, and English).
These facts are largely due to English being considered as one of the country’s official languages, resulting from a long period of past colonization with the Americans who used English as the main medium for instruction in school textbooks and curriculums for Filipinos. To this day, English has remained the standard in Philippine educational institutions, commerce and law.
Additionally, Filipinos are exposed daily to American programs, further enhancing their verbal capacity to speak fluent English. This exposure to English programs allows them to adapt easily as well to the accents, colloquial terms and idioms used by natural English-speakers, which makes them good candidates for teaching English to foreign students.
ESL companies have also found that there is a wealth of well-educated English-speaking workers in the country, who, with just a minimal amount of training and English proficiency test qualifications, were perfectly eligible to teach ESL. This large pool of potential talent put to use has created many competent and experienced Filipino ESL teachers over the years, making the Philippines an even more fertile territory for English studies.
Through well-established outsourcing processes – from facilities and equipment integration to operational management, to back-office needs – in starting up operations and hiring offshore staff, companies from a wide range of different industries have come to trust Philippine outsourcing services.
Companies like Ezy Outsourcing Hub have helped spur this growth through consistent quality service to our offshore clients. At Ezy Outsourcing Hub, we have outsourced manpower and operations for clients whose businesses have enjoyed much greater growth over the years with our support and expertise. Whatever industry you’re in, and however large or small-scale your business may be, we can confidently provide solutions that fit your unique needs. Give us a call today.
