Americamp and Camp Thailand

Hi EFL World!

Let's just have a quick look at Americamp's relationship with Camp Thailand.  Although Camp Thailand comes under Americamp's general umbrella, it is actually at least half owned and run by Philip Crabb. The CEO of Americamp is Lee McAteer, and for his operations in Thailand he has teamed up with Philip Crabb, who runs the show there. He also has a rep called Dean Hallworth there, but his power is limited.

Up to now, this blog has been pretty complimentary towards Americamp and the aspects of their camps that they organise directly. However, it is clear that there is something amiss with the way Philip Crabb is running operations at his end. Typical complaints so far against him are:

1.  He claims his TEFL certificate is "internationally accredited", but this is completely unfounded. It's not accredited in any meaningful sense of the word, and is basically a junk qualification.

2.  Most of the trainers for the courses are unqualified. Instead, they are often just random teachers are in the area at the time who happen to be looking for a job.

3.  Similarly, Philip Crabb himself has no formal EFL qualifications, and is best known in the EFL world for being fired by a school in Bangkok for coming in drunk.

4.  Even now Philip often attends sessions either drunk or clearly hung over.

5.  Philip usually fails and expels a student quickly in order to create fear and compliance among the other students. The student will invariably be someone who has caused some kind of problem or asked some awkward questions.

6.  Later, he often does the exact converse and passes students without even looking at their submissions. The "blank document" incident in 2016, when he passed a student who submitted a blank document, is well-known.

7.  He tries to extract extra money from students anyway he can, with all kinds of extra charges for towels, taxis, air-con, etc.

8.  Most importantly, in 2016 one of Thai staff pulled a gun on some girls students because they did not use Philip's own expensive taxi service. We now have this evidenced from three separate sources.

9.  His history with Island TEFL, which he ran as Philip Dunne before acquiring Camp Thailand, is truly shocking. Google and lots of results will come up. They can't all be lying.

10.  He charges as much as £500 for a five day orientation course before placement in a school by an agency. An identical orientation course can be obtained directly from the agency completely for free.

I will leave it to the reader to decide whether the above is merely sharp practice or outright criminality. The point is that Philip Crabb is clearly not a man you should be entrusting yourself to or giving your money to. It also reflects back on Americamp that they continue to work with him.  It shows that they themselves lack any real ethicality. Clearly it's just about money at the end of the day.

So we conclude that, even though there are some wonderful positives about the Camp Thailand experience, potential campers should boycott Camp Thailand, and use another provider until such time as Americamp disown Philip Crabb.

In my next post, I'll quote from some of the numerous emails I have received.

Stay wise!
EFL Greg