To start an online language school, choose your language and learners, assess their CEFR levels, and plan courses around realistic guided hours. Choose individual or group teaching, set prices and billing currencies, then arrange teachers, time-zone schedules, and a classroom for shared materials.
What can UK English language centre data tell you about the market?
English UK’s figures can help you choose questions to investigate, but cannot establish demand for your online school. The figures describe UK in-person member centres, rather than online language teaching. Use the source markets as starting points for learner conversations. Do not turn a national student total into a forecast for your own enrollment.
English UK’s 2025 figures, available as of 21 October 2026, include 313,954 full-time and 13,929 part-time students. Together, those students accounted for just under 1 million student weeks. Students under 18 made up 62% of the total. An adult conversation course and a school-age course therefore need separate demand checks.
The largest source markets by student weeks were Italy, Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Spain, and China. Those rankings describe travel to UK centres. They do not show which learners would buy remote lessons, what those learners would pay, or which language you should teach.
The same source reports that 32% of centres grew student weeks while 64% declined. Compare the 2025 student total with over 535,000 international students in 2019. The useful lesson is caution: a large established sector does not guarantee demand for a particular offer.
Ask prospective learners what they need to do in the language, when they can attend, and why their current approach falls short. Write your course offer around the answers you can actually serve.
How do you choose your learners and CEFR levels?
Choose a learner need before writing a broad catalog. CEFR gives you a shared language for describing ability, but a level label does not explain why someone buys lessons. Combine a starting level with a practical goal, such as joining workplace conversations or understanding everyday instructions. Then assess whether the proposed course fits that learner.
The CEFR overview describes 3 bands: Basic user covers A1 and A2, Independent user covers B1 and B2, and Proficient user covers C1 and C2. As of 21 October 2026, the source also describes the 2020 Companion Volume, including descriptors for online interaction and mediation.
Use those descriptors to make your offer concrete. Describe what learners will practice and how teachers will judge progress. Avoid promising a level based solely on purchased lesson time. Attendance, starting ability, and work outside class matter to the course you plan.
Use a repeatable intake process:
- Ask about the learner’s goal and previous study.
- Review speaking, listening, reading, and writing against the intended course.
- Confirm availability and the preferred class format.
- Explain the starting point, learning activities, and review method.
Keep the assessment notes available to the teacher. A learner should not need to explain the same goal again after paying. Keep placement evidence separate from invoices so billing records do not become your academic record.
How do you design courses around guided learning hours?
Plan guided hours as a teaching budget, then divide that budget into useful course blocks. The Cambridge figures cited on Wikipedia are cumulative rough guides for European-language native speakers learning English. They are not completion guarantees and should not be carried across to another language without evidence. A continuing learner also does not start the cumulative total again.
The cited ranges are about 180–200 hours for A2, 350–400 for B1, 500–600 for B2, 700–800 for C1, and 1,000–1,200 for C2, as of 21 October 2026. No A1 hours figure is supplied. Leave that gap visible instead of filling the table with a guess.
Build each course block around an observable task. Choose the language needed for that task, prepare practice materials, and decide what evidence the teacher will review. A conversation task needs opportunities to listen and respond, rather than a long explanation followed by a rushed speaking exercise.
Separate live teaching from independent practice in your course description. Tell learners what belongs in class and what they should prepare between classes. Revisit the plan when the work shows that the pace is wrong. Selling another course block should follow a learning review, not an assumption that attendance proves readiness.
Should you offer individual lessons, small groups, or both?
Choose individual lessons when learners need different pacing or cannot share a regular meeting time. Choose groups when learners have compatible goals, levels, and availability, and the teaching plan benefits from peer interaction. Offering both creates separate scheduling and pricing work. Start with the format you can deliver consistently before adding another format to the catalog.
Compare the formats through the work involved:
- Individual lessons let the teacher adapt practice and feedback to the learner.
- Groups create opportunities for peer conversation but require deliberate speaking turns.
- A mixed offer needs a clear process for placing learners and moving them between formats.
For group delivery, Google Meet and Zoom offer options that Halqora does not support. According to Google Meet’s meeting-limit guidance, as of 21 October 2026, calls without a subscription have a 60-minute limit with 3 or more participants. Individual meetings can run up to 24 hours. That makes Meet worth checking for individual lessons needing more time than Zoom Basic allows.
Zoom’s pricing page lists up to 100 participants on Basic, with the 40-minute meeting limit noted above, as of 21 October 2026. Check the scheduled lesson against the plan limit before choosing a classroom. A familiar video link is not enough if the meeting ends during practice.
Halqora schedules, bills, and pays one-to-one classes. Group classes are not supported, and its current subjects are Quran and Islamic subjects. Do not choose Halqora on the assumption that a group language course can be added later.
How should you price courses and bill in different currencies?
Set prices from the teaching work and the payment arrangement you intend to offer. Decide the lesson duration, class format, included preparation, and billing currency before quoting a course. Marketplace tutor rates provide context, but do not establish a sustainable school price. Your school also has coordination and support work that an hourly headline does not describe.
According to Preply’s tutor information page, as of 21 October 2026, English tutors average USD 15–25 per hour. Preply says commission starts at 33% and falls to 18%. These are marketplace figures, not a survey of independent online school prices. Do not present them as the amount a school should charge or a teacher will take home.
Prepare a price list for each currency you intend to accept. State whether the learner buys a course block or pays for delivered lessons. Explain what happens when a lesson is cancelled before taking payment. A clear quote is easier to administer than a verbal agreement that changes with each invoice.
Check the currency charged to the learner and the currency received into your account. A stable local-currency price can leave you exposed to conversion changes. Our guide to invoicing in different currencies explains the operational choices.
Use the language school software checklist to check how a system connects learners, lesson outcomes, and billing. A feature name matters less than whether an administrator can review the actual charge before sending an invoice.
How do you run classes across time zones with shared materials?
Run scheduling and materials checks before enrolling learners into a recurring course. Record the teacher’s and learner’s IANA time zones, confirm the intended local class time, and review what happens when clocks change. Choose a classroom by testing a real lesson activity, including opening the book, sharing the page, and writing feedback while the learner watches.
Use scheduling rules in each IANA time zone rather than treating a fixed UTC offset as a permanent location. Explain which local time the course follows if the teacher and learner have different daylight-saving changes. Our guide to scheduling classes across time zones covers that planning work.
Test the classroom with the materials you intend to teach:
- Open the learner’s book and check that both participants can follow the same page.
- Try the whiteboard exercise while speaking and listening.
- Check screen-sharing permissions and the learner’s view.
- Confirm how the learner rejoins after losing the connection.
Give teachers a consistent place to keep lesson notes and record the next activity. Decide separately how learners receive homework and feedback. A shared whiteboard is a teaching surface, not evidence that a platform has placement testing or CEFR progress tracking.
Ask teachers to flag material-access problems before class. A lesson plan that depends on an unavailable page creates avoidable disruption. Use books and worksheets that your school has arranged to make available to its learners.
What course lengths do the CEFR hour guides imply?
| CEFR level | Band | Indicative cumulative guided hours (hours; Cambridge, as cited) | Example course length at 2 × 60 minutes/week (weeks; our arithmetic) | Format suggestion |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1 | Basic user | Not given | Not calculated | Individual support or a matched beginner group |
| A2 | Basic user | About 180–200 | 90–100 | Guided practice individually or with peers |
| B1 | Independent user | About 350–400 | 175–200 | Conversation practice with clear feedback |
| B2 | Independent user | About 500–600 | 250–300 | Discussion and task-based practice |
| C1 | Proficient user | About 700–800 | 350–400 | Individual goals or matched advanced discussion |
| C2 | Proficient user | About 1,000–1,200 | 500–600 | Specialized practice based on assessed needs |
The course-length column is an Example, not a promise about learning speed. Our arithmetic divides each cumulative hours range by 2 hours per week: 180 ÷ 2 = 90 weeks and 200 ÷ 2 = 100 weeks for A2. The remaining rows use the same division, assuming every scheduled week contributes the stated guided hours.
These cumulative durations represent a starting-from-beginner planning view, not the length of each successive level. Do not sell the B2 row as additional time after B1. Use assessment and completed learning to plan the next course block. The format suggestions are teaching options, not capabilities claimed for Halqora.
How Halqora handles this
Halqora is management software for online academies from Talt AI; Murouj Academy, an online Quran academy, runs on it. As of 21 October 2026, Halqora supports one-to-one classes and a fixed set of 5 Quran and Islamic subjects. Language subjects and group classes are not supported. The Halqora features should be read within those limits, rather than as a language-school launch package.
Each student has a billing currency; invoices are never converted. Billing runs create drafts for admin review and sending. The classroom includes video, screen share, a shared whiteboard, and a synced PDF library.
Quran tools are one part of the classroom; scheduling, billing and payroll do not depend on them. Check the subject list against your courses before a demo.
Sources
- English UK facts and figures, checked 21 October 2026
- CEFR overview and Cambridge guided-hour figures, as cited, checked 21 October 2026
- Preply’s tutor information and commission figures, checked 21 October 2026
- Zoom’s meeting plans and pricing, checked 21 October 2026
- Google Meet meeting limits, checked 21 October 2026
