NEAS congratulates PEAR Academy Australia on becoming our most recent Quality Endorsed Member! Specialising in enhancing further the English language communicative skills of Medical and Allied Health professionals, PEAR Academy prides itself on being designated a Premium Preparation Provider for the Occupational English Test (OET) in Australia and India. PEAR Academy is also an OET licensed test administrator, with test venues in Adelaide (Australia), Bangalore, Mangalore, Visakhapatnam, Kochi, and Pune (India). PEAR Academy’s purposeful strategy is to achieve NEAS Endorsement as an online provider of OET preparation in the first instance, before extending its partnership with NEAS to cover the development of Quality Endorsed physical ELT Centres abroad. Over the past months, NEAS worked closely with PEAR Academy to review these critical components: syllabus, Learning Management System, teacher qualifications, and Train-the-Trainer programme. Integral to NEAS Endorsement has been its distinctive 360-degree stakeholder-driven feedback model, which is informed by input from students, teachers and professional staff.
PEAR Academy has successfully negotiated partnerships with education providers in India to administer OET Test Centre Days on campus under strict guidelines set by OET. It has also recruited trainers and support staff with strong industry and TESOL experience to effect best practice approaches to teaching, learning and testing. PEAR Academy offers a dedicated course, titled, English for Health Professionals (EHP) – OET Communication, which is delivered online and is offered in two-, four-, six- and 12-week modules. In addition to supporting students to achieve their target OET levels, the EHP Course helps students communicate effectively in real-world clinical settings. Teaching, Administration and Student focus group respondents gave highly positive feedback about studying with and working for PEAR Academy, which participants dubbed “Care” Academy. Anonymous student online survey responses included comments such as, “PEAR Academy guides and mentors candidates in a rightful manner”. Highly positive focus group responses were indicative of best practice approaches to online course delivery and test preparation and industry placement.
