Michael Ratcliff

Michael Ratcliff (centre right) has been working in language education since 1991. He taught for several years at Victoria College (Melbourne) and Edith Cowan University (Perth) as well as in Japan, South Korea and Thailand before moving into educational management and school ownership.

In 2000 he opened his first language school in Japan, building it up to three branches in Oyodo, Toyonaka and Tsukamoto. In 2005 he founded Greenwich College; now one of Sydney's biggest language schools, and well known for its IELTS preparation courses and teacher training programs (Cert IV TESOL & TECSOL). The College also has excellent general English courses, and is one of the largest providers of RSA certificates in Australia. More than 4000 students take a Greenwich course each year, and they come from over 35 different countries.

In 2009, together with Simon Cavell, he opened Language Express in central Bangkok. Language Express is a language centre that teaches Thai, English and preparation courses for the GED, SAT, IELTS and TOEIC exams. It has a full time staff of 50, and each year around 1500 people take a Language Express course.

Language Express also has a wide range of corporate clients that include: Vietnam Airlines, the Siam Commercial Bank, Ernst & Young, Toll Logistics, Transmedic P/L, Bandara Hotels & Resorts, the Locksley Group, Centara Group, The Royal Thai Airforce, the Embassies of the United Kingdom and Sweden and is contracted to teach Thai to US State Department personnel in Bangkok.

Michael has also been an IELTS Examiner, a TOEIC Administrator, written accredited training courses and published more than a dozen ESL textbooks. For three years Michael was a board member of Redhill Education, which owns and operates schools and education agencies in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Barcelona, Madrid, Milan, Medellin and Porto Alegre.