THE West London English School (WLES), based in Ealing Broadway is still going strong, despite the coronavirus pandemic forcing it to adapt to new teaching realities.

The school was formed in 2015 and is located on Uxbridge Road, next to Ealing Council.

On average last year WLES had 200 students per week from all corners of the globe and 15 teachers, most of whom are bilingual.

Assistant Director of Studies, Beth Stacey told Nub News: "We pride ourselves in being a little multicultural community.

"We are proud to employ a number of non-native English speakers as teachers, because they have learnt English as a second language and therefore have a very deep and different understanding of the language compared to native English teachers."

According to Stacey, many English language schools have had to close down due to the pandemic, having lost students who have either moved back to their country of origin, or who didn't manage to make the trip to the UK due to travel restrictions.

"We rely heavily on new arrivals to London and obviously the pandemic has reduced that number drastically.

"However, we are lucky that we're still going strong with an average of more than 100 students per week.

"We've also managed to retain all our staff, we're glad to say that we haven't made anyone redundant."

Following the implementation of the first lockdown in March, WLES have had to change their teaching.

Stacey said: "During the first lockdown all of our classes moved online.

"Once the lockdown ended, we returned to in-person teaching, with several new preventative measures, to halt the spread of the virus, including social distancing, mask wearing, hand sanitiser stations, desks disinfected before and after each use.

"Now we offer three different types of classes: normal in-person, online or hybrid.

"The first two are self explanatory, the hybrid classes are when some students attend in person and others online, therefore creating a hybrid of the two systems."

WLES was voted in the top 10 best value English language schools in London for 2019 by the El Gazette and continues to offer great value teaching.

"We've reduced our prices due to COVID-19, we want to make sure our school is accessible to all," added Stacey.