Founded in 1953, International House (IH), is a global network of 150 affiliated language schools in more than 50 countries. All IH schools are independently owned and managed and are members of IH because they are committed to the very highest standards in language education face-to-face and online.

Schools in the network teach English, Spanish, German, French, Italian and a wide variety of other languages. Across our membership network, IH schools train about half of all CELTA graduates in the world. We have well over 200,000 students, and our member schools employ in excess of 5,800 teachers.

International House World Organisation is the central membership office for the International House network. We manage the IH brand, work with schools who wish to affiliate to IH, develop our quality scheme and ensure these standards are met through regular inspections, and manage network communications, publicity, and news.

The International House Journal of Education and Development was founded by Charles Lowe (then director of IH London) and Matthew Barnard, in 1996.

The original intention was to provide a forum for debate, a platform for creating new ideas and re-floating old ones, debunking myths and generally generate a sense of adventure for people teaching TEFL or teaching English as a Second Language.

The new digital IH Journal is published twice a year, in autumn and spring, and aims to include some of the best and most stimulating thinking in language teaching in a variety of modern languages.

This History section of the IH Journal was compiled by Brita Haycraft, co-founder of International House. John Haycraft was, of course, the original chronicler of IH stories, Babel in Spain (Hamish Hamilton 1958) and Babel in London (Hamish Hamilton 1965) and Adventures of a Language Traveller (Constable 1958).

We have included articles written by Brita herself, some of which have appeared in previous editions of the IH Journal, along with anecdotes and memories from those who were part of the first ground-breaking years of International House. The articles follow the journey of International House as chronicled by Brita and others from its beginning in Cordoba when the first school was opened in 1953.

We hope to be readable but serious, though always with room to be light-hearted as well. We are always on the lookout for new materials ideas, papers, photos and articles. We always want profiles and pictures of your school and its teachers, so get on to the computer and start writing! It might be the start of something big – who knows, maybe you will be the next Ruth Gairns or Michael Lewis!

For affiliate schools, we arrange a number of annual conferences, offer recruitment services and list vacancies on our Jobs website, and organise events for Study Abroad schools. We also develop and offer a suite of online teacher training courses for teachers who want to invest in their continued professional development or specialise in a particular area of interest.