Our commitment to the FELCA-GAELA Guidelines
BidandStudy is a new kind of education agency. While we are not yet members of FELCA or a national association, we have voluntarily adopted the FELCA-GAELA Guidelines as our quality framework — the same gold standard used by leading educational agencies worldwide.
Why this page exists
Reputable schools want to know that any agent they work with treats students fairly, matches them honestly, and stays involved after enrollment. The FELCA-GAELA Guidelines are the clearest published statement of what that looks like.
Instead of asking you to take our word for it, we list all 14 guidelines below, the commitment BidandStudy makes on each, and — transparently — which ones are active today and which are on our roadmap until we have our first live enrollments.
Your school declares quality commitments of its own at registration (qualified teachers, academic progress monitoring, extra-curricular activities, safe accommodation for minors). Those declarations appear to the student before they choose you, so both sides enter the match informed.
Written agreement between agent & school
Every partner school signs our Master Services Agreement (MSA) at registration. The MSA covers commission terms, payment schedule, refund policy and dispute mediation. Schools can review the full text before signing.
Careful selection of partners
We only approve schools that declare at least one of: official accreditation (British Council, EAQUALS, ACCET, CEA, NEAS, or local equivalent) OR GAELA / recognized association membership. We also run a 15-minute onboarding call with each new school's decision-maker before activating their account.
Needs-based placement
Students choose countries, cities, language, start window, and budget at the bid stage. Our matching engine sends bids only to schools that actually meet those criteria — never a mass broadcast.
Pre-departure preparation
Once a bid is accepted and the student has chosen a school, our team contacts the student to share everything the school has provided us, plus country-specific guidance on visas, arrival, culture and day-one logistics. Roll-out is tied to our first live enrollments.
Student information shared with the school
After the student confirms a school, we guide them through a structured handover (passport, medical conditions, insurance details, preferred name, gender, family emergency contacts) that the school receives in one package. This flow ships with our first real enrollment.
24/7 emergency contact
We are building a WhatsApp-based support channel with an AI assistant for first-line response and a rotating on-call human for emergencies. This activates before we accept minors at scale.
Airport transfers
When the school offers airport pickup/dropoff, we present it as a paid add-on to the student during the pre-departure phase and coordinate the booking with the school. We act as the intermediary, not the provider.
Travel insurance
Travel insurance is presented as an optional add-on in the student's post-acceptance flow, through a regulated insurance partner. Students can also decline and use their own policy.
Satisfaction checks during the course
We plan to check in with each active student on day 3, day 7 and monthly thereafter — automated via WhatsApp with human escalation when a student reports a problem. Activates with our AI support agent.
Academic progress monitoring
School responsibility — we require each partner school to self-declare that it tracks progress and issues a certificate or report at the end of the course. Declaration is recorded at registration and surfaced on the student-facing school card.
Qualified teachers
School responsibility — we require each partner school to self-declare that its teachers hold recognized qualifications (CELTA, DELTA, TESOL or local equivalent) and are trained for international learners.
Safe accommodation, including safeguarding of minors
Schools describe their typical accommodation distance in the registration form so we can answer student questions transparently. Schools that host minors must explicitly confirm that their host families are police-checked / DBS-cleared (or the local equivalent). Schools that don't tick that box are never matched with a student under 18.
Extra-curricular activities
School responsibility — we ask each partner school to declare whether it offers cultural or social activities outside class (city tours, excursions, language cafés). The declaration appears on the school card the student sees.
Feedback and mediation
A post-course feedback questionnaire will be sent to every student. A published mediation policy names a specific responsible person and a clear escalation path. Activates with our first real enrollment.
On FELCA membership
We believe the work should come first. For now, our focus is on earning the trust of the schools we partner with, delivering value to students who would not otherwise have been able to study abroad, and building the evidence base that proves the model. Formal FELCA association membership is on our horizon once we have that track record — we do not believe it belongs in a marketing claim before it belongs in reality.
Our parent group, FPP and The Student World, has 25+ years of experience running international education events across Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe.