On 15 April 2000 we, the representatives of 11 private language centres and schools, as well as regional university associations, laid the foundation of OPTIMA, The Bulgarian Association of Quality Language Services. The association was set up with the financial and expert assistance of the British Council in connection with its Quality in Language Teaching project. Following numerous lively discussions, the Association’s main documents, the Memorandum of Association and the Inspections and Accreditation Scheme, were drawn up.

In the tidal wave of competing attractive offers from hundreds of language schools and centres, OPTIMA has set itself the ambitious task to GUARANTEE QUALITY IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHING in its member organisations, for the benefit of client students and staff.

OPTIMA works in close collaboration with EAQUALS, the European Association of Quality Language Services, and its member organisations, the Hungarian, Romanian and Polish associations. On 20 April 2001, just before the cocktail marking its first anniversary, OPTIMA was acknowledged for its professional activities: it was voted Associate member of EAQUALS. We, the founder members, are optimistic about the future of OPTIMA. The Association has already been successful in introducing uniform European standards in the field of foreign language teaching. We are confident that OPTIMA will manage to sustain these high standards in the years to come.