Language English Schools - How to study abroad with a low budget

Do you think that studying English in the UK is too expensive? Yes, it may be. But the good news is that if you adopt some tricks you can save up to 80% of your budget. Before reading I advice you to have also a look to the article "How to choose the best English Language School in UK" which contains some useful tips and links for allowing you to make the best choice.

When you choose your English School abroad you have three main points to accomplish:

1. Location, you need a multicultural and peaceful enviroment to study in.
2. Accomodation, you need a familiar enviroment to live in.
3. School, you need to be taught by the best teachers you can find.

You need to do you best to deal with each one of these points and achieve the solution that best suit your needs. As I've already spoken about the first two points in the article I linked above, I want to focus this hub on the third point that in my opinion is the main one.

I've studied English in UK. I've enjoyed my experience and the life in this amazing and welcoming country, but I've also spent a lot of money the very first time I went there. In fact, I was not aware about the high competition there is in UK among language schools. This competition is very useful for students as it makes prices lower and the quality of schools higher. Here I want to share with you some of my experience so that you can avoid the mistakes I made in the beginning.

The first time I went to England I spent £1700 to study for eight weeks in one of the most recognised and famous school in Bournmouth (I truly recommend to study in this town, it is gorgeous). I simply applied for a general English Course of 20 hours per week. So I purchased a total of 160 hours of English for a total amount of £1700. It is like £10,625 per hour. The school and the teachers were not bad, but the price I paid was for me unreasonable for two kind of reasons: 1) Some facilities in the school were very old-fashion, 2) Some teachers were very good, others less. I supposed that a school with 60 years of experience in teaching could provide me more... My teachers were very young like 30 - 35 years old, there is nothing bad with that but then I realised.. If in the school I spend all my time with teachers and if their experience is 2, 5 or maybe 10 years of teaching, why I should spend a great deal of money to study in such schools if maybe I can find teachers with the same experience in cheaper schools?

You might object to that saying that maybe the quality of teaching depends also on the direction that teachers get from the management of the school. This may well be true, but then I realised that it doesn't involve a big difference between expensive (old schools with many years of experience) and cheap schools (new ones), because any good management that want to develop a business and a successful brand need to give direction to its employees (teachers). What's more the books used by all the schools are exactly the same, so that any school has to teach exactly the same things at the same level. As a result the quality of teaching depends only on teachers and you can find good teachers everywhere in the World (both in the well-known more expensive schools and in the new cheaper ones).

After two months I couldn't afford anymore such an expensive school, so I decided to look around looking for more affordable solutions. I did something like a research of market and I was astonished to realise that there were in the same town very different offers to study English and some of them very cheap and flexible at the same time. So I joined a new English school in the Town Center for 24 weeks.I was eventually a long term student paying for all the period just £755 to study 15 hours per week. It was as paying £2,01 per hour with a net saving of £8,525 per hour if compared with the price of the first school I joined in.

The quality of teaching was quite similar and sometimes much better respect to the other school. This is just to demonstrate that everyone might be able to study English abroad saving a lot of many and having an high-quality service.

In the UK there are good schools of English everywhere but prices can be very different and you must be aware about them. The English courses offer in UK are extremely wide and it's up to your ability to find the highest rate quality-prices.

From what I said before, you have understood that don't always the most expensive English schools offers the best facilities and the highest quality of teaching. This true for any kind of business and it is more true for the teaching of English.

English teaching is all about teachers. If they are good, you will be happy with them and with the school. If they are not, you will think that the school is the worst. I want to get my point across. The fact is simply that the world of English Schools don't work as the world of University. At University you will likely find the best teachers in the most recognised University worldwide and you can also check which ones are the best by having a look at the University Rating.

For English language schools don't work this way. First of all, there are not ratings, so you can find difficulties comparing them. Secondly, the teaching of English industry is very dynamic with teachers who continously change school trying to improve the quality of their life and their wages. As a result of that, it's not taken for granted that you can find the best teachers in the most expensive English School. Sometimes I'd say that it is a matter of luck!

Usually the most expensive English Schools are the most advertised all around the World and the oldest ones. They promote the offered services saying that provide students with the benefits of many (sometimes 50 or more) years of experience of teaching English. In my opinion this is only the reason why they are so expensive: they have high cost due to big buildings and an heavy and old business structure.

As personal experience I strongly believe that it's not worth studying in the most expensive schools because they usually charge you more than the quality they provide you. Hoping this article has been helpful I invite you once again to read the hub "How to choose the best English Language School in UK" where you can find more technical information on how to make the best decision about the school to join in.

To your success.

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