Melanie Butler explores the best-value short courses

The average hourly cost for a 15 hour-a-week short course in London is just under £18, but between £5 and £7 of that money normally goes to the travel agent. Shorter courses are more expensive: the hourly rate can drop 20 per cent or more for longer, ten-week courses.

Also, higher quality doesn’t always mean higher price. Wimbledon School of English, one of only seven UK centres to achieve a perfect score from the British Council, costs below the London average, at around £17.50 an hour.

The average variation from the mean in short course prices is £4 an hour, so anything over £22 is quite expensive, and anything under £14 is relatively cheap.

For a five-star school at two-star prices, there’s Kensington Academy, at £12.50 an hour for an EL Gazette Centre of Excellence with eight strengths. Delfin School, at £13 an hour, has an above-average six strengths. Other London schools with the same score cost between a reasonable £15 and an eye-watering £27.

English Studio, with three strengths, scores below-average but comes in at just £10.50 an hour.

Statistically, any price below £10 an hour is two standard deviations below the mean, in other words, it’s astonishingly cheap – making West London English School with two strengths and costing just £10 an hour a real bargain.

If you’re on a tight budget, any accredited school charging under £10 is worth looking at. But most focus on enrolling local residents and won’t pay agents’ commissions on short courses.

The Britannia School of English, for instance, is just £6 an hour – but if you need 15 hours a week for your visa you will need to sign up for a minimum of ten weeks.