Melanie Butler explains how to get the best course for your money

The graph on this page shows the value for money for language schools in London which offer the same type of general English course for adults. Schools to the left of and above the mean value line, the oblique line which divides the graph in two, are good value. The further they are away from the line, the better the value. Central London schools are marked in red, schools in the London villages, the wealthy residential areas, are marked in green.

Calculating the best value for money should be pretty simple: divide the cost of the product you are buying by its quality.

With some products, there is an established quality metric. Hotels, for example, are scored by hotel inspectors, using the five-star method. Similarly, UK-accredited language schools are scored by British Council Inspectors, who award a number of strengths and note any needs for improvement. The British Council publishes the full results for each school on its website.

There may be aspects of quality that inspectors miss, friendliness, for example, but at least they are all judged on the same standards.

Next is price. For a hotel, we need the cost per night, of the same kind of room, for the same length of time, at the same time of year – and a note of any hidden extra costs like breakfast.

With language schools, it should be the most popular kind of course. For over 16s, that is general English, and the average length is three weeks. So, we focused our search on three-week courses starting in January. This excluded courses in universities and state colleges because, outside the summer, most only offer courses lasting a ten-week term.

“Calculating the best value for money should be pretty simple: divide the 
cost of the product you are buying by its quality.”

To get a visa, however, students must study with a teacher for 15 hours a week. But most schools quote prices by the number of lessons, not the number of hours, and a lesson can range from 45 minutes to 90 minutes long. So, we had to count the number of taught hours. Some smaller ‘local’ schools that enrol students who live in their areas, and only for a few hours a week, were excluded. It’s worth noting that centres such as the Central School, whose course hours include things like lectures and guided self-study, which don’t count as course hours, are at a disadvantage in this metric.

Next, the price. Many schools, including some of the big chains, simply don’t publish any prices at all. You have to e-mail them for a quote or phone their sales office. All these were excluded.

Finally, we had to establish extra charges, specifically registration fees and charges for books. Some schools don’t include any information about registration fees – though 99 per cent of schools charge them and they can add up to £2 an hour to the cost of a 45-hour course. Others are vague on the price of books. We made two phone calls to each school to get the missing information, but in half a dozen cases, including one global chain, nobody could provide a clear answer.

It is so hard to get the price out of many language schools that 80 per cent of 18-24 year-olds start out looking for a language course on the net, and end up booking through a travel agent, which adds up to 40 per cent to the cost.