Page 7 - ELG1601 Jan Issue 432

ELmarket report
January 2016 Page 7

Where quality is within reach

Melanie Butler discovers that you don’t necessarily get what you pay
for, and in fact cheaper fees can often mean better quality schools

here is no doubt that stud-
ying English in the north
Tof England is cheaper
than studying in traditional
southern destinations such as
Brighton, Bournemouth and
central London. The average
cost for a three-week course is
£12.50 an hour, which together
with a lower cost of living and
generally lower prices for host
family accommodation means
that the region offers good value
for money – especially when it
comes to high-performing lan-
guage centres which have done
well in their British Council
inspections.
Over 70 per cent of all Brit- Courtesy English in Chester
ish-Council-accredited language
centres in the north charge
between £10 and £15 for an
hour of teaching on a three-week
course outside the summer, as CENTRED ON QUALITY English in Chester students at The Cross in the city centre
we can see if we look along the
horizontal axis of the scatter- north, with the buzzing student Chester, home to English in for money, while the only uni-
gram (Figure 1). If we look at cities of York and Newcastle Chester – not just the top school versity in the region to offer
the vertical axis, which shows offering particularly good value in the region but joint top in the short courses year round – the
the quality scores based on for money. The well-heeled country. Institution type also has University of Liverpool – offers
the British Council inspection towns of Harrogate and Scar- a bearing on price, with state FE the best value for money in that
results, we can see that schools borough also do well, as does colleges offering strong value increasingly popular city. n
on or above the national aver-
age can in fact be cheaper. Only
two schools scoring below the Figure 1: Price vs quality comparison
national average cost less than
£10, as do two of the stronger 10
centres – Northumbria School English in Chester
of English and Leeds English
Language School. Only three
schools on the chart actually cost EF Manchester
more than £15 an hour – all in
the top ten for the region and all International House Newcastle Kaplan Manchester
members of a chain. Fair value line
Judging by these results,
there is no correlation between York Associates Anglolang
price and quality in the region Melton College EC Manchester Academy of a
English
– so choosing a high-quality
language centre won’t cost any Scarborough International School INTO
more, in fact it might actually Quality (Gazette formula based on BC inspection reports) Leeds English Language School University of Manchester a=Kaplan Liverpool
Liverpool ELC
come out cheaper. This is in LILA Liverpool b=ELC York
c =Leeds Language College
stark contrast to the pattern we A+ English d=Manchester Academy of English
have seen in other cities. In the CES Harrogate b e=IH Manchester
f =Essential English
analysis for Oxford in our June g=Newcastle College
2015 issue, for example, the cost Northumbria School of English c d h=Communicate School of English
i =The Liverpool School of English
of the course was highly corre- e f j =New College Group, Manchester
lated to the inspection score of Manchester English School g i h j k k =Language Gallery at LSBF
l =New College, Nottingham
the school, whereas, looking at m=Preston Academy of English
London in our July issue, price l o n p q n=CES Leeds
o= Newcastle International School
was correlated with location, m of English
with central London being sig- r p=Accord Manchester
q= Manchester Central School
nificantly more expensive than of English
the leafy ‘village’ suburbs. r =ECX Training
Location does count in the 0
0 5 10 Fees (£/h) 15 20 25

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