More UK schools are focusing on under-16s both in the summer and year-round. Melanie Butler examines their results.

The private sector market for young learners is changing. No longer confined to summer schools, an increasing number of operators now report that all or most of their year-round enrolments come from under 16s.

There are now 92 young learner specialists, an increasing number of which operate year-round. Summer multi-centre operator UKLC, for example, has just announced that it will run closed group courses outside the summer.

These include many private language schools, like St Giles Highgate, which previously enrolled mostly adults; while more adult specialists, like Wimbledon School of English, are launching separate junior summer programmes.

Young learner specialists have a different statistical profile from the adult market. On average they score the same 4.5 net areas of strength. But their most common score for junior operations is four, while in the adult market the most common result is one single area of strength.

Young learners specialist are generally bunched in the middle of the rankings with statistically fewer than expected right at the bottom and more at the top. Two summer multicentres, SBC and Discovery Summer, even beat all the boarding schools, though that sector as a whole remains stronger.

The young learners top twenty is dominated by family-owned operators with both summer schools, like ISCA, and year-round operators Sidmouth and The English Experience. Fewer chains have schools in the top 20 for juniors than we see in the adult sector.

A further analysis of results based on ownership structure, however, reveals the weakest results, both in the summer and year-round, are to be found in operations owned or part-owned by language travel agents.

According to the information provided to the British Council, some twenty percent of all junior operations are owned or run by agencies based overseas.

*family-run

**year round

***family-run year-round