It’s all hustle and bustle in student world with recruitment fairs popping up all over the place as the end of the summer term draws near. International students are, of course, a key target group and the UK University Fair London 2016 – one of the biggest recruitment fairs where you can meet up to 100 universities – is at the Lancaster London Hotel on Sat 14th May.
It’s also a busy time for accommodation hosting schemes handling applications from interested students and new family hosts. An increasing number of more affluent international students are always likely to be looking for superior accommodation while families who have been considering enrolling on a hosting scheme are giving a spare room the big makeover!
All walks of life and backgrounds
Hosts of homestay accommodation come from all walks of life and backgrounds. It can be reassuring for parents and students alike, to know that the best and most reputable room hosting schemes are approved to British Council standards.
Parents of young international students away from home for the first time in Britain also need to know that their young son or daughter will be safe and well looked after while studying abroad. Starting with a warm clean bedroom, providing proper meal plans with breakfast, lunch time sandwiches and a healthy cooked meal every day. And not forgetting TV, broadband and plenty of light for all the studying that a student is supposed to be doing every day!
Every prospective host and the amenities provided, whether a standard accommodation or a group accommodation are carefully vetted to ensure the specific needs of the student will be properly met. Host parents are required to submit an application, references, and will be assessed for eligibility and compliance by experienced host scheme providers.
Opportunity to invite the bigger world into their everyday life
It’s tempting to imagine that homeowners are simply interested in making as much money as they can from a spare room. There’s no doubt that a little extra income surely helps the average host in their monthly cost of living. At the same time, it’s important to realise that one of the main reasons why a family decides to sign up to a host scheme is the opportunity to invite the bigger world into their everyday life.
While around 20 per cent of international students come from China, Asia and the Indian subcontinent, the largest proportion – nearly 30 per cent – are from the EU, a further 5 per cent from other European countries, 6 per cent from North America and the Middle East, according to a Universities UK report on student trends, 2014/15.
Often hosts are teachers, lecturers or maybe, the caring professions. Some are older couples whose own children have grown up and left the nest, others may be single. Some simply love to add a student from overseas to the family household. Occasionally, hosts will take up to four students at a time to provide extended companionship. While up to three students may share a room, they must all must be provided with their own bed.
In other cases, younger students may only be taking a short course and simply want a room for a brief period. Both the student and the parents will often decide it would be simply easier to select a host from a similar background, culture and dietary preferences. A hosting scheme with an extensive and reputable register of accommodation providers should be able to make a shortlist of ideal hosts to meet particular student needs.
So what should a student reasonably expect to find when arriving at their new home? A neat and tidy bedroom plus a gleaming family bathroom sets the standard, to which the student should realise they will need to maintain.
A student needs to know what the house rules are
A good host not only makes the student feel immediately at home, they also actually physically show them around the home, the appliances they need to know about, such as washing machine, iron and Hoover, and how and when they are to be properly used. In many cases, many of these chores are automatically taken care of by the host, but a student needs to know what the house rules are while living under the same roof to avoid any innocent mishaps.
Communication is a welcome key to help create a real understanding, especially as a young student is likely to be nervous when they first walk through the door at the start of their stay. It also helps a student to more quickly gain fluency in the English language. How to decode the ticket fares of the local public transport system is often a good place to start!
The hosting experience is invariably looked upon as a particularly magical, fun time for all and many hosts and their young charges keep in touch on Facebook long after graduation.