LIVING IN THE UK
In the hundreds of years of education development, UK education has gradually formed to be one of the well-established, rich and flexible education systems all over the world.
UK Education
UK schools are divided into public schools and state schools. State schools are funded by the government and mainly provide free education for local students. Minority state schools enrol international students and they have to pay for the tuition fee. Although for international students, the cost (e.g. tuition fee) of state schools are relatively cheaper than public schools, the infrastructure and educational resources of public schools are better than state schools. Moreover, nearly all of the public schools enrol international students. Therefore, public schools such as Tonbridge colleges and Cheltenham ladies college is the first choice for the majority of international students.
At present, there are more than 2500 public schools in the UK, accounting for 7% of the total number of students. As the essence and core of the UK primary and secondary education, public schools cultivate a large number of students who have been enrolled by the top universities all over the world, including Oxford and Cambridge University who enrol about 40% public schools students every year.
Guardian
UK government requires international students who under 18 years old and study in the UK mush have a local guardian to take care of their life and deal with possible matters. Normally, the responsibility of guardian is holiday arrangement including accommodation, school enrollment, take students to the hospital if necessary and so on.
Additionally, the guardian information is one of the required documents when the minor international students apply for the UK student visa. UK visa centre also points out that the guardian should give guidance and assistance at the all registrations, accommodation and anything related to the guardians students.
Home-stay
International students have two ways to live in host families. The one way is to ask the students' school to help student contact the local host families. The other is to ask the local professional British home-stay agency to arrange the home-stay accommodation.
The life in host families has its unique character as well as the common character of the normal family life.
The UK is an international country which has lots of people from all over the world. Therefore the host family in the UK is not only the UK families but also other countries such as Europe family which can give students with different cultural and religion felling.