The English Studio has now been placed on the register of sponsors for tier 4 applications. From March 2009 students will only be eligible for a student visa if they apply to a school on this register.

To get a student visa to study english in London you will need to score 40 points under the new points based system.

You will get 30 points if you get a visa letter from the English Studio or another school on the register of sponsors

and 10 points if you can show you have enough finances to cover your course fees and monthly living expenses for up to 12 months (known as maintenance).

Currently the UKBA (UK Border Agency) have set the monthly amount of maintenance as £800 to study in London. We believe this is too high and along with other schools and English UK we are campaigning to have this reduced to £600 which is the level set for the rest of the country

Things are still being worked out and I will let you know as soon as any new changes are announced

At first I felt frustrated, as nothing in London looked how it should look or how it used to look, at least in my mind.

I remember thinking ¨Where I’m from is much more beautiful, people are nicer, the weather is better than in London¨ why was I thinking like this, when obviously there’s so much to enjoy?, there’s so much to learn.

Even though this sounds incredible to believe, it took me a few months to “Open my eyes”. It’s the way I recalled all of this time walking around the beauty of London whereas, I wasn’t truly able to appreciate it as there were a lot of new things to learn, language, cultures, manners, fashion style, entertainments, streets and even a new way to socialize, a lot of information to process. I think I had closed my eyes as a way to give myself time to realize everything little by little. (more…)