Dear friends
We hope youre doing OK in this strange and difficult time. Lets hope its all over before very long!
We wanted to get in touch to let you know that we have decided to offer an incentive (similar to the one we did last year) to help encourage students to come and study with us during this difficult time. Of course, at the moment you may have very few bookings for the UK at all but things may open up very soon, so we thought if you have this offer in readiness, it might help. Announcements should be made on Monday next week.
As you may know, it looks likely that schools may be permitted to open from March 8th or soon thereafter although we wont know this for sure until next week. Fingers crossed! We will be continuing to run our usual full-time intensive courses online with the same teachers and quality as normal until we can open.
It also sounds like pubs with outdoor seating/gardens may be able to open a month or two later ? we cant wait for that and neither can our students.
We do know that arriving students will have to:
- Have a negative test within 3 days before they leave their country
- Have a test on day 2 after arriving in the UK
- Have another test on day 8 after arriving
- Quarantine for 10 days, then they can come out after that if all tests have been negative
Our new Cambridge exam term starts on the 15th March, so we are hopeful we will be open for normal classes in school then. So what we would like to offer students is this:
- 1 weeks free accommodation in St Johns house (normally GBP195 per week) from the weekend of 6/7 March while they are quarantining and getting their 2 tests done
- During that week we will offer them free online learning and study materials, plus will have several Zoom calls with them to interview them, get to know their level, their needs and support them and get to know them personally
- We will then start online Cambridge Exam classes and General English and IELTS classes from 15th March
- Then they can (hopefully) join us on day 11 - either the Tuesday or Wednesday of that week, depending on when they fly in ? for real in-school classes
We only have 9 rooms in St Johns for that period, so its first come, first served! We also have a few en suite rooms in Granby Hill self-catering residence too and would offer the free week there too.
Do remind them theres no risk if things change as we offer free cancellation if they dont want to come if things have changed before then.
We hope this helps! Please let me know if anything is unclear and fingers crossed you and we can get back to normal life and normal travel returns soon for all of us!! Hope to see you all in person again soon!!!
Very best wishes
Andrew, John and Margaret
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Andrew Edwards
Principal
ELC Bristol