Overseas Students at St Felix

Starting at a new school can produce a fairly heady mix of excitement and … apprehension.  The holidays are over and the way ahead is pretty unknown…

Just how cool, then, are our overseas students, arriving almost on the Suffolk shoreline  – at the end of journeys that could have started in Russia, China, Venezuela, Germany, Spain, Hong Kong, South Korea and Macau.

Our overseas students span Years 7 to Year 13 of the Senior School.  Overseas students come to us at various stages of their schooling. Some will stay on through the Sixth Form and go on to Higher Education in Great Britain; others may come for just a term, a year, a couple of years or more. It all depends on what their objectives are in coming to St Felix and on how this time out at St Felix can fit in with and complement their schooling at home.

But what all students have in common, from the moment of their arrival, is the care and support necessary to ease them into the life of their new school and home:  in their boarding house, a housemaster or mistress integrates them into the house family and offers all the support and encouragement that will help them fulfil their potential; during the school day, a tutor is on hand to track progress and deal with any problems that may arise.

Our overseas students bring other backgrounds and cultures into the school;  in return our British students – and other overseas ‘old hands’ – are both interested in and supportive of these newcomers.

English language classes and exams.
Within the first week of school all new overseas students take an English language test to enable us to assess their level and put them into a small group appropriate to that level. English as a Foreign Language is taught in small multi-language groups where the target language is also the language of tuition.

Depending on level and time to be spent here students work towards taking, for example, the Cambridge First Certificate in English in Year 11. (Success in this exam - part of a suite of Cambridge EFL exams - is recognised worldwide as achieving a broad-based intermediate level of competence in everyday English.)  In the Sixth Form students seeking university entrance in the UK will probably take the IELTS (International English Language Testing System) exam. This focuses on the academic English skills that non-native speakers will need to cope with their studies in Higher Education and it is recognized by all UK universities.