We’ve followed up concerns about impact on bus travel relating to language school students. Here is a response from the EF International Language Centre. We are contacting EF Language Travel too. The complaints were around packing of bus stops and of language students not having bus passes so slowing boarding time for residents.
Thanks for sharing concerns of local residents about disruption caused by language students. We appreciate that this can be a challenge for people going about their daily lives during the busy summer months and do work with the local bus companies to do what we can do ease the situation. I am sorry that some of your constituents are unhappy but would like to stress that whilst at times something of a nuisance, language students are generally well-behaved and do not present a threat.
I am the Director for EF International Language Centre, which is a school for older students running courses year round. Our students are aged 16+ and generally travel as individuals. We do not have a lot of large group activities or movement around the city, and looking at the details of times and locations from the complaints you have received, these are certainly not activities which we have been involved with.
However our sister company, EF Language Travel, does have more group focused operations in Oxford through the summer vacation period, in particular running courses at Oxford Brookes campus in Gipsy Lane. I will forward the complaints you have received to my counterparts there and ask them to consider ways which issues can be avoided as much as possible.
We are renting a small number of rooms at Dorset House, as noted in one email. Our students arrived there last Sunday 10th July and will be there just for a few weeks. Whilst there are restrictions on use during term time, student accommodation like Dorset House is available to any educational organisation during university vacations. I believe there are a number of schools renting accommodation there but I will also pass these concerns to the manager in order that she can discuss with all schools.
It wold be simpler and quicker if all the students had travel cards and were briefed on how to use them efficiently as they board the bus. A lot of the delays and irritations are caused by people fiddling about at the driver’s console on arriving at the bus.
This should happen David. Language schools are encouraged to buy pre-paid cards for their students and the bus companies are keen to do this. The problem seems to be from the pop-up language schools who suddenly appear and have no local contract address in the UK. All the agencies try and log these when we come across them but it’s not always easy to tell one set of language school students from another.