Spain feedback

Student nationality
The Dutch continue to be an important nationality for Spanish language schools, although it should be noted that two-thirds of all the Dutch students were studying at one language school. This year, they were in number-one position, followed by Germans, who were in third place behind (second placed) Dutch last year. Last year's top nationality of Swedish was low down the list this year, with British, Italian and American taking third, fourth and fifth place respectively behind the Dutch and Germans. Western Europeans represented a whopping 80 per cent of total student enrolments while Eastern Europeans, who last year accounted for 11 per cent of enrolments, made up just two per cent this year.

Student enrolment
The proportion of students using an agent to either book their course or find their course was very similar, year on year, to our previous survey. Twenty-five per cent of students found their course via an agency (24 per cent last year) and 40 per cent booked with an agency (44 per cent previously). It is heartening to see that more students are using an agency to book than to find their course, rather than the other way around. When asked further questions about why they chose their school, reasons given included "it was easy to book on the Internet" and "it was the first one I found on the web"! Other reasons were "not too expensive" and "my university chose it".

Standard of the schools
Class sizes ranged from one student to 23, although almost all students were in classes of 11 or less. A majority of 67 per cent of students were satisfied with class conditions, although 16 per cent (a majority of whom were German) felt there were too many students of their own nationality in their classes. As last year, the Spanish teachers got an overwhelming thumbs-up from students, with 95 per cent of students deeming them either excellent or good. However, both accommodation provision and the social programme were rated lower by students this year than last year –12 per cent said their accommodation was unsatisfactory or poor. Overall, 92 per cent of students said that they would recommend their school (and three per cent did not reply).

Living in Spain
Just over half of our canvass group, 54 per cent, found the cost of living in Spain to be lower than in their home countries and 34 per cent thought it was about the same. When asked what they liked about studying in Spain, students voted the people in second position after the language, followed by the culture and the nightlife.