The number of host families for visiting students from abroad has surged in the recession – but what's involved, asks SHEILA WAYMAN
SHOALS OF YOUNG foreign language students weaving slowly along the pavements with identical rucksacks on their backs are an integral part of the Irish summer.
Come nightfall, the chattering packs disperse into individual family homes, where the majority of the 26,000 children aged 16 and under who come here to study English each year are placed.
During the Celtic Tiger years, language schools struggled to find enough host families – but no longer, as people look for ways to boost their incomes. They can expect to be paid between €140 and €190 a week per student, depending on what facilities they can offer and the amount of food they are expected to provide.
Who are these host families, why do they do it and what impact does it have on their own lives?
It used to be difficult to sign up families, says Bob Golden, who set up Dún Laoghaire Tuition Centre (DLTC) in Dublin nine years ago. “As you can imagine, with the change of circumstances, it has become very, very easy. To be honest, every second phonecall this June was from a family looking to host. Three or four years ago we were advertising for hosts.”
But the surge of interest brings its own worries. “You understand people are doing it for extra money, but you don’t want people who are only doing it for that,” he explains.
Experiences with a host family can make or break a student’s visit here and determine whether the country, never mind the school, will be recommended when he or she returns home.
“Host families are hugely important,” says Fionnán Nestor of Fáilte Ireland. “Parents sending their children over as students are looking for the most holistic experience they can get, and the host family is a very attractive proposition for them.”
Living with a family offers the best way of integrating with Irish society, he says, rather than staying in accommodation with classmates. “It is a very broad experience and I think it is the thing that differentiates us from our competitors,” he says.
Golden says foreign students have a picture of Ireland – the stereotypical beautiful landscape and greenness – but they have also all heard about the Irish welcome.
“I am one of those people who thinks we did lose it for a number of years and we desperately need it back. Tourism is the only thing we genuinely have that is of our own creation.”
The language education sector last year attracted nearly 100,000 overseas students of all ages – a 3 per cent increase on 2009 – and seems to be bucking the trend, says Nestor. Traditionally, students come from Spain, Italy and France – but in recent years Ireland has begun to tap into emerging markets, such as South America.
Although foreign students are more visible when language schools are at their busiest, it is a year-round business. With a wide range of programmes on offer, a host family may be asked to put up a student for a few days or for the best part of a year.
As well as providing a bedroom with space to study and access to a bathroom, hosts are generally required to supply breakfast, packed lunch and a cooked dinner to students who are out of the house all day and have a programme of evening activities. Sunday is the one day families are usually expected to include students in what they’re doing, or take them out.
Therese Campbell, a beautician, is registered with a number of agencies in Dublin but takes only one student at a time into her home in Dalkey, Co Dublin, where she lives with her 19-year-old son. Her cooking always scores highly in departing students’ evaluations, so she tends to be allocated ones with “eating preferences”.
She has had vegetarians, “a girl who couldn’t eat anything red, I’ve no idea why”, and currently has her first coeliac, a 17-year-old French boy.
Campbell doesn’t take anybody younger than 15. “You have to babysit them and I think they are too young, to be honest, to be coming over here,” she says. “Sometimes parents send problematic children. I have only had one once – a magpie, I would find things like my iPod in his bedroom. Thankfully, that was once in 11 years.”
Unlike some host families, she does not issue students with a list of house rules. “If anything untoward is happening, I tackle it head on.”
Hosting is not something to rush into, she says, as when you do it all year round, “you have strangers in your house all the time”.
Karen Dunleavy of Salthill, Co Galway, a separated mother of three, opts for older students too, so they don’t need “babysitting”. She doesn’t mind teenagers, and her daughters Alanna (13), Rebecca (12) and Rachel (10), probably socialise with them more, but as the girls stay with their father two nights a week, she would rather not be housebound every evening.
She started hosting students three years ago and it fits around her part-time work as a legal executive from 9am to 1pm. She is paid €150 for a standard room and €182 if an en suite is specifically requested.
“It is not a huge amount of extra work,” she says. She would be doing the cooking and laundry anyway, “so a few extra clothes and a few extra spuds in the pot is not going to make a huge difference”.
She used to take up to three students at a time but as her daughters got older they like their own space, so she keeps it to a maximum of two.
Dunleavy sees the benefit of visiting students opening her children’s eyes to other cultures. “At mealtimes when we have a conversation, they learn about other countries and their ways of life.”
She has to make a bit more of an effort with the evening meal when students are there, “which is no harm . . . I could be very lazy if they weren’t”. The Europeans, she says, are healthy eaters – they love vegetables and salads – and that rubs off on the host family.
Geraldine Dwyer started hosting foreign students in her Galway home 20 years ago and has been on the books of the Atlantic Language school for the past five years. She takes up to three students at a time – usually aged from 13 to 17 and predominantly Spanish, French, Italian or, recently, Austrian.
Short-term students, many of whom are on school trips, start to come in January or February and by March and April they are in full swing. Her own four children, ranging in age from 12 to 24, have grown up with foreign students in the house. (The second eldest is in Canada and the eldest is about to move to the Netherlands, so just her 17-year-old and 12-year-old remain.)
“They’re so used to the students, they don’t take much notice. They are so busy themselves, especially in the winter, they just meet fleetingly.”
The students who come for a month in the summer are different “from the three friends coming and staying with you while they’re on school tours and who are gone after three days”, she explains. “They are around with you more; they become part of the family.”
This July she had a repeat visit from a Spanish girl – “she is just a pet” – and two Italian girls. But she takes August off so the family can have the house to themselves for a while.
Some people might question the sanity of any family wanting to take on responsibility for more teenagers, but it doesn’t phase Dwyer, who says they’re just typical teenagers, “no matter where they come from”.
Some are more communicative and sociable than others – “but if they don’t want to [socialise], you can’t force it”.
The younger students always have curfews, which differ from group to group. Dwyer gets a letter from the school when each student arrives that stipulates when they need to be back in the house each evening.
“When they are going out I would always, always emphasise that they come home as a group, never on their own.” She says she is lucky that, in the Knocknacarra estate she lives in, there are six or seven host families, so students can come and go in packs.
“If they are late coming back, it is the organisation you get on to immediately. Once the curfew is over they have to be in. You’d feel responsible if you didn’t let somebody know.
“They are usually very good – and if they’re out they are usually with teachers, at an organised evening,” she adds. “So it is not really a problem.”
For the students aged 12 and 13, the curfew is “pretty much after dinner”, says Golden. “They should not be getting a bus anywhere in the evening.” Students aged 14 and 15 have to be home by 10pm and for the 16- and 17-year-olds, the cut-off is 10.30pm.
For the students from countries such as Spain, that is really early, he adds. “Their jaws drop when they hear it. You have to try to explain to them that there is really nothing for kids to do on the street. That is a cultural thing for them to get over.”
FAMILY TIES: WHAT MAKES A GOOD HOST FAMILY?:
“You know when you go in the gate,” says Maureen Kelly, accommodation manager with Atlantic Language in Galway city, who has been vetting host families for many years.
The most important quality she looks for is kindness; families also need to be welcoming and understanding. For instance, children get sick, she points out – the school had a child this year who had to have her appendix out.
Although the host families are paid, “I don’t like the emphasis on that”, says Kelly, who is the mother of four grown-up children.
Families interested in hosting foreign students can register with a local language school. They are asked to fill out a detailed questionnaire about their house: the number of bedrooms and bathrooms; who lives in it; if anyone smokes and if there are pets – as they may be unsuitable for students with allergies. They will also be asked if they have had any criminal convictions.
A home inspection and interview follow; accommodation co-ordinators go with gut feeling after that. They try to place teenage students with families who have children of a similar age and same gender.
In the past, it has not been possible for language schools to avail of formal vetting for their host families. This has been a worry for language school operators, especially those who are placing children as young as 12 in people’s houses, and some say privately that they would prefer the reassurance of official checks.
However, in a response to a query, a Garda spokesman says the Garda Vetting service is currently being extended, on a phased basis. “Organisations placing children to live with host families in Ireland for the purpose of language studies are eligible for the Garda Vetting service,” he says.
Kelly says that some of the host families have been with Atlantic Language since it was founded in 1993 and the school rarely has any complaints from students about them. When students have finished their course at Atlantic Language, which won Best English language school in Europe in the Language Travel magazine Star awards in 2009, they are asked to rate their classes, their activities and their host families.
“If there is anything a little bit off, we would phone the family,” she says. Occasionally there are personality clashes, “but not as often as you might think. They are children and if they say something is wrong you have to check it out and satisfy yourself it is right – sometimes it can be a misunderstanding if their English is not very good.”
Karen Dunleavy of Salthill in Galway, who has been hosting students since 2008, believes it is essential that they are treated as members of the family and not regarded just as “extra cash”.
“I always treat them as if it was one of my girls abroad . . . that’s the way I look at them,” she says.
“I have heard horror stories where a family would all bundle into one room and have as many students as possible – five or six – and feed them rubbish.”
You would want to do it, she stresses, as you are tied to the house for the evening meals.
“You are welcoming them into your family,” she says. “You might as well do it right.”
THE FIGURES: FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDENTS
112 English language schools in the Republic are accredited by ACELS, an agency of the Department of Education and Skills
25,890 students aged 16 and under came to study English here last year
70,360 students aged 17-plus came to study English here last year
3.3 weeks is the average length of stay of a European student
19.8 weeks is average stay for non-European students
€400 is the approximately weekly spend of a language student (accommodation, food, tuition, social programme).
€300 million a year is what the English language training sector is worth to the economy in direct spend
– Source: Fáilte Ireland
