Frequently asked questions

If your child’s visa application is rejected after you’ve paid the full tuition, we understand this can be a stressful situation. While deferring enrolment to the following year is generally not guaranteed, we do strive to support families in these situations. Here are a few possible steps we can explore:

1. Deferral of Enrolment: In some cases, we may allow your child’s enrolment to be deferred to the next summer, depending on the circumstances and availability. This would enable your child to attend the programme the following year without incurring additional tuition fees.
2. Refund Policy: Please refer to our Terms and Conditions in situations where a visa is denied. The student insurance we organise for each of our attendees should cover this situation, as long as it is through no fault of the parents or agents and that visa applications were made in good time. We encourage you to reach out to our office team to discuss refund options, if applicable.

Please contact our office as soon as you receive any visa decision so we can assist you with next steps and find the best solution for your family.

At Summer School, we provide a warm and nurturing environment to help all students, including those who are introverted, feel comfortable and welcome. Our small class sizes and attentive staff allow us to offer personalized support. We encourage participation through a variety of activities academies, helping each student engage at their own pace. Additionally, we assign students to small groups for activities and provide a buddy system to help them make friends and feel connected from the start. Our goal is to ensure every girl feels supported and at ease, regardless of her personality.

If your daughter doesn’t like a specific Academy, it’s important to understand why. If her reasons are valid—such as the academy not aligning with her actual interests it might be worth considering a change. However, it’s also essential to encourage her to give it a fair try before making any decisions. Sometimes, discomfort comes from the challenge of something new and working through that can lead to growth and development. A change should only happen when it’s clear that the academy is not a good fit, and there’s a better alternative available. Please note that for academies with a fixed cost it is not possible to offer a refund once summer school has started.

We always encourage our learners to practice English in and out of the classroom, as it’s essential for their language development. We understand the importance of creating an environment where students are fully immersed in English. To support this, we aim to diversify our student body by keeping a nationality cap of 20 to 25%, ensuring that learners could engage with peers from various linguistic and cultural backgrounds. While we cannot always guarantee that your daughter won’t be grouped with others who speak her native language, we will certainly do our best to monitor and support her English learning experience. Also, we understand that it is exhausting to communicate in English when it’s not your native language all the time, and we try to establish a balance not to pressure the learners too much.

We understand some meals can be challenging for children who like particular foods.  At Heathfield we provide a very good variety of hot and cold meals, vegetarian options and decent snacks. All girls are monitored at mealtimes and encouraged to eat something healthy. Our monitors also make sure that girls with dietary requirements are catered for appropriately.

The main difference is that Summer School includes English lessons and Summer Camp does not. The girls on Summer Camp are either native English speakers or they already speak fluent English and therefore do not need lessons. Some of the Summer Camp girls are boarders and some live nearby and come in every day. All Summer School girls are from overseas and board during the course. Whether you are on Summer School or Summer Camp, you will all mix together at certain points during the week (and every evening for the boarders) so you will all make friends.

The numbers vary but in our busiest weeks we can have about 150 girls sleeping in school – both Summer School girls from many different countries and British boarders. There will also be lots of English summer campers coming in and going home each day. Many girls are returners – some come for many, many years! – but every year we welcome lots of new girls as well.

If your English level is not very high yet, there’s no need to worry! All the members of staff explain the rules and instructions very slowly and clearly and they use signs, pictures and even demonstrations to explain the most important things. The Monitors have a special job: to make sure that you are in the right place at the right time with everything you need. Don’t worry – Heathfield is all about learning English so you will never be in trouble for not understanding anything. Classes are created so everyone in your class will have a similar level of English.

Your family can come and visit you and take you out of the school for a few hours but this only really happens if you have relatives or family friends who live nearby and want to see you. Your parents must email the office to tell us that they want to visit and to arrange a time to come and take you out. You are very busy at Heathfield and so we normally suggest Sundays for family visits so you miss as little as possible when they take you out.

There is a good mix of both older and younger girls. Summer School has girls from 8 to 17 years old. Your bedroom will be in an area where other girls of a similar age will also sleep.

Summer School classes are organised not just by level but by age as well and many afternoon and evening activities are organised for senior and junior girls separately. Older girls will sometimes go on different trips from the younger girls and some special activities are offered just for them too. There is a list of senior and junior sample activities here.

Usually, about half of our overseas girls come from European countries and the other half from Asia, Africa and the Americas. You will be able to make friends with girls from different countries and cultures. Many of our former students remain friends as they become adults and they tell us about their friendships. We have had emails telling us about girls who keep in touch from Russia and Spain, England and Japan, Togo and Italy, Israel and Egypt.

Most girls come to Heathfield without bringing a sister or a friend so if you don’t know anyone, you are in the majority! When you arrive, you will be introduced to other girls your age so that you can start getting to know people immediately and you will join in activities together. You will also be put into a House Group which is made up of girls of different nationalities so everyone will be speaking English and making friends with new people. New girls eat together at their first supper.

There are around 50 members of staff and although they are not all on duty at the same time, we have a very high ratio of staff to students so there are always enough members of staff around. Our ratio of staff:student is 1:6. There are always lots of people to help you, including staff Monitors who look after Junior and Senior new girls, and Helpers and young staff who are former students.