How do I know my child is safe?

This is the question behind every other question a parent asks us, and it usually arrives disguised as something else — what time do they get back, who has the phone number, what if there is a problem. So here it is directly, with the specifics rather than reassurance.

Who is responsible, and when

From the moment a student is met at the airport to the moment they are handed back at departures, the school is responsible for them. There is no gap in that, and no hour of the day when the answer is "they are on their own".

What that looks like in practice, hour by hour, is set out in how supervised is a study holiday — including who is with the group at seven in the morning and at ten at night, and what happens when a student is unwell. This guide is about the checks behind it.

The adults: what is actually verified

Every adult who has contact with a student — teachers, group leaders, activity staff, and every adult in a host family — is checked before they are allowed near one. Specifically:

• An enhanced DBS check. The Disclosure and Barring Service is the UK's criminal-records service. "Enhanced" is the highest level and the one required for regulated work with children; it includes the children's barred list. Not a basic check, which shows far less.
• Two references, taken up and read. Not collected and filed.
• Identity and right-to-work documents, seen in the original.
• Safeguarding training, renewed rather than done once.

Two things about how we hold that, because they are the part most schools do not talk about. First, a check has an expiry, and our system tracks two separate clocks — when a check was issued and when it must be redone — so somebody cannot drift past their renewal date while still on a rota. Second, nobody is added to a group until their record is complete. It is a gate, not a form.

Host families

A host family is inspected in person before a student ever stays there, and re-inspected while they are working with us. The visit covers the bedroom, the bathroom, fire safety, and a conversation with everyone living in the house. Every adult in the household is DBS-checked, not only the person who signed up.

A student is never placed with a family who has not been visited. If a placement has to change at short notice — it happens, illness mostly — the replacement comes from the same checked pool, and you are told the same day.

What families are like, and how to choose between a family and a residence for your own child, is in host family or student residence.

The one adult you will actually deal with

Every group has a named member of staff who is your contact for the whole course. Not a switchboard, not a shared inbox. You get their name and their number before departure, and they are the person who calls you if anything happens and the person who answers when you call.

There is also an emergency number staffed outside office hours, in the UK, for the whole time your child is with us. It is not a voicemail.

What we tell you, and when

Our rule is that you hear about anything that would worry you, from us, before you hear about it from your child. In practice:

• Arrival — you are told when the group has landed and reached the accommodation, on the day.
• Anything medical, however minor, on the day it happens. A twisted ankle is a phone call.
• Any change of accommodation or any change to the course, when it is decided.
• Anything involving behaviour — theirs or somebody else's — on the day.

We do not send a daily update, because a daily update trains you to skim and then the important message gets skimmed too.

Phones, and the argument you are probably having

Students keep their phones. We are not going to confiscate a fourteen-year-old's only link to home, and a school that does is solving its own problem rather than yours.

What we ask instead is that phones go away during lessons and during an excursion briefing, which is a rule about attention rather than about contact. Students message home constantly, mostly photographs, and that is fine.

One piece of practical advice, from experience: agree a time to speak, once a day or every other day, before they leave. Students who have a fixed time worry less than students who could call any moment and therefore think about it all the time. The homesickness we see is almost always in the first three days, and it almost always passes.

Insurance, medical care and consent

You tell us about medical conditions, allergies, medication and dietary requirements on the enrolment form, and that information goes to the group leader, the teaching staff and the host family — the people who need it, not everybody.

You also sign a consent form covering emergency medical treatment, so nobody is looking for a signature at the wrong moment. Travel insurance is your responsibility unless the course states otherwise, and we will tell you plainly what your course includes rather than leaving it in small print.

What we will not claim

We will not tell you a fortnight abroad is risk-free, because nothing is, and a school that promises that is telling you something about itself. Students get lost for twenty minutes. Students lose passports. Students fall out with each other. What you are buying is not the absence of those things — it is that when one happens there is a checked adult nearby who knows what to do, a named person who calls you, and a school that tells you the truth about it.

If there is something specific you want to know — a condition, a worry about a particular child, a question about a particular city — ask it on the contact page. We would much rather answer a hard question before you book than after.

For what to do before departure, what to pack for two weeks in England and do we need a visa for a short English course are the two most useful next reads.