English Summer and Winter School in San Diego

Twenty fifty-minute lessons a week, sixteen hours and forty minutes of class time, taught at levels from elementary to advanced. Lessons cover integrated skills — listening, speaking, reading, writing, grammar and pronunciation — and project work, and teaching is interactive rather than exam-focused. New students are tested and given an orientation on their first day so that they are placed in the right class. LSI's price list gives the junior class size as fifteen students on average and eighteen at most. The school's e-learning system is open to students outside class hours.

Three bookings are published for students aged 12 to 17. Tuition only covers the lessons alone, and the family arranges its own accommodation and meals. The day camp adds lunch on weekdays, the weekday activity programme and a full-day excursion each weekend. The full package adds full-board homestay accommodation in a shared room on top of everything in the day camp. A separate tuition-only programme exists for children aged 6 to 11, but the school requires them to be accompanied by a parent or guardian, so it is not a residential camp and is not sold here.

Students on the full package live with an LSI homestay family in a shared twin room with full board. LSI manages its own pool of homestay families in San Diego rather than using an agency, and homestays are within forty-five to sixty minutes of the school. Host families and staff are subject to background checks. Students booking tuition only or the day camp arrange their own accommodation; a student residence in San Diego's Little Italy district is listed by the school as a separate option.

The full package includes full board with the homestay family. The day camp includes lunch on weekdays. Tuition-only students make their own arrangements. The school can cater for special diets on request, for a supplement published in its price list.

The activity programme runs five mornings or afternoons a week with one full-day excursion at the weekend, and it is led by qualified LSI teachers who live in San Diego. It is included in the day camp and full package bookings and optional for tuition-only students. San Diego Zoo, Balboa Park, Symphony Hall and San Diego Bay are all within walking distance of the school, and the coast and beaches are a short journey away.

The school occupies a contemporary building on 5th Avenue in central San Diego. Students have a library with internet access, a lounge, a student kitchen and a vending machine offering free tea and coffee. Shops, restaurants and public transport are all next to the school, which makes the city easy to reach without a long commute.

San Diego gives students warm weather for most of the year, a long coastline and an easy-going Californian city that is used to international visitors. The school is small enough that staff know students by name, and it keeps dedicated student welfare and safeguarding officers, a twenty-four hour emergency telephone number and a code of conduct that students sign. Welfare and safeguarding procedures are assessed by local accreditation agencies.