To all our host family:
Thank you for your support and for hosting and welcoming our students into your family. I thought I would personally give you an update to the current situation and our hosting arrangements.
Some of you may be feeling frustrated about the changes with placements and last minutes change during the current pandemic. This is totally out of our control, and many restrictions are now in place due to Covid-19 and also guidelines set by school management.
Back in March just before the official lockdown, many of our parents, who are based in Hong Kong, Macau and China decided to ask their children to return due to the high numbers of infections. For this reason, we needed to cancel our Easter camps and hosting placements. In May, our company was in danger of closing down because the majority of parents were worried about the handling of the situation by the UK government and were refusing to allow their children to return t
o the UK in September. With this in mind I personally travelled out to Hong Kong and after 2 weeks quarantine, spent my time persuading parents to allow their children to return. Together, Candy and I met with all our new students and answered all their questions and concerns. In the end, the majority of them have chosen to return in September although they still highly doubt the UK government’s handling of the situation. The parents had no choice, as in August, Hong Kong was in lockdown and no schools have reopened in September, forcing children to either travel back to the UK or to brace themselves for very limited education for their children.
With students back in the UK, we now face another problem on the cultural difference between Chinese parents and the British culture on how to handle the coronavirus. Chinese view face masks with utmost importance in this pandemic, and many are asking us if we can impose measures on these. For example, we have parents asking all host family members to wear face masks (even young children) inside the household, to protect their child. On balance, we decided to follow the UK government guidelines, together with British Boarding School and the AEGIS guidelines on hosting. We want to provide a safe and yet homely environment for our students, and hosting should be an enjoyable experience, and a chance for them to experience British culture. We have explained to parents individually what the UK rules are, and have found that some have agreed to follow our local guidelines, and some have decided to ask their family friends to take care of their child, many of whom share the same ethnic community, making the parents feel safer.
For UK Schools, in view of the parents’ concern, they are pushing for the schools to stay open for exeats and half-terms. We tried to get the information in advance as to whether this will be possible, but many schools are undecided. We now find ourselves in a difficult position, that when a school decides to stay open, the parents would prefer their child not to be moved and to stay in school. Parents see any movement will increase the chance of infection, and this decision is out of our control. Therefore, we have tried to alert all of you about this. This proves to be the most common reason why a student placement has been cancelled.
As the UK infection rate is becoming more serious, I believe more schools may consider staying open, because they are exempt from the lockdown rules if there is a local lockdown. We may get more requests to cancel their hosting at the last minute. I hope you can understand that we have tried our best, but the pandemic is making it very hard for all parties. We need to be adaptable under the circumstances in order for our students to feel confident about studying in the UK. I hope after this term, when we all learn about the new normal, we can stabilise the hosting arrangements like before.
I want to thank you for your generosity in giving up your time and your effort to help to host a student. I would like to keep our relationship for many years. I am sure Gwyn, Evelyn and Wai Kin all wanted the hosting to happen. Stay healthy and we shall keep you updated.
Eve
Eve Leung
Director of Elite Anglo-Chinese Services