The Language Holiday Industry Has a Quality Problem
Most people choosing a language holiday assume that price, branding, or confident marketing language will tell them which schools are good.
In reality, it rarely does.
Almost every provider promises “immersion,” “confident English,” and “authenticity,” yet the actual experience can be radically different.
The problem is that most people don’t know what to look for — partly because marketing is murky, partly because big companies make a lot of noise, and partly because everyone thinks they already know what a good language class looks like. (The problem with this is that those standards were set a long time ago by schools and the same big companies).
At Blue Noun, we have a lot of experience reimagining what a language holiday can be.
In this blog, we give you a clear overview of the problem and give you practical tips for comparing language holiday offers, so you can find the best language holiday option for you.
To do this, we are going to talk about eggs.
Breakfast at Blue Noun
Seeing Past Marketing
You might think an egg is an egg,
But not all eggs are equal.
You get eggs that are fresh and full of flavour, eggs from farms that prioritise bird welfare.
And you get the opposite: ones with paper-thin shells, raised in unholy conditions.
The problem is, they all have convincing farm names, or are called Happy Chicken Farm or some such. The bad options pretend to be the good options.
One problem you have as a consumer (if you care) is working out which is which — and what you are willing to pay for the difference. And unfortunately, even that is complicated. Most UK consumers assume that an expensive chicken is an indicator of better conditions, but it is not. There are only a couple of supermarket brands that insist on better welfare; if you are not shopping with those, a higher price is just a scam to make you think you are getting better animal welfare.
What This Egg Box Can Tell About Quality
My small town here in Perthshire has a wonderful advantage over urban life: we are surrounded by small-scale egg producers, so we have lots of good choices within reach.
This box has a couple of tells that indicate it’s a good buy.
→ Firstly, it’s got a handwritten date. This indicates small-scale production.
→ Secondly, the box is a bit bashed and grubby. This means it’s probably on its second outing as an egg box, which again indicates small-scale, client loyalty, local production and distribution.
These are 2 signs of high-quality eggs.
Your Guide to Choosing a Language Holiday
There is much known to be wrong with the food industry, but there are also buyer traps and red flags inside the language tuition industry that, as a client, you may not be aware of.
You want an opportunity to practise speaking English in a country where it’s spoken, so you start searching for an English learning holiday.
These days, you will find every language school using much the same language — finding freedom of voice, authentic cultural immersion, and promising “confident English.”
Like supermarket chickens, price is not an indicator of the quality of service.
So, What Are the Good Language Holiday Tells
How can you know whether you are going to be treated like a guest, meet real locals for real conversation, and have a bespoke holiday built around your interests, language needs, and best learning rhythms — or whether you are going to be processed: one more bum on a seat in a mixed-level class with an ill-coordinated teaching team?
Your Guide to Choosing a Language Holiday
(Let’s start with things to avoid).
5 Red Flags for Language Holidays
The people selling the course are not the people teaching it.
This matters because language learning is relational. When sales and teaching are separated, decisions are made by people who will never meet you, never hear you speak, and never adapt the experience to how you actually learn. What gets sold is a promise; what gets delivered is whatever fits the system.
You are given a fixed timetable weeks before you arrive.
This signals that your needs are irrelevant. Real language learning responds to context, energy, confidence, and opportunity — none of which can be predicted in advance. A fixed schedule exists for logistical efficiency, not for learning quality.
Everyone does the same excursions, every week.
This tells you the experience is designed for repeatability, not meaning. When activities are pre-set and unchanged, language use becomes performative rather than responsive. You are placed into a loop, not a living environment.
Classes are mixed-level by default.
Mixed-level teaching prioritises classroom management over progress. Stronger speakers hold back, quieter speakers disappear, and teaching is flattened to the middle. For confident learners, this is one of the fastest ways to stagnate.
Accommodation is an afterthought — somewhere to sleep, not somewhere language or connection is expected to happen.
This removes an important part of your daily language exposure. Where and how you live determines how much English you hear, use, and absorb outside formal sessions. Treating accommodation as logistics instead of learning strips the experience of continuity and depth.
No one asks what you want to see, do, or talk about before you arrive.
This reveals that curiosity about you is not built into the model. If your interests don’t shape the experience, neither will your motivation. Language sticks when it attaches to things you care about; without that, it remains abstract.
You are promised “confidence” but treated like a number.
Transformative confidence cannot be delivered at scale.
It comes from being seen, responded to, and taken seriously as a speaker. When systems prioritise throughput, confidence is reduced to a slogan rather than an outcome.
Choose the Right Experience for Your Level
If you were an English beginner, this list is not a bad approach to language learning: you can make a lot of progress in a classroom in a week.
But when you already have a good level of English, and you’ve sat in many classrooms before, these are second-rate options.
You arrive as an English learner and go home as an English learner.
Aim to go home as an English user.
Instead, choose a small-scale language holiday provider that can give you exciting, interesting, real-world language experience every day and get you inside the culture of the town or city.
Very few of us do it.
We are exceptional.
How Bad Can it Be?
An Industry Gone Wrong
The language industry has always had players happy to exploit the international pressure to be good at English.
After Brexit, there was a significant shift in the English language holiday market. Europeans who had previously travelled to the UK began choosing Ireland instead — the right language, but no passport required.
This led to a rapid increase in demand, and alongside many legitimate schools, a large number of poor-quality and outright scam providers appeared. The situation became serious enough that the Irish government introduced a strict legal definition of what a language school service is.
To some extent, this protects buyers from the worst abuses. But it also has a downside. Those rigid definitions favour large, standardised schools and classroom-based models, and they do little to encourage alternative, flexible, or more human ways of learning.
In practice, they make it harder for smaller, relationship-led providers to exist — even when the learning experience itself is far richer.
Helpful Guides
Blue Noun Help Choose the Right Language Holiday for You
This article is a part of a series written to help you choose your language holiday.
It’s a big decision which merits research, it’s not as easy as just one single factor — it’s about understanding how different decisions affect the experience you’ll actually have.
I’ve written in more detail about some of the key signals mentioned above, and others too, to help you compare offers properly: ending up frustrated when you could be having fun.
Class Size on Your English Holiday
Discover how numbers can change everything on a language holiday
→ Why Small Class Size Matters on Your English Holiday
Immersion Courses for English: What You Need to Know
This blog explains what “immersion” really means in the context of English learning — and what it doesn’t. It helps readers understand the different types of immersion courses on offer, what actually supports progress, and what to look for (or be cautious of) when choosing an immersion-style English experience.
Can a Holiday Fix Your English? We Compare 3 Options
Does taking a holiday for your English work?
This blog looks at 3 language travel options:
- Going on holiday by yourself
- Taking a language school English immersion UK language holiday
- Our offer – a bespoke, real-world English conversation holiday.
A Guide to Choosing a Language Holiday – Go Rural or Urban?
This blog gives a fresh look at people’s preconceptions about choosing where to travel to learn English, with tips on answering this one question: should you go urban or rural for your English immersion holiday?
→ Tips | Language Holiday in UK – Go Rural or Urban?
You don’t need to read all of these.
But if you’re comparing options, understanding even one or two of these areas will put you far ahead of most buyers.
Price per person
per week, 2026
This is me looking after a neighbour’s chickens – and getting to keep the lovely warm eggs. (Photo taken by a client on a Blue Noun holiday).
Food and Drink. Options Matter on Your Language Holiday
By the way, I do also care about eggs
It’s why our language holiday guests only eat the best-choice local eggs and meat. We get a weekly organic veg box that supplies most of our shared meals. We feature milk from an island dairy where the cows are free-roaming and the milk is pasteurised slowly so it retains its full flavour (and boy, can you taste the difference). I’ve done all the research, so you can just enjoy the ingredients, the meals, and the conversation, knowing that your body is being treated to the best, healthy, tasty food.
→ You can find out more about Food and Drink on our English Language Holidays.
Successful language travel needs guidance, structure, and curation to convert moments into language transformation.
To demonstrate this, we look at one simple whisky tasting, experienced in two different ways, one with language coaching support and one without.
→ Language Coaching is Key to Successful Language Progress On Holiday
Further Information
Ireland passed legislation to protect students and staff at English language schools after a number of providers failed suddenly, prompting concern about quality and stability in the sector. This led to the introduction of the International Education Mark to signal higher standards.
In 2024 the Irish government moved to tighten oversight of English language schools to sideline rogue operators and introduce a learner-protection fund — a response to long-standing concerns about poor-quality providers in the sector.
