Student Profile

When it all started….

1963…. 

The first students to visit Malta on an English language course were Italian University students during the summer months of 1963, the result of an obvious relation with the Maltese University students.

Growth

... from school children and university students following summer courses ….

This activity was immediately picked up by a French lady while on holiday in Malta and who, at the time, was in charge of Voyages Scolaires at a Parisian agency. The next year the student age bracket included school children from the age of 13 years. 

This pattern of attracting school children and university students during their summer vacation soon extended itself into Germany and then spread into other European countries. 

… to all year round courses for adult learners and business executives...

Profile of the English Language Student

Malta was rapidly gaining a name as a summer holiday destination suitable for learning English as a foreign language. 

However, it did not stop here ...

More than a decade later, the Malta EFL student profile started to change. In fact, it was during the end of the seventies that the first requests for individual adult tuition over the winter months were received and catered for. This introduced a different type of student - the business executive who required English for his professional purposes.

The success registered in this new market segment transformed the summer operations into a year round operation, and attracted another two or three schools to set up. 

The leading English language schools within FELTOM operate all year round and provide intensive mini-group tuition, individual lessons and a combination of group and individual lessons to adult students in both General English and in English for Special Purposes (ESP). ESP courses focus on various areas including:

• Business English
• English for Tourism, 
• English for Banking and Finance, 
• English for Medicine, Law, Engineering, Marketing, etc.

This development over the eighties and nineties changed the profile of the English language student coming to Malta to the extent that from a 100% young student base, only 55.9% were under 20 years old in 2005. The percentage of the more mature student of between 21 and 25 years was 13.9%, between 26 and 30 years was 11.5% and 31 years and over 18.5%. 

There have been consistently more female than male students between 10% to 15% over the last three years, this being more pronounced in the lower age brackets.