Cheap English Course Abroad: What Makes It Cheap?
Ask three agencies for four weeks in the Philippines and you will get three numbers that can differ by thirty per cent or more. The instinct is to assume the cheapest one is hiding something and the most expensive one is padded. Usually neither is true. The prices differ because the products differ, in ways that are entirely visible once you know which lines to read.
A separate article lists the items a quote leaves out altogether. This one is about the quote itself: why one is lower, when that is genuinely good value, and when it is a cost that arrives later with your name on it.
Real prices by course length are in study English in the Philippines: cost and 2026 prices.
Seven things that move the number
1. The ratio of one-to-one to group hours. This is the single largest driver, and it is the one that matters most for results. A package with two individual hours a day and four group hours costs far less than one with four individual hours, because individual teaching is the expensive input. Two quotes described as "six hours a day" can be completely different products.
2. Room occupancy. A bed in a four-person room is a fraction of a single room, and the gap is often larger than people expect. Nothing dishonest happens here — but a cheap quote is frequently a cheap quote because of the room, and someone who sleeps badly with strangers has bought a discount they will regret by week two.
3. Which meals are included. Weekday meals only, versus meals seven days a week, is a difference of eight or nine days of eating out per month. It rarely appears in the headline.
4. Season. Prices move with demand, and the same room in the same building can carry a meaningful low-season discount. This is the best kind of cheapness available: identical product, lower number, no consequence beyond who else is there.
5. Course length. Longer bookings usually carry a lower weekly rate. Comparing a four-week weekly price against a twelve-week weekly price tells you nothing; the mechanics of that curve are in how the total changes with course length.
6. What is unbundled. Materials, airport transfer, room deposit, utilities. A quote that excludes all four looks cheaper than one that includes them and may end up costing the same. Ask which of the four are in the number in front of you.
7. The building. Newer dormitories cost more to build and are priced accordingly. An older building is not a worse course, and for some people it is the correct trade — but it is often what the discount is.
Which of these is fine, and which is not
Sorted by what it actually does to you:
| Reason for the lower price | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Low-season discount | Take it. No downside beyond quieter weekends |
| Longer booking, lower weekly rate | Take it, if the length suits your goal |
| Shared room instead of single | Fine if you know yourself; expensive if you do not |
| Older building | Usually fine. Ask about air conditioning and hot water |
| Weekday meals only | Predictable. Budget the weekends and move on |
| Fewer one-to-one hours | The one to think hardest about |
| Unbundled extras | Neutral until you add them back — then compare again |
The sixth row is where the real decision sits. One-to-one hours are the part of the timetable where nobody else can answer for you, and they are why most adults come at all — the mechanism is described in what happens in a one-to-one lesson. Saving money by cutting them is not saving money; it is buying a different, cheaper product and hoping it does the same job.
Normalize before you compare
Two quotes only become comparable after you put them on the same footing. It takes ten minutes.
- Write down the total for the whole stay, not the weekly rate.
- Add back everything one quote excludes and the other includes: materials, transfer, deposit, utilities.
- Add weekend meals for the number of weekends in your stay, at a realistic local rate.
- Add the government fees, which are identical everywhere and fixed by rule rather than by the school: ₱7,800 per SSP application, ₱4,500 for an ACR I-Card if you stay beyond 59 days, and ₱3,000–6,000 for each visa extension. At roughly 58 pesos to the dollar that is about US$135 and US$78, plus the extensions your stay requires.
- Add flights, which vary far more by route and timing than any of the above.
- Then divide the total by your number of one-to-one hours for the whole course.
That last figure is the only number that compares two courses honestly, and it frequently reverses the ranking you had after step one. Note that fees and prices change, and low-season windows move — treat every figure here as a prompt to confirm the current ones with an agency before you pay.
Two questions that expose the rest
Ask both in writing, of every school on your shortlist.
"What is the exact timetable, hour by hour, for the program in this quote?" Not the number of hours — the breakdown. Individual, group, self-study, optional. This single answer explains most price differences and is the hardest thing to reconstruct after you arrive.
"What will I pay locally that is not on this page?" A good answer names the deposit, the utilities, the materials and the government fees without being pushed. A vague answer is itself information.
One structural point worth knowing while you ask: enrollment at schools like this runs through partner agencies rather than directly, so the agency is who you put these questions to, and comparing two agencies' answers about the same school is a perfectly reasonable thing to do.
In short
A cheap quote is usually cheap for a nameable reason: the season, the length, the room, the meals, the building, or the ratio of individual to group hours. The first five are trade-offs you can make with your eyes open. The last one changes the product. Normalize every quote to a whole-stay total including weekend meals, government fees and flights, then divide by one-to-one hours — and ask for the hour-by-hour timetable before you compare anything at all.
More on budgeting a course properly is collected under cost.