For anyone curious about studying at a language school in Thailand on an Education Visa (ED visa). This covers the documents, schedule, attendance, teachers, and how the classes actually run.

• School: KSTVS
• Language: English
• Class Level: pre-intermediate
• Year: 2023-2024

🪪 ED Visa

I enrolled in a pre-intermediate English course at KSTVS school around July 2023. In theory, after finishing this course, I could have started the next level – intermediate – and stayed in Thailand for another year. However, in reality, for some reason, the school registered me as intermediate in the documents submitted to the Ministry of Education. I found this out about halfway through the course. A bit of a tricky situation.

The visa is initially granted for 90 days, after which it needs to be extended at the Immigration Office. The school reminded us about this, and each extension cost 3,000 THB.

📚 How Classes Work

The school suggests buying the coursebook (“Cutting Edge” textbook), but you can easily find these books online as PDFs. There’s one book for homework and one for classwork. The teacher is supposed to structure lessons based on these textbooks. The textbooks are a bit outdated, and the topics often aren’t very interesting.

(Note: Make sure the image path is correct relative to the final location of the English file)

Classes were relaxed, without pressure or judgment. No one got penalized for missed homework. There were no tests or exams. We did a lot of speaking in class and didn’t spend much time on the textbook or theory.

At the beginning of each week, we’d talk about how our weekends went. This was good practice, as it involved talking about ourselves and learning to keep a conversation going. It turned out that, for many, talking about themselves was harder than the English language itself.

In every lesson, we’d listen to and break down the lyrics of an English song. The repertoire was quite varied – from “Old Pine” (Ben Howard) to “Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts” (Arctic Monkeys).

Sometimes, we read excerpts from books in English. For example:

• Dracula (Bram Stoker) - lots of archaic language and generally difficult.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Mark Haddon) - written from a child’s perspective, quite engaging and relatively simple.

Teachers

Teachers at these language schools might be people whose main occupation is something completely different. Native speakers can get jobs at language schools in Thailand even without relevant teaching qualifications. Working as a teacher is one way to get a long-term visa, just like being a student.

Perhaps that’s why studying at the language school didn’t feel overly serious. It all felt a bit like playing school rather than attending a real one.

Schedule and Attendance

My classes were twice a week: Monday and Wednesday, for 2 hours each day from 10 AM to 12 PM. At the end of each class, a sign-in sheet was passed around for everyone to write their name and sign. This served as a kind of attendance check. But these sheets always looked like nobody ever actually checked them.

In our group, some people attended almost every class and seemed genuinely interested. But there were others I saw maybe only a couple of times throughout the entire course.

Periodically, perhaps once a month, a school staff member would drop by the class and take photos of all the students. Possibly for reporting purposes. Also, sometimes they brought people I’d never seen before into the classroom and photographed them sitting with us at the desks.

(Note: Make sure the image path is correct relative to the final location of the English file)

I came to the conclusion that attending classes wasn’t strictly necessary.

Travel and Trips Abroad

We had no issues traveling within Thailand for a week or two. Leaving the country for a couple of weeks was also possible; you just needed to request paperwork from the school and visit the Immigration Office. Longer trips abroad could be problematic unless there were special circumstances.

Long-term travel within Thailand on an ED visa is possible but comes with inconveniences. During my time studying on Samui, we didn’t experience the kind of spot checks you sometimes read about, where you have to report to the school immediately upon receiving a call. We never received such calls. As far as I know, these checks might happen in Phuket. And things could change on Samui too; it’s not guaranteed to stay this relaxed. However, they did occasionally call us to bring in certain documents, fill something out, or sign papers. Visa extensions also have to be done at the specific local Immigration Office.

So, the feasibility of travel really depends on the specific school and region.

End of the Course

At the end of the course, in my case, nothing specific was required. After my ED visa finished, I did a border run, and I didn’t need any documents from the school or the Immigration Office for that. Although the school mentioned I could get a course completion certificate for 200 THB, I didn’t bother with it.

After the final visa extension, during the last 90 days, students aren’t really tied to the school much, and many leave to travel elsewhere in Thailand.

Did my English improve after a year of study? Well, maybe a tiny bit. It was mostly just some practice.