There is no argument that having students in the house will cost you in many ways. This is part of the payment that you receive from the school. It is meant to offset the costs of having the student, not make you a tidy profit each week. It is unreasonable to charge the students for things that they have paid for in the fee's that they have already paid.
Reasonable extras to charge for are: Washing, Ironing, International Phone Calls and Internet.
You cannot charge for meals at home. If you go out for dinner, you need to give the student the option of staying home for a meal as not all of them have the budget to eat out at restaurants very often. You are not required to pay for any meals at a restaurant, but it is nice to do so on special occasions such as their last night in Brisbane.
Clothes washing: There are many ways of doing this and all of them are ok.
Some people who have only one or two students tell their students to pop their clothes in the wash with the rest of the families and just do the washing like they normally do.
Some print up instructions and show the students how to use the machine and leave them to take care of their own washing.
Some families do the students washing on certain days (once or twice a week) and charge the students a few dollars for this.
Some families let the students do their own washing when ever and charge a few dollars for the powder, electricity and wear and tear on the machine.
The families I have spoken to think that anything up to $5 per load is reasonable.
Some students want to do their own washing as they will be embarrassed to have other people handling their underwear. I have found that some students hand wash their "smalls" and hang them to dry in their room and pop the regular outer wear in the basket to be washed with the family.
Phone calls: Most students will have their own mobile phones and use them to make calls. If they dont, unless you have expensive local call plan it would be unreasonable to charge for local calls. In most cases the students have no one to call in Brisbane except the school anyway.
Its fine to show them the bill if they (with your permission) make an international call and ask for the cost of it.
We supply an old mobile phone with a rechargeable Optus sim card in it to eliminate a few first day hassles and so we are able to contact them. If they want to keep using it for their stay, we ask them to top it up when they need to and leave $5 on it for the next person. We don't charge them for the use of the phone.
Transport: This one can be a tough call.
For day to day travel, the students are expected to get themselves around using public transport. If they ask you to run them somewhere it comes down to your personal ethos as to how you do this.
If my husband and I are going in that direction at that time anyway - we don't charge.
If there simply isn't any public transport running at the time the student want to go some where, then it comes down to each household setting up a system to get the student to where they need to go.
Suggestions I heard are to have a set price for certain trips eg Saturday morning into the city by car = $10-15 dollar depending on where you live. Pick ups after 9pm from the train might be $20. If you arrange it a few days in advance its free and so on. We don't pick up after 10pm on week night (we need our beauty sleep) but are happy to help them navigate the TransLink website and see what we can work out for them.
Some families just drop students any where any time if the student arranges it well in advance and some families do a bit of everything - However it is unreasonable to charge them as much as a taxi. Much more reasonable to charge a return trip by bus or train if it were running if you want a guesstimate on how much to charge.
We purchase Go Cards for them before they arrive and ask for the $10 it costs to set one up. EF students are not entitled to the student concession. There is a newsagent some where near the school who will sell concession go cards to the students but if a ticket inspector comes along (and its happened to my students) they will get a fine if they have a student ticket or go card on them. Its up to the individual what they want to do.
I believe the school will help students get go cards on their first day during the orientation that they all do and explain how it works.For getting around, the Translink website has a "Journey Planner" that is great for figuring out if there is a bus, ferry or train at the times your student needs one.
The school sometimes has activities in the weekend that need the student to be at school at 7am to catch a bus. Our buses start at 6.30am and so ask our students to give us plenty of notice if they need a ride into the city at 6am on a Saturday morning!
Internet: The internet will probably be one of the MOST IMPORTANT THINGS in your students life. If they arrive with only five words of English, Wi-Fi will be one of them! It is best to have a system worked out before you take on some students. There are a number of options and they are all ok.
If you have Broadband, you can simply hook them up and have a set charge for the week. We do this and charge $10 a week as thats pretty much what it costs us to get the extra 'bytes per month that we need for the students. We are happy to hook them up and ask for the $10. Often they only have large notes when they first arrive and we are happy to wait till they break them in the next day or two. After a week, if they haven't paid, we cut them off and the money appears within hours!
You could also supply a set up pre paid dongle from one of the bigger companies (and I say this as they have more places for the students to top these up with) with a few dollars credit on it and ask them to pay for what they need and to return it at the end of their stay.
You can take them to a shopping centre and let them buy their own dongle or sort out with with an Internet provider.
Many of them have a phone plan with plenty of data allowance on them and can use it as a hot spot for their computers. This is expensive and sooner or later, many of them will ask about other options.
You could set up a student computer at a desk in the kitchen or lounge and give them x amount of hours on it for X amount of dollars as another option.
The internet connection can cause a lot of friction in some houses. We had a young man who lived on the net when he wasn't at school. Our bill went through the roof as he was gaming and the $10 simply wasn't making a dent in the amount that he was using. His English was almost non existent and we simply couldnt explain that he needed to be considerate of our internet bill too. We ended up cutting him off as he wasn't eating, sleeping or coming out of his room. This turned him into quite a personable and engaging young man into the bargain for the last week or so of his stay...
The students do have access to the internet at school and they can go in early and access it after class if they are desperate for the net.
It is not compulsory to provide the net but is also a bit rude for you to spend all evening face-booking and skypeing while your student watches TV or does homework....
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