Hello All
Does anyone else have problems with link schools in
China getting UK visas for exchange visits ?
I would like to make a representation about this
but to who ?
I organised a student exchange this year with a
school in Beijing for my year 9 students.
We have signed link school agreements.
The school in Beijing tell me that they have a
lot of problems getting visas for the UK and that the British Embassy in Beijing
is much more difficult to deal with than the US, Canadian, Swedish, Japanese and
Korean Embassies which the school also has exchanges with.
Briefly the problems are
1. student families have to send proof to the
Embassy of large funds held in the bank. This means that some students can't
come to the UK even though they could afford the air fare. The Embassy asks for
the original bank documents and in one case they lost the document and the
student family had to freeze their account.
2. A range of specified documents all
have to be sent to the Embassy and it take quite a few weeks to get them back.
The US Embassy conducts face to face interview and documents are just shown.
This takes a short time.
3. My school in Beijing tell me that the Beijing UK
Embassy staff are curt and not helpful.
These problems are really not helping us to
organise a successful exchange and limit the amount of students that can
take part.
On the positive side our link school
tell me that the British Council in Beijing have been very helpful.
Regards
Anne Martin
Trinity School