Safeguarding and Supporting International Students: More Than Just a Requirement
By Charlotte Coles, Director
East Coast Guardians
Each year, thousands of international students arrive in the UK to study at boarding schools. For many, it is their first experience living away from home — often in a different language, culture, and climate.
While academic opportunity is the primary focus, student welfare must always remain at the heart of the experience.
International students face unique challenges. Beyond adjusting to school life, they must navigate homesickness, cultural differences, unfamiliar social expectations, and periods outside term time when boarding houses close. Without structured guardianship and consistent adult oversight, these transitional moments can become vulnerable points.
Guardianship in the UK is sometimes misunderstood as an administrative formality — a name on a form to satisfy visa or school requirements. In reality, it is a safeguarding role.
Effective guardianship should provide:
• 24/7 emergency availability
• Carefully vetted host families
• Clear communication between school and parents
• Structured welfare oversight
• Appropriate boundaries and professional accountability
For students, guardians represent reassurance. For parents overseas, they represent trust. For schools, they represent safeguarding partnership.
The most critical element of international student welfare is clarity of responsibility. Students move between environments — boarding house, host family, travel, half terms — and at each stage, safeguarding oversight must be clear. Ambiguity increases risk. Structure reduces it.
A well-run guardianship arrangement should include:
• Enhanced DBS checks for all host family adults
• Formal home assessments
• Clear reporting procedures for welfare concerns
• Defined curfews and supervision expectations
• A zero-tolerance approach to unsafe behaviour
However, beyond policy and procedure, welfare is about presence.
International students thrive when they feel seen, heard and supported. A settling-in visit after arrival. A check-in before half term. Calm management of unexpected illness. Sensitive handling of homesickness. These small but consistent interventions create stability.
Safeguarding is not simply crisis response — it is proactive care.
In recent years, increased attention has rightly been placed on online safety and the Prevent duty. International students may be particularly vulnerable to online exploitation or misinformation due to isolation from their usual support networks. Guardians, schools and host families must work together to promote awareness and maintain open lines of communication.
The goal is not over-supervision, but appropriate oversight.
When done well, guardianship enhances a student’s UK experience. It enables cultural exchange, builds independence within safe boundaries, and provides parents with reassurance that someone local is acting in their child’s best interests.
As guardians, our responsibility is simple:
To ensure that every student in our care is safe, supported and able to focus on the opportunity they came to the UK to pursue.
International education should be life-changing — for the right reasons.
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