Chester College International School

Last July (2025), I sent my twin 11-year-old daughters to Chester International College’s Spanish immersion program in Santiago, and we loved absolutely everything about the experience.

The location in Santiago was ideal—this small, beautiful, and historic city created the perfect backdrop for both learning and exploration for our kids and us as parents.

The program itself was wonderfully balanced: my girls were immersed in Spanish while also enjoying quintessential summer camp activities such as sports, swimming, theater, and fun after-school and weekend outings throughout the region. The variety kept them engaged and excited every single day. The campus felt idyllic—lush and garden-like. Each afternoon, the children enjoyed a fresh, nutritious lunch prepared by the kitchen staff and served in a beautiful garden beneath the grapevines.

The staff was exceptionally friendly and supportive. They even helped us secure accommodations in the old city, which we absolutely loved. While we opted not to board our daughters this time, the school made staying off-campus seamless with their convenient door-to-door bus service. Boarding is something we would definitely consider in the future as they grow older.

Overall, the program exceeded our expectations in every way—combining language immersion, cultural discovery, and fun in a safe, supportive environment. We couldn’t recommend it more highly.

Added note: A wonderful bonus was reconnecting with our close family friends from Ireland, whose three daughters were also enrolled. With the kids happily at school each day, us parents had plenty of time to work remotely while exploring the city and surrounding areas together.

Sabel teacher is very amiable and has left a deep impression on me. In the classroom, everyone's abilities will be taken into account and layered teaching will be conducted. Each class and homework will be conducted in a layered manner. We have been encouraged to communicate in Spanish. Overall, I really like this teaching method. I won't feel very difficult, or dull and simple.

There are abundant sports activities in school, which is a great honor for me. I can experience different sports activities every afternoon. In sports activities, there were always people who gave me more opportunities. Even those sports activities that I’m not good at will encourage me to try more. They always patiently explained the rules to me. I particularly enjoyed school-organized outdoor activities, especially surfing!! This was my first attempt, but I think it's very, very, very fun!

Our daughter (13) absolutely loved this residential camp. So much so that she wants to return for a month (rather than 2 weeks) this year. The teachers and organizers were amazing and she made wonderful Spanish friends her age. It could not have been a better experience.

The logistics of travel and handover were really well handled. Our daughter could have felt very nervous attending a camp away from home by herself, but the organizers and teachers were so kind, that she didn’t at all. Very highly recommend it.

Chester College has many years of experience as an international school with excellent English and Spanish summer camps. Besides a wonderful location, there is a great deal of factors that speak in its favor. First of all, kindness and pleasant environment. The staff includes experienced professionals and energetic young people that give personalized care to every child. The space is cozy both at school and at the residence. The language course is combined with a lot of fun activities and excursions. The summer camp is very well organized. Parents receive detailed practical information before the program and a personalized progress report afterwards. Making the experience very positive for a shy teenager (as is the case of my child) must be a serious challenge. Yet I believe it was a very useful experience: new scenery, contact with new languages, new people of different nationalities and origins, opportunity to enjoy nature and beautiful landscapes during the excursions, engage in creative group activities, spend much less time with gadgets and much more having an actual social life. It was without any doubt positive and enriching. My daughter's knowledge of Spanish was not zero before the camp, but her speaking skills improved significantly.

I spent 2020-21, my 10th grade, at Chester College. This was an unusual year because of the pandemic. The cozy-looking boarding houses at Chester were closed, so I was staying with a host family. We all had to wear masks of course, and for long stretches we could not socialize with anyone outside the school community or leave town. So life really revolved around school more than it would have otherwise. The Chester College teachers were undaunted by this situation and coped with it creatively and with great dedication. -- Where I came from (California) 10th grade was a critical year already for college preparation for many students. I needed to take certain standardized American classes that year and prepare for certain standard nation-wide tests. My Chester teachers were impressively familiar with the content of these classes and tests. They arranged my schedule in such a way that there was time for them to give me individual tutoring, to allow me to cover these American requirements. But I learned very different things as well, which I would never have been exposed to at home. My Chester teachers made sure my Spanish was improving rapidly, so that I could soon follow classes held in Spanish. These included, for instance, classical philosophy, which I would not have studied at home, and European history taught from a continental European perspective. My (British) English teacher read Shakespeare and other classical literature with her advanced students, and her composition assignments were very different from what is asked of students in California -- perhaps more demanding, but also more interesting, I felt. The school community was particularly small in 2020-21, because of the pandemic, so _every_ class was small and personal. But even in normal years the style would surely not have been very different. Everyone was kind, friendly, and supportive. The school's overall attitude was that academic achievement was important and possible to everyone, but was not the only goal to focus on. Physical thriving mattered: we had a nutritious lunch together every day in the dining hall, an event which brought us all together as a community. Also, all age-groups were out doing field sports behind the school almost every day. We had all-school gatherings, celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas with traditions taken from everyone's cultural background and with musical performances. And especially the lower grades did a lot of arts and crafts, while the upper grades were offered an afternoon program involving a blend of design and creative engineering construction, a bit like a makerspace, which I was particularly involved in. The school managed to make the pandemic feel like an opportunity for a warm communal experience, rather than a time of deprivation. The teachers' dedication to keeping up Chester's tradition, which meant their dedication to each individual student, was exceptional.