Its courses are held in public schools in Cranleigh and Epsom in Surrey and Seaford in East Sussex. Two weeks costs from £995 including full-board accommodation within the schools in either single or double rooms.There are 15 English lessons a week as well as 15 hours of professional coaching in golf, hockey, tennis, horse-riding or football. Students can do the same sport for the whole fortnight or do a different sport each week. However, if your friends’ son really is a golf fanatic, he can opt for a programme offering more intensive coaching, including individual tuition, costing £1,335 for two weeks.In the south-west, the Sidmouth International School (01395 516 754; ) in Devon charges £245 per week in the summer. Younger students stay with host families who have children of a similar age, which is sure to help them practise their English.

Full-board accommodation costs an extra £115 per week which includes transfers to and from the school.The price also covers a full social programme including trips to Exeter, Bristol or Bath. Mornings are devoted to English lessons, while visits to the local driving range are reserved for afternoons. Green fees cost £9 for children, while golf lessons given by a PGA professional, cost £10 for juniors.. Not for several years has the public approached a Budget with as much trepidation as they do this time. The reason is simple: Tony Blair and the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, have made no secret that they intend to increase spending on health and education and they will not finance it through borrowings as their Labour predecessors did. MoneynetenergyprovidersearchNot for several years has the public approached a Budget with as much trepidation as they do this time. The Whitehall spin machine has almost certainly let the higher figure circulate so the eventual blow will seem lighter when it lands, but even the lower figure amounts to nearly £100 a year from every man, woman and child.On page one, John Whiting, a partner of PricewaterhouseCoopers and president of the Chartered Institute of Taxation, assesses the likeliest personal tax imposts, but Mr Brown is certain to surprise us.

Apart from the routine increases on existing taxes such as tobacco and alcohol duties, this is the sort of year when the Treasury dusts down long-cherished new wheezes, stealthy or otherwise The one respite should be time. Because of the tragic death of his baby daughter, Mr Brown has delayed the Budget until after the start of the tax year. This does not prevent new or higher taxes taking immediate effect, or even being made retrospective to 6 April, but in many cases it will be both more convenient and more politically attractive to delay them until next April.We will not notice them so vividly by then, and the spending they will pay for probably will not take place until next year anyway.But I suspect that there will be disappointed faces on Wednesday night. Such “middle class” measures as reducing stamp duty or raising its threshold will not be at the top of the Chancellor’s priorities.

Growing numbers of first-time home buyers are paying stamp duty, which begins at £60,000.Mr Brown will not want to be accused of further inflaming the house-price boom. But if he does shovel as much as promised towards new schools and hospitals, it will be worth thinking about buying shares in construction.BAA, the airports operator, caused a stir years back when it launched its fair-prices policy for airport shops. Airport bureaux de change, which had been routinely shunned as rip-offs, suddenly became the place to buy foreign money. Now they have been supplanted by Marks & Spencer.The change has come about because Marks & Spencer began accepting credit cards other than its own charge card in November 1999.