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Old 01-07-2016, 01:31 PM
 
Location: Gatineau, Québec
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We live in a globalized era where people move around the planet a lot.

I am wondering where people from your country send their kids to school when they are living abroad/going expat?

Do they send them to the local schools? Do they send them in a school that's part of the network of international schools (French, American, British, etc.)?

Does it depend on which foreign country they happen to be living in? Its language? Level of development? Social climate?
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Old 01-07-2016, 04:14 PM
 
Location: Phoenix
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It doesn't matter whether public or private school as long as the school reputation and academic standard are above average.
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Old 01-07-2016, 10:47 PM
 
Location: Gatineau, Québec
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kent_moore View Post
It doesn't matter whether public or private school as long as the school reputation and academic standard are above average.
I don't think that's entirely true.

There are nationalities that when abroad will send their kids to their ''own'' group's expat schools even though the local schools are perfectly fine.
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Old 01-08-2016, 03:51 AM
 
Location: Finland
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Really depends on what country they go to. My ex was born to Finnish missionary parents in Kenya, first they sent him to a local private school but when he started speaking English in an Indian accent (there were a lot of Indians there) they sent him to a Finnish-run boarding school. His older brother and sister went to local schools but they were a lot older when they moved there.

Finns in the UK, from my experience, send their kids to local schools.
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Old 01-08-2016, 04:32 AM
 
Location: Gatineau, Québec
26,766 posts, read 37,679,468 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Natsku View Post
Really depends on what country they go to. My ex was born to Finnish missionary parents in Kenya, first they sent him to a local private school but when he started speaking English in an Indian accent (there were a lot of Indians there) they sent him to a Finnish-run boarding school. His older brother and sister went to local schools but they were a lot older when they moved there.

Finns in the UK, from my experience, send their kids to local schools.
That's interesting. I suppose that the Finnish-run boarding school is just something that happened to exist there, and not something that you find all over the world in most major cities.
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Old 01-08-2016, 06:11 AM
 
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I am an American living in southern Portugal - no kids. Most of the resident foreigners are either English or German.

There is one very large "international" school about twenty minute away from where I live. It is considered the top drawer place to send your kids if you are English, but it doesn't come cheap for most people. The school makes an attempt to make sure that its students can speak Portuguese. It has a good academic reputation, and does attempt to have a diversified student body and not just an English one. There are some posh English ex-pat ghetto towns here, and this is the school these folks want their kids in.

There are also a string of local private schools that follow the English curriculum and instruction is preponderantly or exclusively in English. Their quality varies, and they also usually are for the lower grades only.

In my experience the English in general have a very strong reluctance, if not an outright disdain, for learning Portuguese even though they live here. And this extends, unfortunately, to their kids' educations and can have a crippling effect on their lives. Unless a family can afford the full twelves years of education in an English language environment their kids can end up a bit marooned when their local private English language primary school education comes to and end. If they can't speak enough Portuguese to make it easily in the national school, and the family has no money for further private education what to do? There is only one answer: the kids get thrown into the national school to sink or swim, and the parents' wring their hands and lament as if it were some unavoidable disaster, instead of something they could have better prepared their children for. These folks usually attempt to "compensate" by getting their kids into as many non-academic activities for English kids as possible. These kids seem to end up neither fish nor fowl: they haven't received the swank English language education for the full twelves years, and they don't fit comfortably into the local community either.

On the other hand, I used to know a number of English on the lower end of the social scale and they showed remarkable ingenuity. They would send their young children to both Portuguese language schools and the cheaper English language private ones. But it would be two years in the one, then two in the other, then back the first and finally upper grades in the national school in Portuguese. These children, of course, are fully integrated into the local community as a result.

The Germans are a different ball of wax (and they were when I lived in Cyprus too.) They do not have a reluctance to try to learn the local language, and they want their children to speak it for sure. They can go to the English language schools if they have the skills or the classy international school too. But many German parents put their kids into the national system and regularly tutor them at home themselves. Having Mom or Dad tutoring an hour a night, several nights a week does not seem to be unusual among Germans in my experience. My accountant is a German woman with a girl 13 and a boy 16 in the Portuguese national system, and for several of the courses they take she has a German language survey book on the same subject and she reviews and discusses these subjects with them based on the survey books.

I know of Ukrainian and Russian families who put their kids immediately in the national school system, and by hook and by crook made sure that someone tutored them in a crash course in Portuguese.

German and East European ex-pats seem to dive into the local culture, whereas as lot of the English here really want the country just to be England with sun.
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Old 01-08-2016, 07:48 AM
 
Location: Finland
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
That's interesting. I suppose that the Finnish-run boarding school is just something that happened to exist there, and not something that you find all over the world in most major cities.
I'm fairly sure it was run by the missionary society. It was a very small school.
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Old 01-08-2016, 07:52 AM
 
Location: Gatineau, Québec
26,766 posts, read 37,679,468 times
Reputation: 11534
Quote:
Originally Posted by kevxu View Post
I am an American living in southern Portugal - no kids. Most of the resident foreigners are either English or German.

There is one very large "international" school about twenty minute away from where I live. It is considered the top drawer place to send your kids if you are English, but it doesn't come cheap for most people. The school makes an attempt to make sure that its students can speak Portuguese. It has a good academic reputation, and does attempt to have a diversified student body and not just an English one. There are some posh English ex-pat ghetto towns here, and this is the school these folks want their kids in.

There are also a string of local private schools that follow the English curriculum and instruction is preponderantly or exclusively in English. Their quality varies, and they also usually are for the lower grades only.

In my experience the English in general have a very strong reluctance, if not an outright disdain, for learning Portuguese even though they live here. And this extends, unfortunately, to their kids' educations and can have a crippling effect on their lives. Unless a family can afford the full twelves years of education in an English language environment their kids can end up a bit marooned when their local private English language primary school education comes to and end. If they can't speak enough Portuguese to make it easily in the national school, and the family has no money for further private education what to do? There is only one answer: the kids get thrown into the national school to sink or swim, and the parents' wring their hands and lament as if it were some unavoidable disaster, instead of something they could have better prepared their children for. These folks usually attempt to "compensate" by getting their kids into as many non-academic activities for English kids as possible. These kids seem to end up neither fish nor fowl: they haven't received the swank English language education for the full twelves years, and they don't fit comfortably into the local community either.

On the other hand, I used to know a number of English on the lower end of the social scale and they showed remarkable ingenuity. They would send their young children to both Portuguese language schools and the cheaper English language private ones. But it would be two years in the one, then two in the other, then back the first and finally upper grades in the national school in Portuguese. These children, of course, are fully integrated into the local community as a result.

The Germans are a different ball of wax (and they were when I lived in Cyprus too.) They do not have a reluctance to try to learn the local language, and they want their children to speak it for sure. They can go to the English language schools if they have the skills or the classy international school too. But many German parents put their kids into the national system and regularly tutor them at home themselves. Having Mom or Dad tutoring an hour a night, several nights a week does not seem to be unusual among Germans in my experience. My accountant is a German woman with a girl 13 and a boy 16 in the Portuguese national system, and for several of the courses they take she has a German language survey book on the same subject and she reviews and discusses these subjects with them based on the survey books.

I know of Ukrainian and Russian families who put their kids immediately in the national school system, and by hook and by crook made sure that someone tutored them in a crash course in Portuguese.

German and East European ex-pats seem to dive into the local culture, whereas as lot of the English here really want the country just to be England with sun.
Thanks, this is interesting.

I did a bit of research and it seems like the Germans have a fairly extensive global network of international schools. Maybe 150 in most of the major cities and capitals. But perhaps not in southern Portugal.

I knew that the Americans, British and French had very extensive networks. But not the Germans. I wonder if there are any other nationalities that have such global educational networks? (Not for second language teaching, but rather to teach kids in the original country's language and school system, but on foreign soil.)
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Old 01-08-2016, 09:27 AM
 
596 posts, read 715,206 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
I knew that the Americans, British and French had very extensive networks. But not the Germans. I wonder if there are any other nationalities that have such global educational networks? (Not for second language teaching, but rather to teach kids in the original country's language and school system, but on foreign soil.)
Italy and Spain have it. Don't know about other countries.
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Old 01-08-2016, 09:33 AM
 
Location: Gatineau, Québec
26,766 posts, read 37,679,468 times
Reputation: 11534
Time for me to answer my own question...

Francophone Québécois will generally send their kids to local public schools in francophone Europe (France, Geneva, Brussels, etc.)

Elsewhere my observation is that they will tend to send them to private schools that are part of France's international schools system.

This interesting because the Quebec school system here is much closer to the American one (if not identical) whereas the French school system is very different for a kid who's gone to school in Quebec.

But language trumps the other considerations for most people I suppose.

There is in my area one of these French international schools (Lycée Claudel) located in Ottawa, Canada's capital city. It draws students from the Ottawa and Gatineau areas who are often French expats or diplomats, Canadians who work for the foreign service (so their kids can get "used" to the French system they will attend abroad), and also the children of some high-level Canadian politicos.

The new Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, went to Lycée Claudel. His father Pierre was PM of Canada when he was a kid and they lived in Ottawa.

Anecdotally, my parents have friends who are francophones (but not from Quebec, they lived in Ontario) and they were in the Canadian foreign service. During their nomadic period when they were posted in many foreign locales they opted to send their kids to American international schools because they thought the French system would be "too alien" for them.

In the end their kids turned out just fine (they are all in their 30s or 40s now) but none of them can really speak French today, nor can they speak any of the languages of the countries they lived in.
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