Has living abroad.....

[bijou3]

Put your children at a disadvantage academically?

Nope.

The opposite I think. She is bright, and top of the class in most things. It's a very different system to the UK, more academic, less hands-on and practical.Suits her as it would, in all honesty have suited me.

University however will be attended in the UK (even if I have to drag her there) Because to get a decent degree here I would have to have sex with Berlusconi, and love her though I do, love only goes so far.

Nope, not so far. In fact quite the opposite. My eldest two dc have now been at school in Australia for six months and have come on leaps and bounds.

Yeap, YABU, the opposite here. I now have a bilingual 3 year old who has come on leaps and bounds. The language will be particularly useful in later life as its a handy one to have under your belt.

(marking place) - what countries are you lot in? Presumably makes a difference.

It's given them an education vastly superior to what they would have had in the UK tbh. There is real choice here (Australia) and affordable private schools.

I would say that compared to most of the Western world and Asia, the British education system puts British children at a disadvantage, especially with maths and sciences.

Nope, Belgium ranks no. 1 for education often. And dd has the added advantage of being bilingual at a young age - plus she will start to learn Dutch next year, and probably a further foreign language at Secondary school.

How would your children cope should you have to move back into the UK system? I know Australia and other European countries are behind the UK system as are British schools in the Middle East.

Australia is ahead, particularly in maths. My eldest son is very clever but was behind in maths here when we arrived, and my middle son was behind on reading when we arrived but has very quickly caught up and is now in the advanced section in his composite class. And that is at a public school. If we ever moved back to the uk I would be concerned that their education may suffer for it. (Also, we were originally concerned as had heard that aus were behind before we came but decided to counteract it ourselves through tutoring etc, but much to our very pleasant surprise this was not a legitimate concern!)

It is impossible to say not knowing where you are and where you children are currently educated, what ages they are, and what ages they will be upon your return to Britain.

@bijou3. I don't think "schools in X are behind schools in Y" is actually a meaningful statement. Every school system will have particular strengths and particular weaknesses and everything will depend on the details (child's strengths, weaknesses, age etc.)

For example, I'm in France, which has an average school system if you look at the global rankings. What the ranking's don't tell you is that this globally average ranking is a mixture of being one of the best systems in the world for stretching bright kids, and one if the worst in the world for leaving weaker kids behind. If you're kids struggling, don't touch France with a barge pole, but it's a excellent option for acadeically minded children.

Nope. Although she is only six, dh and I are teachers and would not work anywhere that didn't provide an excellent education ( she gets free tuition at our school)
In Canada we could not afford private school for her.

Yes.

Tough to say. DS hasn't started school yet but I'm glad he will go to school in Denmark because they are just more relaxed than the UK, and wont start formal learning until he is 6. They learn more later here, so sixth form lasts 3 years, they take more subjects and cover things that I did for GCSEs. They value breadth rather than depth. SOme days I like that, other days it drives me nuts!

I disagree about schools in the Middle East actually.

Why are you asking?

I teach in an international school and I get new children from different systems all the time. The main difference I notice is whether the child has been living in a country which starts school later.

I teach year 2, English system (but not in UK). If I have a child from the (eg) German system, they will sometimes be behind, same for US system. This is only down to the fact that those children haven't yet started formal schooling at 6, whilst our English system pupils will have had 2 full years reading and writing by then.

They all soon level out though...

The one thing that buggers me about having my children educated abroad (=in the UK) is that they are not acquiring the foreign language skills that I would consider the bare minimum for an educated person. Other than that I am very happy with what they are learning at their British state school.

I did three years in Europe as a kid and the benefits of being trilingual outweighs any possible disadvantage. I have two degrees and am starting a Masters so I think it can't have held me back.

DD and I are living in Canada now and I worry about her because if she stays in school here she will end up maybe a year behind, eventually. Luckily she probably won't be stabbing people and taking drugs like her peers in Croydon some parts of the UK.

I teach in an International School and I have to say, I would ten thousand times rather send my kids to this school, than to a UK school.

About to start in an international sCHool, and really oping I'll feel tHe same PerCy :) (sorry, Computer Has a wierd Virus)

OP my df took my half sis to live in a small East African country - she was 3 at the time so the education she had was appropropiate and all she knew.
He brought her back here at the age of about 9-10 and put her straight into a private school for her last junior year in the hope she'd get through the 11+. It went very wrong. She was traumatised at the British system (they'd come from a country that follows the UK system but more relaxed). She was under enormous pressure and the teachers ended up advising that she not take the 11+ as the pressure was too much.

But she'd done fine and now at a good a university. But she struggled in the UK for about 4-5 years - not just education but how young people are here.

Possibly he should have brought her back either a bit earlier or later?

I had no complaints about the schools in the Middle East that my kids attended. I do however have much to complain about the UK state school system. A chance has come up to move abroad again and if it all pans out I will be delighted that my kids will get to finish their education in an international school and not in the UK.

Well, apart from the concerns about language teaching (which I share - will be speaking a lot of French and German with the DDs and helping them learn proper grammar) my two are doing very well in the UK state system. I'm Dutch, DH is from the US and both my DDs are doing things I was certainly not doing at their ages. DD1 (Yr6) is doing statistics and probability - this was not touched on in primary when I was going through the Dutch system. She is also learning genre writing (persuasive/biography/tragedy/drama/detective) - also stuff I did not touch on until secondary. So I'm pretty satisfied that the UK system is doing well by my children, with support from DH and me at home just as the Dutch schools had support from my parents at home.

No. Moved back to the UK from Japan when DS was 8, in year 4; August born, so one of the youngest in his year in the UK. He had also had one year less schooling than everyone in his class as he started international school the September after he turned five, rather than a year earlier as he would have done in the UK. He wasn't behind at all, except for in handwriting.

I think the real disadvantage comes when families move abroad with older children who don't speak a word of the new language. We have a lot of those families in Spain. British kids who arrive with their families and get dumped into Spanish school with very little help. The schools themselves are good, but not geared up for teaching children who don't speak the language. The parents love the sun-filled life and generally have jobs which provide reasonable wages, but for which speaking the local language is normally not a requirement. The kids are unable to cope with studying in a foreign language, waste years of education and end up coming back to UK with no qualifications as soon as they can. Of course, this is not always like this and there are children who learn the language and cope, but I know of many who don't. I feel very sorry for them.