State school Uk vs International school abroad

[Lentilsandyoghurt]

Hey all,

I know not many of you have such experience but I am wondering whether a good state school in the Uk will provide better education and opportunities for my kids or an international school abroad that follows British curriculum is better.

We are not originally from the Uk, we come from a EU country and we may need to good soon back for family reasons.

The kids are still young, primary school kids and have been raised as bilingual.

What do you think will be best for them?

Eventually in 10 years time they will return in the Uk to study as they will follow the British curriculum no matter where we will be.

100% international school! No question.

that is ridiculous! There are thousands of international schools, and thousands of UK state schools, you can state that one type is better than the other, both have a massive range

@Chocchops72 and @Nimbostratus100 what you said is mind changer!

Both kids are British nationals, have Uk passports and were born in the Uk.

Will they have no access to student loans and we will have to pay for international uni fees if they graduate from a school abroad?

They have to have been resident in the UK 3 years prior to uni in order to avoid paying international rates even as British passport holders. That's usually right in the middle of GCSEs so not the best time to move them :(

How old are your parents OP? I’d suggest that if they are, say, mid 70s now, it won’t be as simple as just returning to the UK in ten years’ time, when they will potentially be frailer and more in need of your support . We have had several family members making it to their 90s…

If the children are only 8 now, maybe they won’t want to come back after 10 years away.

Are you comfortable sharing the country?

There are a lot of misconceptions about international schools on this thread. I have spent more than 20 years working in them.

Some are excellent and some are terrible and most are somewhere in between.

Some are expensive and some are cheap and most are somewhere in between.

There is no set definition international school. A school that is totally staffed by local teachers and only attended by local students but offers a curriculum other than the local one can call itself international. Others will only have international teachers and in some cases support staff, and will not allow local students to attend. As above most lie somewhere in between.

The curriculum is that of England and Wales there is no British curriculum even if the school calls itself British.

If you can prove you were out of the UK for employment purposes then some universities will consider home fees. However if you are in your home country I doubt this will work. It is about the tax paying parent not the student being resident.

Having said all of that I would say go to your home country if you are happy with the school.

In British schools there will normally be British teachers. There are a lot of people who want to teach but hate the toxic environment in the UK and so go overseas.

Completely depends on the International School.

I moved around a lot while my kids were in Primary, and so they've been to multiple international schools in multiple countries - some were great, some were OK, some seemed more interested in the kids wearing the right uniform than actually educating them.

They now go to a state school (well, and a local, private, but with many international students secondary), and the hardest thing for them was that the kids in the state school had already been there years together, so breaking into friendship groups was hard, vs international schools where kids are always coming and going so they could fit straight in.

Along with the other factors raised you also need to consider what level of University fees would need to be paid in the UK, if you move abroad, as I think you specifically said you would want them to return for University. International fees are much higher than home student ones.
One other point, it depends on the particular International School but often the pupil cohort moves around to other parts of the world frequently and also sometimes staff turnover is very high.

I discussed with my DH the issue with the international fees if we move abroad and it's worrying.

I think we should either stay in the UK until kids finish school (by which time our parents won't be alive if we think of just numbers) which finds my DH against as an option or we should go back now! Like really really now and let kids follow the national curriculum of our home country and attend university there and not come back in the UK. This is only because if they attend an international school in our home country and having to come back in the UK and pay international fees will be unaffordable.

We don't have any very strong ties with the UK, apart from the fact that we live here for the past 20 years and we bought a house. No family here, nothing.

My biggest worry would be the kids having to adjust to a new curriculum in a language that they are not as familiar with as English is and that I also prefer the British educational system than they one in our home country.

So confusing and so upsetting.

Could/would your parents move to join you in the UK? (I suspect the UK make this very difficult, as with most things immigration, but family reunification includes parents here...)

@MumInBrussels No, unfortunately not. They are unwilling to move and given their age and health I don’t blame them. There will also be language barriers for them.

I and DH have also siblings that live abroad but there circumstances are such that it makes it much more difficult for them to move in comparison to us.

It’s all unfair and I can’t find a happy medium in my mind that keeps me, DH and kids happy and balanced.

I really sympathise with you OP, we’ve had the same dilemma. When my second son was almost two I went back to our home country for 6 weeks to see if we could luve their. Really investigates everything, also all the hidden costs of things we take for granted in the UK, like healthcare, banking fees, security costs, schooling (it would have had to be private, whereas in the UK state schooling is still very good). In the end financially it absolutely did not make sense! When you add it all up we had a better and cheaper life in the UK with more opportunity for our children. The UK is also politically very very stable which is very important to me. Girls have a voice and opportunity.

Anyway, I digress our parents (both sets) were horrified that we were thinking of going back. They saw it as we ‘escaped’ to a much better life and opportunities, and could not understand why we would give it up to essentially go and care for people that have had their lives already. Does your parents actually expect you
to go back and care for them? You may find that a twice yearly trip (unless is Australia or Polynesia or somewhere
very difficult to get to!) with a meaningful and eventful, memory filled visit may be worth much than life in the daily
grind.
You can set things up to make life easier for them as I’ve said before. With £ you could probably also buy help in for them.
I send my parents a grocery delivery every now and then with treats that I know they won’t buy themselves. We also bought our kids smartphones way you get than their friends, purely because they can have an independent relationship with their grandparents, call and message them on their own time and whatsapp them photos of what they get up to during the day (star of the week, football wins, what they had for dinner, new toy, lego creation etc). Sometimes O just have my
mum on the whatsapp screen while I cook and we chat away, or she sees what goes on in the kitchen and the kids coming and going. They are very much part of our daily lives.
There are ways of doing it. The world is becoming a very small place and I can tell
you now, from one immigrant to another, the road to get here was damn hard and we worked our asses off for it. Think very carefully!! But also, I am biased. I love my life in England (three months to go till we’re back!) and I and thankful every single day for my British passport and the opportunities and protections I have.

*could live there

So many typos sorry.
When do we get an edit button?!?

I would think about overall quality of life in your home country compared to the UK, housing etc. Also look carefully at the education system locally in case it suits your DC better. Most countries encourage proficiency in English and if they already speak English schooling in another language might give them opportunities. With Brexit the trajectory for the UK doesn't look good in the near future. Your own country might be more up and coming.

It sounds very difficult

is there any reason why you have to go right now? Can you start going regularly for holidays over the next couple of years and see how it goes?

Thank you all!

To put things into perspective and explain why it’s now or never, we are Greek.

Greeks have different alphabet, let alone Grammar etc.

If kids need to follow the Greek national curriculum then we really need to go back ASAP.

My eldest is Year 2 , meaning 6 years old, and would have been in Year 1 in Greece this year, there is no reception in Greece.

My youngest is in reception, meaning that he can start in Year 1 in Greece next year which is the first year in Primary school.

It would not be easy for the kids to go back in 3-4 years time as it would have been impossible to them to catch up with the language.

Also, our parents (both sets) have iPhones and we FaceTime them every day, they are already part of our lives.

The problem is their health. Even if we buy them help in support, this person normally takes one day per week off. Who will look after them on this day? My grandma is in a very poorly state and I know that she can’t stay on her own not even for hours.

Having said all that financially it would make sense to stay in the Uk and it will also be better for kids school-wise …

I can offer our experience if it helps:

We moved back to our home country last year because we wanted to support our elderly parents and for our kids to connect with their heritage, culture and language. We chose an international school because we thought it offered the best education, and would allow them to reintegrate the UK system later. But in truth academically it feels quite similar to our "Ofsted outstanding" school back in the UK.

However, it's been wonderful for them to feel submerged in local culture, and they definitely feel more connected to that side of their heritage already. They've built a relationship with their grandparents and cousins they just didn't have before.

So I'm glad we came. BUT we agreed it would be for 3-5 years max, and that we'd come back to the UK in time for my eldest to start secondary. Personally I don't want to live here much longer than that.

Why can't you buy in cover for the day off?

There was a more holistic approach at the British international school I attended than the Ofsted outstanding comprehensive I moved to back in the UK. The independent international school had fewer arbitrary hoops to jump through.

Place marking. My kids have done both. I’ll be back soon to update.

I live abroad and a friend of mine used to work at the international school here but she quit due to terrible behavior. The majority of students where locals kids who had been kicked out of school. Not much English is despite despite being international. But everyone that moves here thinks it's the best place to enroll their children.
As they're bilingual I would enroll them in a regular local school in the EU country. It obviously won't be UK curriculum but the standard of education is highly superior to England in a lot of European countries.

Yes it is correct. Though it’s not to do with where they go to school as such, it’s down to residency.

for UK nationals already living in the EU when Brexit happened there is a 7-year window where they can qualify for ‘home’ fees and student loans, so that’s up to around 2027 I think. After that, they are treated as EU students - which now means as international students.

your children won’t even qualify for that: they’ll have to follow the residence rules which usually means being resident in the UK for three years prior to starting study.

each home nation has its own variation on these rules and each university interprets the rules slightly differently, but that’s the bottom line.

This is scary but thank you for the eye opening info. I hadn’t thought of Brexit impact.

As international school fees plus uni international fees for two kids is unaffordable for us, we are now discussing seriously the option to go back in Greece and the kids to follow Greek curriculum and attend a Greek uni.

As I said our DC1 is in year 2. Do you think we missed the boat and it would be too upsetting for the kids to relocate and change curriculum now?