Move back to UK for kids' education despite having better quality of life where we are?

[littlewillow123]

Our children are now 12 and 9 years old, and we’re considering moving back to the UK when they reach Year 10 & Year 7. We currently live in SE Asia, where we enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, financial security, and strong family connections. However, we’re thinking about relocating so they can study in the UK from GCSEs through A-levels, potentially giving them better career opportunities and deeper cultural immersion.

💡 Key Factors We're Weighing:
✅ UK: Stronger education system, home fee eligibility for university after three years of residency, greater independence for kids, and exposure to a global environment. However, it comes with high living costs and financial sacrifices.

✅ Where we are: Comfortable lifestyle, financial stability, excellent expat community, strong family support, and flexibility. However, the kids may not fully experience UK culture until later.

📌 Additional Considerations:

• Visa is not an issue as we hold dual citizenship.
• We have family in both countries so children will be living near either sides of the family. Although at the moment they are missing out on time with my husband's side of family.
• We can’t afford private schools in the UK, so they would attend state schools.
• My husband (British) grew up in the UK, went to a top grammar school and university, but he is hesitant. From his experience, teenagers in the UK are more rebellious and exposed to alcohol and drugs at an earlier age, while kids in Asia tend not to have similar issue. One of our child has ADHD so this might be something worth considering.
• With the same income, we’ve been able to save significantly more in Vietnam than we could in the UK and still have better quality of life.

🔎 Our Dilemma:
❓ Would moving to the UK at this stage make a big difference for the kids' future? (We prefer to stay but if it's for the children's benefits, we can live in UK for a few years until they both go to uni)

❓ Or is it better to stay where we are and provide global exposure in other ways (e.g., travel, exchange programs, summer schools)?

If you’ve made a similar decision, we’d love to hear your experience! What did you choose, and how did it turn out? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! 🤔✨

I think year 10 is very late to start. Ideally, you should moved before.

Thanks for your perspective. My kids are half-Asian, so yes they could be easy target for bullying.

I wouldn't do it in your shoes. Britain is in an economic mess. Your children will still be subject to racism because that is also rife here.
It sounds like you have a lovely life where you are. Being educated in England does not have the same meaning it used to have especially if you can't get a place at an outstanding school.

my Dd is in final year of uk state system and I wouldn’t rush back here in your situation

Most state schools are struggling to manage behaviour and have a lack of resources and while teachers are amazing, too many are sick of the Jon and the admin and woke bullshit that comes with it, awful behaviour from entitled kids and entitled parents make it all even worse.
uni seems to be more about partying than anything else and far too many mental health issues with our teenagers which seems to only be getting worse.
The actual education at school is not fit for purpose for this world we live in today - the same stuff that’s been taught for decades instead of preparing kids for the current technical revolution we are going through.

not sure what British culture you’re referring too but doubt you’d find it in a secondary school.

Stay put in your situation

Does it have to be a UK university?

Don't do it.

NRTFT but the British education system is bad (I’m a secondary teacher). Obviously it varies from school to school but all schools are suffering from decades of budget cuts, there’s a huge shortage of teachers so odds of your kids having temp teachers is high, the British curriculum and exams aren’t fit for purpose, and the British SEND support is, at very best, patchy. Behaviour in lots of schools is utterly wild. My son has ADHD and his school do nothing to support him despite multiple meetings. My kids are about to go to secondary school and if I didn’t have caring responsibilities here, I’d be looking for an international job somewhere so that they don’t have to go to school here!

We came back. I was glad we did. It was a bit late though. I came back for A levels and struggled. It was a big jump. Culturally I was pleased we moved but my brother who was 3 years younger had a much easier ride. This was in 90's when drugs and alcohol rates were much higher among kids and underage sex in parks has always gone on with some kids. You know your kids and whether that's likely so ignore the scaremongering. Kids around here don't seem bothered with booze or drugs these days (at least around here). If it's mainly the free uni fees you are after and the international school qualifications mean the won't struggle with a UK degree ( A levels are harder than international baccalaureate for example) then why not use the cash you are saving by living in Vietnam to fund international places for them both ( although you may have to adjust your lifestyle in Vietnam so would it be as fun there on a tight budget?). Lots to consider.

Well so my husband also said: Just let them do bilingual program, move them to an International high school if need to. And let them choose to study higher anywhere in the world as they need to pay international uni fees anyway.
I think as they're half British it would be ashamed if they don't experience life in UK or live near UK side of family at all.

@littlewillow123
There are two separate things going on here I think. Firstly you are trying so hard mentally to create the ideal perfect life for your children, and yet you say they are happy already. Indeed your life does sound fantastic, I only visited Vietnam for 3 weeks and I loved it and especially the beaches of course. So I think you need to consider that leaving your current life is a huge massive risk, if you move to the UK can you be sure your children and your husband will be equally happy?
Secondly you can't possibly know what life is going to be like in the UK for your family, you don't like living here so at least 25% of your family would be worse off. I've lived all my adult life in London by the way and I love it doesn't mean everyone in London is happy!
I work in an average state Secondly school it's a happy place on the whole, some kids get brilliant results, some don't. Some parents are very unhappy with us, usually they hate really normal rules and want all manner of special exceptions for their children which we can't do, we are limited both by money but also by common sense!
No matter what research you do into schools you can't guarantee your children will have a good experience. There is a piece of academic research which shows that it makes no difference what ofsted rating a school gets in terms of results, when all other factors are adjusted for, like prior attainment, parental occupation, social class, gender, etc.
So in my opinion moving to the UK is a huge gamble and the odds are heavily against it working. On the one hand your life now is great and you are gambling that against maybe your children gaining a British Cultural identity. I'm personally risk adverse and wouldn't move.

One of my friends did that at those ages. The older child struggled as the school system and expectations were just so different, she was considered bright and hardworking but in the UK bombed his exams and didn’t go to university. Preparation for exams takes far longer than 1 year, they’re quite specific.

Younger child thrived as he had a longer lead time. He’s gone to a top 3 university and seems to be doing well and settled in.

If I had kids, the UK would probably be one of the last places I’d want to bring them up in. The higher education aspect is about the only good one - think about the lifestyle your children would be losing, in terms of health, food, activity levels, mental health, embracing toxic trends etc.

Why don’t you consider Swedish/ Danish/ Dutch etc universities? It costs far less than UK home fees, you study in English and the top universities are more highly rated than universities outside the top 20 in the UK.

It does sound like this isn’t the right move for you and your family.

Some posters are being extremely negative about the UK and have written as if the whole country is just some miserable crime-riven slum with all teenagers engaging in under-age sex. Of course, that’s not the full picture. My DDs are now 20 and nearly 18 so I have experience of raising teens here and there are millions of children growing up here, mostly pretty functionally. However, it does seem likely to me that children growing up here probably live less sheltered lives than children growing up in SE Asia and moving your DCs here with no experience of how to navigate things is likely to be very tricky for them.

You say you find the UK dull. I grew up here and have always lived in very multicultural, vibrant parts of the UK which have lots going on and have never found it dull but certainly the weather can be. I think if you and your family are used to an outdoorsy life with lots of sun, beautiful beaches etc, then the UK won’t seem like much fun in comparison. It will seem dull and dreary.

Plus, the UK is going through a long depression and is definitely a tougher place to live right now than it was in, say, the early 2010s (the huge self-harming act of Brexit has made things harder than they needed to be though that was disguised by COVID at first).

So it seems unlikely this move would be a particularly happy experience for you all. Are there no alternatives to UK universities for you? I’d be looking into those more, in your shoes.

You seem more worried of missing something for your DC than anything else. The English education system isn't as great as you seem to think. And culturally your kids won't be seen as local in Surrey, opening a potential world of woe for them.

www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people/why-vietnamese-children-outperform-the-british-at-school/

@littlewillow123 also stop looking at school reviews- it’s irrelevant until you’re actually living here at a uk address, until you are physically living here you cannot apply for your child to go to school here. When you are living here, as my last reply tells you, your child will be given a space at the nearest one with spaces available. You won’t have a choice. Your children may well end up at different schools also, and may not go to one near where you’re living.

I would stay where you are and educate the kids at a great International school. Is International Baccalaureate an option?
Moving back during University would be more stable, I think, unless you were certain of the exact school they could attend in the UK. Could you pick up great jobs there?
Use lateral thinking when searching for university courses. Some unis do semester exchanges in SE Asia..
Your adult children might like to take a gap year and work in the UK, then study.
Realistically assess what the kids are interested in and where strengths lie.

Sounds like they are masking at school, which isn’t a good situation.

Yes it's definitely fear of missing out. I fear I'd miss out on something better for our children and time is ticking by but I know deep down we would probably be having a more enjoyable life where we are.

Stay where you are, AI chatbot! no brainer imo.

I also have to be frank. When you came to the UK, it was probably during a booming economy. I can’t see that coming back anytime soon.

Your children will be more competitive (imho) in a Vietnamese international school and going to university in Britain instead, with an eye towards coming back to Asia.

Do you see them working in SEA, perhaps in Singapore? Vietnam too is growing very rapidly as you must know. I would imagine the future looks brighter in East Asia and their mixed heritage could prove an advantage in this market.

You are massively projecting your own unfortunate experiences and attitudes onto your kids. The UK is multicultural and, in 20+ years of living here not once did I feel disadvantaged or professionally overlooked due to my non-Britishness. Speaking to my friends who moved here in their 20s and who still live here today, none of us felt the same way you do. I also have a lot of friends who came to the UK, decided it wasn't for them and moved back. The difference is not some inherent "culture", the only difference was our attitudes to building life in the OK.
Yes, I don't understand what the British culture is. But neither do the Brits if you ask them to identify precisely what it means. I am sure your husband won't be able to clearly articulate it either if you asked him. Also, culture is vastly different depending on which part of the country you are in. I spent most of my time in the SE, moved to the SW three years ago and it is like night and day. I am sure it is different still in the north or across Welsh border.
Compared to the European schools, education here is atrocious. Schools are colonies for young offenders in the way they are structured - petty uniform police, timed toilet breaks, rigid rules. I don't know what schools are like in Asia but it may be a bigger adjustment than you realise. Teaching profession is also in crisis and there are more teacher redundancies predicted in coming years.
Universities are in no better shape with a lot of rhetoric about scrapping non-vocational degrees, for example. I went to uni in 2015 and our university scrapped the entire modern foreign language department overnight jeopardizing my plans to do Masters in Germany.
There are a lot of really good things about living in the UK. On a whole it is open to adversity, there is a lot of personal and professional freedom. I feel settled here. But most young people with opportunities choose to go abroad to study and live. And that tells you a lot about the state of life in the UK that your children will be faced with.

Have you asked your children? What do they think?

Fellow migrant here. My family moved a lot when I was a child. I was young enough to integrate when we finally ‘settled’ (though I then moved to the UK as an adult for more opportunities to travel)… My sibling, who was early teens, hated being moved. There is a whole theory around this: look up third culture. They need to be in their adopted country by around age 11/12 ar thr latest to ‘fit in’ generally…

Economically, the UK is on a downward spiral as there isn’t the appetite to bring in ambitious and hardworking migrants to fund our ageing population. The government is now going after not just the rich but the moderately well off for taxes and this will only get worse over the next two decades. Very rich people have already fled so the next tier down will have to take on a bigger tax burden - regardless of who is in power (so I’m not trying to make an anti-Labour point).

Unless you’re posh and educating them at a top private school there will be no advantage to your DC in taking on British affectations. I would say they stand a much better chance eventually of being successful in the UK if they can’t be pigeon holed according to their class.

I managed to transcend class barriers precisely because I arrived in my 20s and could not be pigeon holed.

They also stand a MUCH better chance of getting into a top uni - even Oxbridge - as international students.

Additionally, the government here is imposing a 20% tax on private school fees. This will force out many from the private system into the state. Surrey famously has a massive shortage of state school places in certain year groups. The baby boom was around 2010-12 so those are the toughest year groups to get a space in.

The special educational needs system here has been repeatedly declared broken and is going to get worse with private school kids - a fifth of whom have special needs - transferring to state.

You say that the tax you will pay here will be offset by the savings on international uni fees anyway so I would stay where you are for your children’s sake, not just yours.

It’s a shame as the country could benefit from your taxes and no doubt your children’s talents.

It is interesting you seemingly value their British heritage more than their British father.

(Just an observation don’t take it as a criticism!!)

You need to bring your eldest back to the UK for the start of Year 9. That's when they choose their options for the subjects they want to take at GCSE. Your eldest would be dealing with moving and starting GCSE's all at the same time. You need to think about the area you want to live. The better the schools, the higher property prices/rent will be. Not all teenagers are drinking alcohol, taking drugs, smoking/vaping and having underage sex! That is in the minority of teenagers! SEN provision varies from area to area and school from school. You need to do your research before committing to a particular area and school.

I think that's true. I learned about British heritage through school and films and probably still look at it with tinted glasses. My husband had first hand experience working in a high school and he detested raising teenagers in the UK.