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! 🤔✨

It's a tricky dilemma, and I say that as someone who grew up abroad but was educated in the UK (boarding school), and have visited and loved Vietnam. I definitely missed having a UK "home" when I was growing up and felt a bit out of the loop culturally. I wonder if some of that is less relevant now as technology means children watch the same things and listen to the same music regardless of where they are.

I've chosen to raise my kids here and think some of the pictures being painted of British teenagers experience on this thread are incredibly bleak. Yes there are some drugs and knife crime in schools but the vast majority of children don't experience it. My teens love living in London and the independence that offers them. Ones at a grammar school and one is at a comprehensive and neither school has bad behavior issues.

For friends who live abroad that have come back, increased independence for their children has been one of the plus points - that may not be as relevant in Vietnam as in somewhere like the middle east where kids are driven everywhere.

Agree with others though that moving for yr 6 and yr 9 or even yr 5 & 8 if it's not too late would be preferable.

Tbh my kids didn’t drink or take drugs, all three did well at grammar schools and good secondary schools. Not all UK kids are off their heads on substances.
Two of the are at good universities(can’t tell you what they are up to there!)
I think teenagers/young adults are better behaved than when I was young.
There are lots of cultural opportunities here and I like that my kids are well rounded and street wise
Just my opinion though

i know the area well that you are looking at and yes, there are some great schools but like any area also some not so great, there is no guarantee you will get a place in these schools.

The area has really changed over the years and I find it far more diverse than it was with many people moving there from all over the world due to some of the schools and the distance to London.

That being said we had an opportunity to move back to this area and we declined. Partly due to the schools, partly to some local areas declining a lot and I guess it was just not right for us having been abroad for so long.

Based on your updates I think I would be inclined to stay where you are!

Yes

we did move back to the UK (from the Middle East) when our kids were 7 and 9 - our reasons for returning were primarily about education quality, and both settled well into UK private schools. there's no way we would have made the same decision had we been looking at state options. we also have one with SEN and the support has been brilliant, certainly compared to what we would have had overseas. but honestly i think you've possibly left it too late to make all the (very considerable) upheaval worthwhile - plus Year 10 is such a difficult transition point for your eldest.

I don’t know what the school system is like where you are. But children with adhd seem to struggle here as there is a one size fits all system. I would also move for year 9, year 10 would be hard to benefit your children if they haven’t been in this system. You also need to find a school which is good not all of them are. Plus it’s whether they have space for your children.

Is your worry about the kids drinking, smoking etc? Drinking is becoming less of a thing amongst teenagers apparently. Neither of my teens smoke. Youngest teen v(16) has never touched alcohol. Almost 19; year old rarely.
Moving back when youngest starts Y7 might be okay but Y10 is too late. They probably won't be able to choose their GCSES and friendship groups will be established.
I would stay where you are if they're settled. Don't move because one of them has SEN. IME all schools, especially secondary, are useless at dealing with any child with a disability.

People on here are so negative. No the uk is not perfect but neither is vietnam. It is important for children to to have a sense of community and belonging. Are you Vietnamese yourself? If not and they are currently in a 'third' culture this would be part of my decision. I moved my 8 year old back from a SE country a few years ago so that she also knows her british identity and is part of the uk education system and it has gone well for her. I do think if you come back its important not to leave it too late. I think whatever you decide it sounds like the kids will have a good life

Right so these two schools are very familiar to me.
Nonsuch is exceedingly hard to get in to. And I mean exceedingly hard.
You have to be the very top academically as it’s a super selective grammar school. Not just pass the 11+ but pass it higher than virtually every other student. Is your child very very academic
Glyn you have to be living very close to the school as the catchment is small.
The area (Ewell / Epsom) is mostly lovely but very expensive- one of the most expensive areas in the UK.
Basically the schools you are aiming to get to are very hard to get into!

Life up here in Liverpool, is very different to life in Surrey. It's different to life in semi rural Yorkshire, or the Essex coast. You will be giving them a tiny snapshot of life as a middle class imigrant in Surrey. They'd get more out of visiting cities in England and studying the social history side after the Industrial revolution. I'm second generation immigrant from both parents, there are worst places than the UK, but with your children's earning potential, I wouldn't land them here. I fell in love and stuck myself here, my cousins all scarpered. Life for their children brought better opportunities.

I agree with a PP, it sounds like you have a romanticised idea in your head and it’s fear of missing out on this. Is this perfectionism?

Seems you have your answer. Go with your gut instinct.

Yes I would

@littlewillow123 you really don’t seem to be listening to the replies.

To those people who are saying the replies are negative, unless you have personally been through returning to the UK with teenagers going into the UK school system for the first time, with the greatest respect- you absolutely have no clue. I don’t hate the UK, I love the UK, but my eldest child had a truly awful time as a teenager returning & ended up self harming.
Unlike the op I had no choice in returning, but I was totally out of touch regarding the current school application process. So unless she can pay for private schools where she can pick & choose which one they like the best etc….. she doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that in the state system there will not be a choice.

Obviously not everyone is taking drugs or getting stabbed but there is criminal activity of some sort at every secondary school in the city I live in. Even the fancy private ones.

But it's definitely the minority of children.

I would stay out. Don't underestimate how grim being in grey skies and landlocked Surrey can new.

OP I think moving back at 11 and 14 is not really moving back as children, the 11yo maybe but by 14 they are fully into teenager years and won't have 'childhood' memories in the UK.

People are being pretty negative about the UK, I think it has some good sides! But, in your situation where you are all happy and you would only be moving for a sense of 'they might miss out', I wouldn't do it.

I lived abroad as a child, we came home because my parent's contract ended. My teenage siblings found the adjustment hard, but there was no sense of 'what if' as we had to come home. Similarly my brother and his family lived abroad for many years. They were very happy but one of the family developed a medical condition and they returned to the UK for family support, and because my brother's earning potential is much more in the UK. Again, any sense of 'this is hard' has been balanced by knowing it was necessary for medical and financial reasons.

For you, if you move to UK it all ended up going wrong or even not going as well as you hoped, what would you say to yourself to balance that disappointment? 'oh well, we had to move back because we were worried the would miss out' doesn't feel like a compelling reason

What we have learnt very quickly - is that education is now global, many of the world class universities are based in the U.K. A UK education offers assess to all global elite universities, if your dc are high achieving.
Yes if you want your child at least to have the opportunity of a solid profession, qualifications etc then that is the best option. There is a good reason why we have so many international students.

Teacher here. I really wouldn't. Schools in England are not in a good state at the moment and I wouldn't trust 'good' or 'outstanding' inspection results. You might find a genuinely good school, but it's a bit if a lottery, andif a school is really good it's likely to be oversubscribed- you may not get places.

I find it hard to believe that this post is about UK schools, the big issue is uni fees for international students. Just stay where you are and accept you will have to pay the higher fees.

Thanks, I do appreciate all the viewpoints and perspectives offered here. People obviously have different experience and I'd love to hear them all to make an informed decision.
This thread also makes me realize I'm totally out of touch with the UK school application process. It doesn't seem as straight-forward as the research I've
found.

I’ve already posted but just coming back on to say that I agree with posters who are querying what you mean by British culture. I grew up here and I’m not sure what it means. If you mean a multicultural environment (something I value hugely), then you’ll get that in most cities of any size I think but many smaller places in the UK have much less diversity. If you mean freedom to be, for example, LGB+ then I think you will get that in most of the UK but I think SE Asia is the same on that in any case, isn’t it? If you mean pretty market towns, you can visit those when you’re here on holiday but I think living in them as a teenager can be pretty boring.

You’re very unlikely to get your DCs into the schools you have been considering. Most local parents who’ve raised their daughters with an eye on those schools still won’t get them in.

I think you’ve left it too late to make this move really work but I equally don’t think that matters because it sounds like you’ve been having a great life in Vietnam. As a PP has suggested, if a UK uni is still very much what you want, then it probably makes more sense to save up and pay international fees.

I live in that area, and completion is fierce for those schools. If you don’t get in there, the options are quite dire (unless you pay for private).

Well, this is all very bleak - on life in the UK. To offer an alternative view. My teenagers are growing up in the UK and are not vaping/having sex in parks/doing drugs/have no personal experience of knife crime.

They are doing well in their inner city state school where they regularly meet/are good friends with children from other countries. DS has volunteered with a project in school which runs English conversation sessions with new arrivals, DD has a good friend who arrived in year 7 - parents English but had lived abroad for primary school - and has fitted in well.

Would say year 9 would be a good year to arrive before GCSEs start. My year 9 child is choosing GCSE options now.

If I were you I'd 100% stay in Vietnam. It sounds like an idyllic life with exposure to lots of different cultures. Life as a UK teenager is usually far from idyllic, there are usually a ton of social pressures etc.

If you do come back I wouldn’t put your eldest straight into Yr 10, but come ready for Yr 9.

Lots of schools start the GCSE curriculum in yr 9, and if you wait til Yr 10 they will be getting to grips with culture change, curriculum change, new friends, etc for at least the first term.

When I say culture I was referring to become more eloquent / culturally fluent, exposed to various accents, slang, humour and nuances of English or any idioms, and cultural references, that might be useful in making them more adaptable in international settings.