High Schools in Europe that teach lessons in english

[GenevievePelli]

Hi, My family is relocating to Europe from the US for work. My husband can work in any EU country so this gives us flexibility to choose the location. However, our kids are in high school and only speak english unfortunately. My youngest already struggles academically. My oldest will be a senior next year. It seems a little late to expect my kids to suddenly pick up a foreign language at this age - enough to comprehend the lessons and graduate anyway.
To make the transition as easy as possible, does anyone know of high schools that teach in English that are free or affordable? I found American boarding schools but $30K plus per year per child is no where close to anything we can afford. Thanks for your help.

The British School of Brussels

Would living in Switzerland be a possibility. Not EU but very easy to work and live there?
If yes there are public schools which would enable the kids to do IB taught in English. No fees at all.

If your DH is an EU citizen why not move to his home country?
Send the DC to school there and learn the language and culture?
You'd be surprised how quickly they adjust and it has the added bonus of learning about their cultural heritage.

My husband can work in any EU country so this gives us flexibility to choose the location.

With an EU passport your husband has more flexibility than you do as his family. You don't mention which EU country your husband has a passport from, but it's important. For any EU country other than his own he will be exercising FOM rights, but to move to his own country and bring you with him can be slightly more complicated and will depend on the immigration rules for that country.

Looking at this just from the education perspective seems a bit short-term and naïve when you're not in a position to throw Euros at problems to make them go away. There are huge differences in your right to work, tax rules, recognition of qualifications, healthcare, residence/citizenship, etc. that stem from this decision.

Sorry for the confusion with TTO. DS has gone through the Dutch school system, but although his school offers TTO we deliberately didn't choose it. I didn't realise the end exams were in Dutch.

I still maintain that you can live here without speaking a word of Dutch though. I'm fluent but I've met plenty of people who can't string a basic sentence together. In the cities like Amsterdam and Utrecht waiting staff and shop workers don't even speak Dutch. They're often economic migrants and English is used as the lingua franca.

https://jfks.de/admissions/admissions-hs/ John F Kennedy school in Berlin appears to be free. And follows the US curriculum.

I missed that your eldest would be going in to senior year.
That is a really bad time to move.
Socially senior year is a big deal but academically most countries will have a 2 or 3 year senior cycle so moving for one year would be incredibly difficult.

i had suggested Ireland but moving only for the final year of school would not really work as exams are based on a 2 year programme.

I would not move for senior year unless it was totally unavoidable. even than I would try to leave the eldest with family so they could complete their education.

It's reputedly very difficult to get into, though they may try to find room for a child transferring into a year higher than y7, and especially in your circumstances.

There are also a few state 'Europaschulen' in Berlin that teach in another language, often English, alongside German, but I think they would have to do German at one of those.

My child went there - I really haven’t got the wrong school! Cité Scolaire Internationale de Lyon (CSI) is a French state school with nine different international sections. It is free of charge for all, other than a small charge for the Anglophone section to employ English speaking teachers for the subject areas taught in English.
It is also known as the Lycée Internationale de Lyon or Lycée de Gerland.
It is unusual in the French school system in that it goes from Primary and middle school all the way to Lycée all on one site.
They are very well experienced at receiving children from all around the world and getting them up to speed in French.

OP, is your husband, the EU citizen, doing any research into this or is he leaving his children’s future entirely up to you and some strangers in the internet?

I think you’d be better off letting your husband work away in the EU and you stay until your children have graduated high school. Otherwise it sounds horrifically disruptive.

International schools are usually if not always private.

The least disruptive to your children would be a school following the US curriculum. There are US high schools on air bases in Germany and possibly other countries but I have no idea if you could access them not being in the military.

It's not just about the English Language it is about different systems.

Link to a school in Dubai that teaches both USHSD and IB IB is available in most of Europe and other countries.

https://www.gemseducation.com/en/News-and-Events/Blogs/american-curriculum-vs-ib#:~:text=Curriculum%20%2D%20The%20IB%20aims%20to,therefore%20focused%20on%20the%20USA.

I'm in the UK, we have more than one system with Scotland being very different. But in the UK students take GCSEs at age 16. 5 GCSE grades passed at 4 - 9 are taken by US colleges as equivalent to a HS diploma.

I'm not saying British teens are 2 years ahead, they are in one way but in another they are not because US students take a broader range of subjects.

At 14 students in the UK take 'options' ie they pick the subjects they will study for GCSE and stop studying other subjects.

Could your older child stay in the US to finish HS? Maybe staying with relatives or friends?

Are you going to be working? Could you home school? Could your eldest's school provide work?

Try the Netherlands. By the time they graduate high school their standard of English is almost better than the UK.

You just cannot move a high school senior unless it's to an American curriculum international school and even then I wouldn't do it. (Brit in US FWIW, oldest in college.) If you must go for work, oldest is going to have to stay in America with a relative.

All the EU countries I know of (any exceptions I don't?) have school-leaving exams of some type that the students are preparing for 2-3 years prior. Even if you knew the local language you couldn't switch systems.

BFI (the replacement for OIB) is an extremely rigorous bilingual diploma, not one for newcomers. It's harder than the regular bac and you must still be fluent in regular French to pass it. French lycée pupils (2de - Tle or American 10-12th grade) go to school over 8 hours a day and then have piles of homework. There are newcomers classes but it would be intense work to reach the required standard.

The John F Kennedy School in Berlin is a free bilingual school, but again, you still need to know German and pass the Abitur exams.

Housing in NL is impossible right now, I have seen what friends have had to accept at extortionate prices after endless searching.

There really aren't free schools teaching entirely or primarily in foreign languages, especially not to a foreign curriculum. If your child were going into 11th grade then an IB school, rather than a national curriculum school, might fit better. But it wouldn't be all in English.

You can't get into the DoD schools as a civilian.

My Dutch friend has pretty much said that. There are concerns about just how widely English is used over Dutch (and it can't be helping politics there).

The non-Dutch speaking foreigners do tend to end up isolated though. They're stuck with friendship circles from work and international groups who leave a lot, then they're screwed at retirement. It's completely possible, especially as an introvert, but a bit of a miserable experience. From my own experience, it really limits job opportunities too. The big companies mostly don't mind, but most won't promote non-Dutch speakers very high and you don't get full choice of projects for obvious reasons. Small companies won't normally consider foreigners.

Apologies! I only every had interaction with this school www.islyon.org/ which seems to be a separate entity and more like a classic international school.

be aware though Ireland has a housing shortage at moment so cost of living is higher than other EU states. But public school is free, of an high standard and in English (bar Irish language schools). Also worth noting that it can be difficult to access non-Catholic schools in lots of area as a result of the way the school system was set up. There’s definitely no separation of church and state here.

Agreed , but would add OP wouldn’t need to live in Dublin specifically as presumably could live anywhere in the ROI. Is NI an option for overseas Irish passport holders? (As NI citizens can hold both)

Do you know in which Canton these schools are? I'm only familiar with the French-side and have never heard of schools teaching in English. Might they be in the German part?