Mid year move or live separately

[MaybeBKK]

Which one do you go for if a mid year move needs to happen for the working parent?

The schools are all international and IB so curriculum the same.

Kids not happy about move and even less happy about a mid year one (currently K, 7th grade and 10th grade).

Any experiences of mid year moves or when one parent goes earlier to allow kids to finish the year?

My dad moved first and we all followed at the start of the next academic year. To this day I don’t know what was worse, if being without my father for 6 months (my mother was not exactly Mother Nature even if she is convinced she is) or joining a school mid year. I was still a new comer when I joined at the start of the year, but definitively struggled less with school work than if I had arrived mid year as I didn’t have to catch up with anything.

Thanks for sharing your experience.

I'm actually not so worried about school work per se as the schools are good at accepting new kids and even might be good for oldest to settle before beginning the ib diploma in 11th grade.

I'm more worried about the social and emotional aspects for them and what's best from that perspective.

My ds moved school midyear to an international school. Got fussed over and looked after but within 2 weeks was no longer the new boy as there is a turnover in international schools and people join at all sorts of points in the year.

Worked well for us.

It depends on the international school. I've worked in ones with new students arriving all the time and ones where there is very little turn over.
Also is your grade 10 student doing MYP EAssessment? If they are the work in both schools will be the similar, if not there may be big differences. The content for MYP is only prescribed in Maths.

Thanks, all good points.

No, neither school is doing MYP e assessments. There is quite a bit of turn over in both schools although most moves happen at the end of the school year.

I only have experience with young children (k and gr2). We opted for one parent moving until the end of the school year and it was hard. A lot of tears and disruption that moving midyear might have been better for us.

I do think it depends on the children's personalities. If this happens again, we'll all move together, whatever time of year.

After much consultation and discussion and back and forth, we decided on a mid-year move. Fingers crossed it's the right decision and thanks for all the input!

Can only speak from experience but stay out the year from your 7th graders POV. Not an international move but my parents did a big cross country move half way through year 8 for me (we’d already done several international moves when I was younger) and doing that in the midst of puberty, middle of the school year was honestly terrible. DH was also moved schools and areas aged 13.5 mid year through the academic year due to parental divorce - a move at that age is traumatic, let them finish out the academic year (this is said as an expat with similar aged children knowing I’ll be moving them again at some point but I will just ensure at least it happens in the summer)

It depends on the school, my friend teaches in an international school and they study IGCSEs at the end of year 11, they are the prerequisite for the ibacc, lack of qualifications could affect your kids options later

It depends on the school, my friend teaches in an international school and they study IGCSEs at the end of year 11, they are the prerequisite for the ibacc, lack of qualifications could affect your kids options later

If you had read the first properly, you would know both schools do IB not IGCSE.

And if you had read more of her posts you would know both schools do MYP and don't do E Assessment which means your concern about not getting qualifications is not valid.

And if you had read her last post you would know the decision had been made.

IGCSEs are definitely not a prerequisite for the IB DP which, obviously, accepts students who have done the IB MYP (since it's their programme which IGCSEs are not!)

We made the decision together with the older children. The working parent has to move mid-year - that part isn't negotiable unfortunately - and, after much discussion, they have both agreed that they'd prefer a mid-year move to living apart from the parent for 5 months or so.