Singapore mums - what can you tell me about the schools?

[MizZan]

We are contemplating (reluctantly on my part) a move to Singapore and after calling around to the various private schools are finding that wait lists are unbelievable and some seem to demand huge sums of money to bump your child up on the waitlist . We have a bright but not very adaptable 6 year old who was in a pre-prep in the UK for two years and is now in Kindergarten in international school in the US. would probably like him to go back to the British system. Is Tanglin the only decent option for this? If he started at an IB school would it then be difficult to switch to Tanglin later if we needed to? Is Eton House mainly for littler kids? Is it crazy to think of sending him all the way out to Ang Mo Kio/Tampines for the new UWC campus (if we could get in, which I am not even sure about)? Should we keep him out of school till Jan in the hope that we'd get him into a better school if we wait till then and not have to change?

Any feedback on the schools and whether these wait lists are actually real would be greast.

Unfortunately the wait lists are real. Do you know how long your stay in Singapore will be?

If it's only for a 2 year stay, then I would put him in one school and not bother putting his name on a waitlist, particularly as you say, he's not very adaptable, so the less chopping and changing the better.

There are a lot of kids here who go to a smaller international school and then change schools when places come up at the more popular school.

I also know of kids who do their primary years at Tanglin and head to UWC after so I presume it must be easy to change between the 2 systems.

Have you looked at Dover Court Prep? I think they offer the British Curriculum too?

The other thing about waiting lists is that they tend to change quite quickly too as people move away to a different posting or decide they don't want to remain on the list.

There is lots of school info on the ExpatSingapore message boards here. Chatsworth and Dover Court tend to be the next choices after Tanglin.

Chatsworth is a nice school at that age. Small class sizes and so on. They (used to? guess they still do) like parental involvement with reading and so on which would be great if he needs a bit of reassurance.

Right on Orchard Road, very handy for Takashimaya and the gym at Paragon after drop off.