When Schooling Abroad Goes Wrong
When parents relocate abroad to start a new job or to be near to family, schooling is an important consideration.
Educational circumstances that need to be taken into consideration if you’re going to move your family to a new location include:
- What curricula do the local state or independent schools follow?
- Is the child required to slot into an existing curriculum or will provision be made to continue on their existing path?
- Will the child need to learn a new language before starting school?
- Will the child be able to fit in with a new culture, make new friends, and maintain their grades at a new school?
- How far away is the school from the new family home and how will transport be arranged?
- What is the provision for sports, hobbies, and special needs education in the school?
Parents of students that have special educational needs should be particularly aware of the variable provision in the rest of world, so if your child needs to stick with the same curriculum, or requires SEN provision, it’s important you do your research before arriving in your new location.
Other concerns, cultural or academic ones, often arise or surface only after the student has started school.
So what to do if your educational arrangements aren’t going as planned?
International organisations, NGOs, and foreign embassies are regular contributors to the global movement of employees, and many offer relocation advice, often recruiting the help of a specialist relocation company.
If you’ve employed a relocation specialist to assist with your family’s move, get in touch with them, even if it’s well after the move itself. They should have detailed knowledge of the area and the options for schooling in your new country.
Speak to the head-teacher of the school you’ve enrolled your child or children in. Explain your concerns and ask what options are available to fix the issue. Schools, especially in developing countries, are often limited by budget, and what you might think of as standard provision in a US or UK school may be a luxury in others.
Parents often call Tutors International because we’re leaders in global education, whether its advising parents on schooling abroad, finding a last minute private tutor to step in to a dire situation, or to discuss plans to home school with a full-time private tutor.
But please, don’t rely on being able to find the right tutor at short notice. If it seems that the need for a full-time or even a short-term or part-time tutor to ease the transition is going to be needed, plan well in advance.
This way you stand a much better chance of finding an excellent tutor at a good price who can start work when you need them to. The costs of hiring a tutor who may already be employed in a teaching position elsewhere (as most tutors are if the current school term is already underway or fast approaching) can be very high indeed.
Examine the schooling options in your new location carefully and thoroughly before committing to any one path.
There are options available to families if it doesn’t go as planned, and these include:
- Enrolling the child as planned in the local state or independent school and hiring an after-school tutor to help ease the transition culturally and academically.
- Moving the child to another area to stay with friends or family, where the education provision is more appropriate.
- Keeping the child in the original country at a boarding school, and then spending holidays with the family.
- Hiring a full-time private tutor for home tuition to keep the child on the same educational track, and to support them in and learn from their new environment.
Remember, parents, some children make the transition to a new school in a new country very well, but others struggle to fit in, or to maintain their grades. In these instances, it’s important that you know what your options are, and what support is available to you.