Job Discussion Forums

[valleyninja]

Hi,

I'm an ESL teacher currently working in Indonesia, and my wife has recently become pregnant. As this is a career that is pretty flexible in terms of location, I've been thinking about where would be the best place in the world to educate my child.

So which country in the world do people think has the best education system for children, at different ages, say 0-10 and then 11-16? I mean in terms of quality, relative to cost, relative to the possible salary an ESL teacher could earn.

I have a degree, a CELTA, 2 years experience and am about to take the DELTA. I'm a UK citizen, so have obviously considered moving back to the UK, but still want to look at all the options.

Any discussion and opinions welcome,

Alex

[Shroob]

It depends on what sort of education you value I think. I'm currently in China and there's no way I'd send any future children I had (I'm 23) to a regular school here, but that's just my personal opinion. An international school perhaps.

The whole issue of 'which country has the best educational system' is a minefield as well, how exactly do you measure what an 'education' should be? Not to mention personal opinions differ vastly.

If you want to stay abroad (not in the U.K.) then I'd echo an international school, if you can afford it. I seem to remember similar advice posted a while back on here, where people suggested working for an international school and making a deal to have your child educated there. That said, I have no experience of what the educational system is like in Indonesia, or any other country save the U.K. and China.

[rayman]

When you're talking about your child, it's not about which country provides the best education, but which school, right?

If you're happy in Indonesia, then work toward gaining a position at one of the better national plus or international schools. At worst, you will need to pay only 20% of the tuition fees. Most schools will provide up to 2 dependents for free.

[CarolinaTHeels]

Most ESL teachers will not be able to afford proper International Schools with tuition of 10 - 20K.

[valleyninja]

Thanks for the replies.

I suppose I mean which countries have the best 'normal' schools. i.e. not international schools or ones with high tuition fees. I also appreciate that it's something of a vague question regarding the best form of education, and that it probably is more important to find the best school as opposed to best country. That said, I'd have thought that there were some patterns. E.g. in country X, you'll have a better selection of good quality schools.

Staying in Indonesia and working towards getting myself a job at an international school is certainly an option. My concern is that the level of education would still be below the level on offer from state schools in Europe and maybe other parts of Asia.

[tttompatz]

[Matt_22]

Yeah, international schools can be incredible deals for your children. The monetary value of having your kids educated free can be hundreds of thousands of dollars.

However, there would still be the small problem of paying for university fees. Living overseas, you would end up paying foreign or out-of-state tuition, which can be double the (already expensive) domestic or in-state rate. Of course, this is assuming that you would want to send your kids to UK/US/AUS universities.

[spiral78]

[Guy Courchesne]

[MotherF]

As others have said--there is not one best place, because every family has individual goals for their children. For example if you want your children to be fluent in Indonesian, then I would think staying in Indonesia would be your best option.
In the elementary years, I personally think what happens at home is much more important than what happens at school, school is the place where they learn to interact with people outside of their family unit, and learn the larger culture of their country. So in that case you could be anywhere.
On the other hand, from what I've read about school systems, I'd choose Finland if I could go anywhere in the world. After that I would choose a country with another language that I wanted my children to learn. Mabye China. (My children speak Spanish and English, so if they learned Chinese, they'd be able to speak the 3 most widely spoken languages in the world!)

[Kofola]

I think this is a really difficult decision to make because schooling is about so much more than just the effective teaching of subject content. Children can find school difficult if there is a big difference in child-rearing habits in the two cultures. This is particularly true where there is a cultural difference between the main carer and the school. So this may be less of an issue if your wife is Indonesian and the child goes to school in Indonesia. There are all sorts of issues related to this one. For example, education in the UK tends towards the belief that children should compete against themselves (i.e self-improvement) rather than against the other children. Some cultures believe that competition should be against others and children are publicly shamed for not being Xth in the list etc.

Then there is the issue of how many foreign children there are in the school and how foreignness is dealt with. Friends of mine have had real difficulties with this one. And of course language issues. International schools are sometimes better at dealing with pupils from different backgrounds and cultures, but on the downside they tend to attract pupils from a very distinct socio-economic background and the children don't come from the local community (they are bused in from all over the city), making it potentially more difficult for your child to make friends with children living in your area.

In the end of the day the emotional and identity issues can be more important than the quality of the maths lessons. Especially seeing as you're a teacher yourself and you know what you can do to help your child at home - often it's that that makes the real difference in educational attainment.

[valleyninja]

Thanks for all the responses, it's been interesting reading.

One of the attractions of educating my children abroad is the possibility of them learning multiple languages. They'd have English, Indonesian (my wife is Indonesia, which will complicate visa I guess, but that's another topic) and the language of the county we'd be living in. Possibly too much to take on for them though?

Does anyone know the requirements to enrol at a state school in Europe? Or in South Korea for that matter, since it comes top in the Guardian's survey.

[spiral78]

[MotherF]

Children are perfectly capable of learning any language they feel they need to learn. Parents are not always capable of making children feel that need.

[naturegirl321]

I'm in a similar situation. Thought about going back to intl schools, but I don-t think I want to go that route.

I'm pretty sure I'm going to do a combination of homeschooling, tutoring and local schools. You mentioned Korea, we can't discuss it much on this board, there's a separate board for it. I will say this though, just becuase students TEST well doesn't mean that they retain the knowledge. Or that they can apply it. They can reguritate it though.

I think Finland is one of the best places. It seems they go for quality rather than quantity, the opposite is true where I am now. Regular studying from 9am to 3pm, then institutes, tutors, and studying until early hours in the morning tends to lead to overwhelmed students who have trouble thinking outside of the box and who use suicide as an out becuase of the high stress and competition.

DebMer has a lot of good resources about homeschooling. She also has a FB page. The internet also has TONS of info about homeschooling.

The traditional math and science testing isn-t necessarily the best. Remember that people have different "smarts" if you will. Music smart, people smart, creative smart, etc. Look into Gardener and multiple intelligences. If you were just to focus on math, science, and testing like Korea, you'd be missing out on a lot.

Other options include unschooling and methods such as Waldorf or Montessori.