As a soon-to-be expat, one of the most important and difficult decisions you will make is where your child will go to school. While there will be a host of concerns and questions that arise during your search for a school for your child in Shanghai, generally speaking, international assignees have three main concerns: the safety of their children; the happiness of their children; and the quality of their children’s education.
SAFE
International schools operating in Shanghai can be considered very safe by almost any assessment. These schools invariably employ high-quality accredited staff from the Americas, Europe and the UK (among many other countries) and have excellent and secure facilities and highly qualified Western management. The vast majority of expats arriving in Shanghai report that the international schools are actually safer than those they are used to in their home countries.
HAPPY
Concerns about your child’s happiness are certainly warranted, as the adjustment to a new school is often stressful and challenging, especially when combined with a move abroad. It should be comforting to know that international schools are uniquely skilled in helping newly arrived children adapt to their new environment. In the sections that follow we will provide you with the tools you need to make the right choice for your child’s education, to ensure that they are the beneficiaries of the type of education you want for them, in an environment offering them the best opportunity to be happy.
WELL-EDUCATED
The standard of education at international schools in Shanghai varies from institution to institution within a very narrow bandwidth at the top of the scale. In other words, while there may be differences between schools, in terms of quality they are generally very good. As such, you can rest assured that your child will receive a top-quality education during your time in
Shanghai.
SHANGHAI’S SCHOOL SYSTEM
Perhaps not surprisingly, for expatriate parents who want to educate their children in China while they are posted there, the options are increasing all the time. This is in terms of the number of schools to which foreigners can send their children, as well as the type of education opportunities that are now available. What was once a fairly limited range of options has grown a great deal and continues to do so year upon year.
No matter the option upon which you decide, you will be able to find other parents following the same route and therefore a good deal of support, advice and encouragement is always available – don’t hesitate to take advantage of the expertise and knowledge that your neighbors, friends and colleagues will have already built up. Seek out people who have already agonized over this decision and look at the choices they have made. Such advice may save you from trying to reinvent the wheel.
However, in the meantime, the following will provide you with some useful background on the different types of education provision available for you to consider.
INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS
Almost all cities in China with a reasonable expatriate population have at least a couple of international schools from which you can choose – in Shanghai there is a multitude and you should have no difficulty at all in finding a place for your children. In fact, if you take the international school route, the biggest difficulty you may face could well be narrowing down your options sufficiently for you to be able to make a final choice.
International schools represent a fairly obvious and straightforward option for most parents, if for no other reason than you will be able to ensure a good degree of continuity in your child’s education by enrolling them in a school that operates the same education system as you have experienced at home. If your child is currently at school in a large European country, the UK, USA or Australia, you will find a good number of schools in Shanghai offering your national curriculum, teaching in your home language and operating the same year and age group structure. The benefit of choosing this path is that your transition into the international school sector should be relatively simple and painless, while re-entering your national system on your return home will also be pretty straightforward.
Most international schools also offer the International Baccalaureate (IB) either along- side or in addition to their national curriculum. The IB caters for pupils of all ages and is offered in English, Spanish and French (see the detailed section on the IB, page 88).
However, it would be a pretty poor international school whose curriculum and programs of study did not also reflect the culture of their host country; fortunately, this is an area where the majority of international schools in Shanghai excel.
The teaching of Mandarin Chinese is offered by all international schools in Shanghai, although the amount and intensity of the instruction may well vary according to the school and its outlook, which in turn may also be shaped by you and your child’s needs. However, you can rest assured that your children will be learning at least some Mandarin wherever they attend school, so even if you don’t have the time or inclination to take lessons yourself, eventually somebody in the family should be able to communicate on your behalf.
International schools in Shanghai also place a premium on learning about culture and traditions, and this is very often done through celebrating and participating in Chinese festivals, holidays and national days. In this way, children and their families develop a sense of engagement with the wider community and gain a greater understanding of the many important events and occasions that shape the calendar in China.
International schools in Shanghai are genuinely international in that they have pupils from a vast range of nationalities and backgrounds, and this is one of the greatest benefits of at- tending such a school. It is not uncommon for larger international schools to have students from up to 100 different countries. Likewise, the parents of pupils will be involved in every conceivable profession, business or industry, which only serves to enhance and enrich the experience for the whole family.
Most international schools in Shanghai cover the full age range, which means they offer pro- vision from pre-nursery school right up to year 13 (i.e. from two years old up to the age of 18). They are also mixed sex, i.e. they accept both boys and girls. These two facts are very advantageous for the expatriate family, in that parents are not required to be in several places at once with regards to the school run, parent-teacher meetings, school concerts, etc, while siblings being together in the same school means that you will have established a ready-made, inbuilt support system.
The majority of international schools in Shanghai are non-selective, i.e. they do not accept pupils solely on the grounds of academic ability. They may nevertheless require prospective pupils to sit an entrance examination, the primary purpose of which is, in most cases, to test prior learning and/or language ability. Some schools will also use an entrance examination to enable them to place pupils in the appropriate stream or set (e.g. pupils of roughly the same maths ability, or attainment level in science, might be grouped together). Generally speaking, waiting lists for international schools, even in the biggest cities, are not like those for the most prestigious institutions in Western countries, and therefore if you are able to meet the cost of the fees, you are usually able to secure a place in the institution of your choice without too lengthy a wait. Nevertheless, it is always advisable to begin the school entrance process at the earliest possible opportunity.
The biggest stumbling block to taking this path is that the fees for the majority of international schools are extremely high. If you are in the position that school fees are covered by your relocation package, this is not an issue. However, today this is not always the case.
Nevertheless, in the best schools you should be able to see quite clearly why the costs are so high. You can expect to find extraordinarily well-equipped classrooms and laboratories, extensive grounds, outstanding sports facilities and wonderful performance spaces, such as theaters and concert halls. However, as attractive and impressive as these facilities may well be, they are not in fact the main reason why international schools charge the fees that they do.
Employing first-rate teaching staff and maintaining small class sizes in the school is where you can expect the bulk of your fees to be spent. A good international school will have classes that are much smaller than you might expect to find in a comparable school at home, even in the independent sector. This has a significant impact on the quality of education that a school can provide and is an important reason why international schools charge the fees that they do. Manageable class sizes should be a high priority when you are considering schools – try to find out what the school’s policy is in this regard and what they consider their optimum class size to be.
The quality of the teaching staff at international schools is another reason why you will be charged premium fees but, at the same time, if a school has invested wisely in its staffing it will be worth every penny. In most instances the staff at international schools are of a high caliber, and a successful and imaginative principal will have put together a teaching team that consists of a good mix of youthful, energetic teachers on the way up combined with more experienced teachers looking for enhanced job satisfaction and a new challenge. A good staff will be balanced in this respect, as well as be- ing from a fairly broad range of countries and training institutions.
This is an important factor to consider when you are making enquiries, but most international schools are pretty good at providing in- formation about their staff, so do take the time to look on their website at the staff section as part of your research. Look for a staff that man- ages to combine both youth and experience, has some stalwarts in its ranks (this usually means the staff is happy and the environment is stable) and comes from a diverse range of back- grounds and education systems (so that you know the school’s approach and outlook isn’t limited or stagnant). A well-managed international school staff should go some way towards satisfying all of these criteria and if it does you can feel fairly confident that your child will be getting an education at least equivalent to that which they would experience at home.
See Choosing the Right School and Delivering the Goods for further de- tailed guidance on the process of selecting the right international school for your children.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS
There has been an increase in recent years in the number of foreign families sending their children to public schools in China. This may be for financial reasons, because the international sector can be expensive, or for reasons of cultural immersion. Sometimes foreign employees are called upon to make a contribution to the cost of their children’s education, while the growing number of self-employed foreign entrepreneurs now in China have to assume the full cost of their school fees themselves. As international schools can be expensive, more and more people are exploring what Chinese public schools have to offer.
It is also the case that a small (but growing) number of families view this in a positive light as their way of rejecting the social and cultural divisions of the long-established expatriate life- style, and so they make an active choice to opt for a public school to improve their children’s language skills, their social integration and friendship groups, and the degree to which the family as a whole actively engage with wider Chinese society.
At present, expatriate parents most frequently opt to enroll their children in a public school at the kindergarten or nursery stage. The school fees are usually a significant deal cheaper than at an international school, while there are a number of other positive benefits.
In terms of facilities and the physical environment, local kindergartens usually have good- sized classrooms with spaces for activities such as art, music and physical education, as well as playgrounds with climbing equipment, sand pits and other equipment for outdoor play. The class sizes will range between about 20 and 30 pupils, and teachers will usually be supported by classroom assistants.
