Hi,
We send our oldest child to Hsinchu International School (HIS). He is in the elementary department and has been going there for 2 years.
We live in Zhubei, and were looking for a school offering a quality education in English, compassionate and attentive teachers, and most importantly for us, diversity of students. Our son is mixed, and we wanted him to attend a school where he wouldn’t be the only non-Taiwanese kid in his class. Or the only native English speaker in his class. We’ve found that HIS offers all these things (especially the last item regarding diversity).
HIS has been around since 1981, and has a reputation of accepting primarily students from overseas families who come to work in Taiwan (in the science park or in ASML, for example). That isn’t to say that native Taiwanese students can’t get in. However, they told us from our first visit to the school that they give priority to students of overseas families. Having a non-Taiwanese passport is a requirement for entrance. There are many nationalities represented in the student population, including French.
(HIS offers something called the French DELF and Spanish DELE, I have no idea what these are, but maybe you do?)
I found out about HIS through Forumosa, actually. This thread is old, but still relevant:
As far as the other international schools go: I’ve heard that Hsinchu American School (HAS) could be comparable to HIS these days, especially in the high school department. But the other schools don’t even come close. Also, almost all of them are more expensive. I do know that Pacific American School offers teaching in Spanish, not sure about French though. One downside of HIS is that the students have more holidays than other schools, including 3 weeks for Christmas and several professional days throughout the year, in addition to the normal national holidays, and 2 months off during the summer. But for us, this wasn’t a huge issue and we were able to work with it.
In any case, we will probably send our other kids to HIS too (and go broke in the process…)
If you have any other questions about living in Zhubei/Hsinchu, please feel free to PM me.