We’ve posted here on various school options. We have two kids in local schools this year who have done pretty well. They like the school and it’s convenient. In the past this forum had helped us with finding out about how to “line up” for the school system (essentially show our ARC address and get papers from immigration on entry/exit). Okay, now to the dilemma… we are going back to our home country for a year. We are in a downtown district where there are several schools and we’d like to stay in the school that is right next door to us but which also fills up.
When we come back, it’s very possible we will “lose our space” in line. This does not seem to be the case for local parents. In the park, we meet kids who have entered this school after a year in Minnesota, a year and a half in Shanghai, etc., etc. It may be that since they’re on hukou, they don’t have to deal with this entry/exit question/losing your place question. I probably need to be really friendly and go to the office and talk to people nicely. Besides that, here are my specific questions:
- Does anyone have experience of doing this? Of going away and coming back into a Taipei school system?
- I remember last year that I think to go into one of the foreigner-friendly public schools (Xinsheng, the one in Neihu, the one in Tianmu) you had to have been away for two years or something like that? Does anyone know? (That could be a good option for us.)
Anyway, we’re grateful for any insights others have had. We’ll continue to renew our ARCs and health insurance and we’ll be in the same apartment. The main question would be the actual time outside of Taiwan.