Wow… such great input. My child and I we both speak Chinese. He can read about a grade 2 level only. I don’t think that we will put him into TAS or TES. Being around wealthy classmate will be a race of buying the newest phone or bag instead of trying to get a decent education LOL. Being in school at least he could play some sports with his friends which homeschool can’t provide. However, like you say in the future there could be a lot of homeschooling and learning on-line anyway. I think that I will try to look at Kangchaio. I know there are quite a few students there and graduated from there and become actors. Maybe be can be around famous friends. LOL Thanks for your great input.
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I thought Taiwan has zero local cases already. Why are they going back to remote learning?? We are from Thailand. He is studying in an English school here and learns some Chinese on Saturday. We have a house in Taiwan so I thought about moving back so he can pick up more Chinese there.
Thanks for the list. Those international school in Taiwan are crazy expensive. Talking about our gov’s goal to make Taiwan an international hub like Singapore but not providing enough English schools in normal schools. I wonder how?? LOL
Oh my… the bilingual school are that bad. HA HA HA HA…
Sorry for off-topic, but recently we debated with wife about English. About how many doors English open
We live in Germany and decided not to enroll our kids in bilingual German - English kindergarten.
We prefer they focus on learning our languages German and Chinese. To be able to communicate with family and work locally where they are entitled with passports.
I work for German company and got promoted, cause I am native speaker. Others have more experiences, but their German is lacking.
Taiwanese here have hard time adjusting, cause their English ability is not helpful in a German speaking country. We live in Germany and is expected for good job positions to bo fluent. While my limited English is enough to deal with French customers. Anyway they speak poor English. You better speak local language, where do you live and work.
I believe it works similar in Taiwan. In Japan I couldn’t order coffee with English.
When it comes to EU market French and German native speakers are in higher demand than English native speakers.
It’s not like speaking English will land you a good job in non English countries.
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Agreed with your points overall.
But Japan and Taiwan are really quite different in that respect . Many Taiwanese people quite like speaking English.
And being a native English speaker can help quite a bit in Taiwan for some jobs. Of course learning Chinese is very helpful and useful here too, obviously.
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I will not deny that, but English is still more globally accepted than other languages. There are obviously places where other languages will take priority, but generally, regardless of whether I’m in Denmark or Korea or Columbia, if there is a common language between me and others, it will be English, even if it’s VERY limited. I do agree that knowing the language of your country’s passport, however, should absolutely take precedent.
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Knowing English opens the door to a Western college education.
That’s the main selling point of international and bilingual schools anyway.
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All of you have good points.
English does open a door to Western education, but let’s be real is often a business facade by private academia selling dreams of Western life to non western world. They produce students without needed skills and young people become
unemployed. Ofc rich families don’t care about it, but many average families take loans. Which sucks indeed
Public universities have highest rankings in Germany and there are sits available to non EU students. They are tuition free.
We have private universities too, they charge
25 000 € yearly or more.
It’s sad to see foreigners sending their kids to Germany, to private faculties taught in English, when tiny percentage of German companies are willing to hire graduates from English programs.
Of course, English is world wide used language, is useful and beneficial to when travel around.
In reality is so difficult to land a job with only English language in non English speaking country (90% of world).
Parents should rather use their resources to learn their children local language fluently and provide education which can secure a stable job.
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Yea, perhaps teach a useful trade or something that allows them to be employed by TSMC and the like. Otherwise most bushibans in Taiwan are frauds. They really are just places kids go to have fun learning english while their parents don’t have to worry about them.
Which is why lots of classes got canceled when they went online only.
My son is also a citizen of Taiwan. We speak English at home so his English is the top of the class LOL. He reads and write Thai as it’s the language he learned in school along with English. The only problem now is Chinese which apparently is the hardest language because you have to remember in characters. So… I thought about letting him so back to study in Taiwan at least it has the environment for him to pick up speaking Chinese faster if learning read and writing is too late.
Class gets out at 3:35pm at TAS. Teachers are generally allowed to leave at 4 if they don’t have an after-school duty like coaching, but the sheer amount of work dictates that if they don’t stay later, they’ll be working from home in the evening. No shortage of exhausted teachers there. You actually underestimate the pay, though— it’s significantly higher than the best-paying districts in the US, which is how they get so many good teachers (and doctors, lawyers, nurses, professors, etc.) from the US and elsewhere to move to Taiwan to work there.
This is true. When you travel around the world and hear a Polish person and Italian person speaking to each other, or a Japanese person and Thai person, or a Kenyan and a Brazilian, they are almost always speaking English. It is the closest thing to a universal common language the world has.
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Where do you live now? In Thailand?
I would love for my children to have high fluency of Mandarin, and I am OK with living Taiwan, but don’t have a lot of support from my Taiwanese spouse.
So moving to Taiwan requires a lot of strategy on my side to figure out logistics.
This forum is in the great help.
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We live in Bangkok now. However, my parents have a house in Taiwan so we can stay there. Thailand just doesn’t have the environment to practice speaking Chinese. The fastest way is to be in Taiwan by person to learn the language.
I’m curious to know how much TAS actually pays then. I thought it was in the ballpark of NT200k/mo., which is still less than I was offered at a wealthy suburb district of a mid-sized city in the US. (Their offer was 72k USD/yr. I had one year of experience at the time. Since salaries are public record, I saw that this was on the higher end for a new teacher, but not by much.) If TAS is paying more than NT200k/mo, I am amazed, because I don’t know anyone who had been working there who wanted to stay for more than one year. You’d take quite a pay cut to go work somewhere else after that.
As for workload, TAS has after school programs that teachers can elect to have anything to do with. My guess is they are also paid extra. Most other private schools just tell their teachers to go supervise or teach after school programs as part of their job. Do you really want an adult who has already been working for 9 hours to now supervise your child until you get off of work?
As I understand it, that’s the very low end, as in zero years experience and only a bachelor’s degree— and people like that are rarely hired there. With several years experience and a graduate degree (as most who work there have), low six figures is the norm for off-island hire including housing supplement, so maybe more like NT300k per month. Plus extra stipends for various stuff. Practically no taxes and practically free health care are also a big draw for Taiwan compared to the US. Factor that in, and you’d have to make $150-200k in the US to have the same take-home pay.
Yep, I think most who leave are taking a major pay cut unless they are retiring or taking a job at one of the other top-tier international schools worldwide.
From what I understand TAS employees do not pay taxes in Taiwan. Special deal with the government.