Hello, I am hoping to get some help or guidance. We are not from California and have no family in Taiwan but are thinking of moving to Taipei with a digital nomad visa in August 2027. Our kids will be 6 and 5 years old (1st grade and kindergarten in the states). We would like to enroll them in either a private or public school in Taipei so they can pick up mandarin (they currently go to a bilingual mandarin school but their mandarin is by no means fluent).
Does anybody have a list of schools that we can check out?
How does enrollment work? Would we need to apply for our visa before applying?
We ideally would like to have a school that would support the language transition and not be too rigorous with the academics. Does anybody have any suggestions? Any information would be much appreciated!
Hi, welcome to Forumosa! It would help if you could give some more details like which part of Taipei you’re considering living in and how much money you have to spend on private education. There are various levels here. So you want more of a local school rather than an international school? A lot of public schools claim to be bilingual, but it’s really quite a stretch for the most part. There are some private schools with bilingual programs, but for the most part, they’re just wannabe international schools. You may want to consider sending them to just regular public school and if them getting educated in English is important to you, consider homeschooling, private tutoring, or specific cram schools. Not sure why you need to mention the fact that you’re not from California. Also not sure how one qualifies to register for a local public school if you’re not Taiwanese, perhaps some others can try to offer better guidance in that respect.
Our primary goal is for them to get a good education and for them to be immersed to learn mandarin. But we would like them to have easier transition with the language immersion since their Chinese is not very good.
I’ve put my kids in private bilingual schools and one had a brief stint a a public school.
We chose these and not an international school because we also wanted them to learn mandarin (the price difference didn’t hurt either)
The bilingual schools for such a young age did just fine. They do have classes in different subjects in English with foreign teachers (Brits, Americans, Pinoys, etc) and also have a heavy focus on mandarin.
Public schools are also good if in a good neighborhood but English is not taught at the younger ages for some reason. You would have to homeschool or put them in an English academy.
So it depends. If budget is not really a factor I’d recommend bilingual schools initially and get an idea of the local neighborhood public school.
@ExpatDad do you have bilingual private schools you would recommend and can you give me their website or more information on enrollment and when I should start the enrollment process?
Why digital nomad? If you can afford international or private schools in Taiwan, and are set on central Taipei, then maybe you might qualify for the gold card ARC.
The kids might get more out of it at a public school, in terms of mandarin and local immersion.