I lived and worked in Taiwan for about 6 years. Among other things, I worked in a number of English speaking schools in the Taipei area. We moved back to the states when my daughter was 2 years old and had another daughter recently. I don’t know what the schools in Taiwan are like to a parent. However, as a teacher I thought they were pretty much what I would want for my children.
I have been very disappointed in the quality (and price) of care back here in the states. I’ve had my daughter in 4 different schools in the last 2 1/2 years. They generally cost between $800 and $1400US dollars a month.
The best school my daughter has been in is roughly comparable to one of the midrange schools I worked in Taiwan.
I can post more details if anyone is interested but has anyone experienced the same thing.
I’ve noticed that many mixed couples here delay their departure because of the relatively low cost (and reasonable quality) of medical care and pre-school education, plus the fact that they want their young ones to pick up some of thee ol’ Chinee.
[quote=“Okami”]Just because the teachers dip when they teach doesn’t make them bad teachers.
I don’t necessarily thing they are bad teachers as much as they are working with a bad system.
One example is that my little 3-year-old bully pulled a girls hair in class so they called me at work and told me that I had to take her home for the day. I was really mad until I saw the handful full of hair she pulled out. I apologized profusely and had a long but rather ineffective talk with my daughter about pulling hair. The next day she did it again and once again, I had to go pick her up from school. The third time it happened I asked the teacher if she tried to stop her and she told me that they only have 2 teachers for 18 children and are unable to give them individual attention. I explained that she has a pattern of pulling hair but she does not do it when I am around because when I see her going for the hair I stop her. They said they were too busy and do not have time to care for the students as individuals but rather as a class.
So let’s do the math.
18 students at $1100= $19800 a month
Co teacher @ $10.00 an hour =$1600 a month (they might have had 2 co teachers)
Primary Teacher @ 13.00 an hour=$2080 a month
That leaves a lot of money left over for someone to give a little individual attention where needed.
Eventually I pulled her out and put her in a school close to my work. It was an inner city school run by a church. The teachers were great and the kids were a lot tougher than the little Ms. Britney Spears rich girls in the previous school. The only problem there was an issue of safety. There didn’t seem to be any access controls and the church had a drug rehab counseling center on the same floor. There was only one younger guy in the morning to watch all the kids until the teachers came in and he would pile the kids in his office and make them sit on the sofa until enough kids came in to go to the class. My daughter refused to go into the office with him so I took her home. (I used to wait until another teacher came before I left and that made me late for work half the time.)
The school she is in now is pretty good but they have no academic program. I’m sure there are good schools out there but I would rather have just about any foreign teacher I ever worked with in Taiwan teach my kids in Taiwan than most of the teachers she has now.
Day care and preschools in Taipei are far superior to what I could fins in my hometown. Not only is schooling cheaper here, but it is more multi-cultural, multi-lingual, and the quality of English education and school preparation is about the same. There is also usually a lower teacher to kid ratio. I pity my friends in the states paying up the butt for inadaquate care.
Every moment of every day, I praise the powers that be that I am not in a position to have to put my kids in pre-school in North America.
Daylight robbery, If you ask me.
Here in Taipei, we pay about NT15,000 (US$450) per month, for a good school a block from our house.
Then we pay nanny NT7,000 (US$200) per month for a few hours of afterschool care per day plus dinner for the three of us (my wife and daughter eat there most days, when we go there after work to pick up our girl).
This thread is illuminating. In HK, we pay US$400 a month for what is considered an expensive playgroup that is two hours a day. Half is in Mandarin, and the other half is in English. All teachers are native speakers of their teaching language, and all have a UK QKT cert or its equivalent. Next year the little turkey will move up to kindy in the same school, which will run for 3.5 hours a day at US$500/month. I guess I’d be hard pressed to find something like that in the US. I should count my blessings.
Well, I sent my toddler to a daycare center in Korea, and I was far more satisfied than the one in Taiwan. By law, the toddler to teacher ratio is 5:1, so they really get a lot of attention and a few academic classes by outsourced teachers for English & Haba or Montessori. And, the cost is less than $400/month.
And, their breakfast and lunch menu can be fantastic if you choose a good one. The first one that I sent my son just gave peanut+rice porridge for breakfast and some curry rice for lunch, but the second one changed their “dishes” almost everyday for the entire month, and they included three different dishes and soup for each lunch. Also, they provided fruits or cup cakes as desserts.