Educating Kids in Taiwan

Taiwan Parenting
1

My son is still a few years away from starting school, but I wanted to get some feedback from more experienced parents on how foreign kids are educated here. My choices are to send him to a local school or put him in one of the American / International type schools (way more expensive!).

Here are my concerns with the local education system:

  1. Is speaking to the kids in English at home enough to give them a solid English foundation versus all the Chinese they’ll be exposed to at school and play?
  2. There seems to be much more focus on testing versus fostering creativity and discovery. Is this a concern as they grow up?
  3. Do they require having to go to cram schools on evenings and weekends to keep up with their fellow classmates?

Are there any parents here who have put their children in one of the international schools? Is it worth the much higher price?

Thanks in advance.

2

Hi Adam

I can only write a short response at the moment but in my experience

  1. Children become fluent in the language of their main care giver. If that person speaks English with your boy and reads to him etc. he should have a solid foundation in the language, but literacy is another thing.
  2. The intensity of testing and pressure varies a lot between schools and teachers in Taiwan. Most people seem to agree Elementary school isn’t too bad and that Junior High is when it’s really piled on, so choose to return to their homeland or put their child in international school.
  3. Again, it depends on the school and also on the child.

It’s literacy that’s the main concern. I doubt many children could learn to read or write Chinese without attending a local school, whereas it’s possible with English, though quite a lot of extra work for the child on top of their schoolwork (if you want them to achieve native-speaker English literacy).

3
  1. No. More is needed.
  2. Yes, but this is where the home front come into play.
  3. Cram schools might help a child having problems with a particular subject, but other than that it is just babysitting.
4
  1. Yes, possible. Ours is 6, and managing very well so far. Although I’ve been around her whole life, not absent for long hours out at work. She’s also had 2 trips per year back to the Uk (about 8 weeks in total each year). Both of those undoubtably help. She’s just started Grade 1 elementary here, and we’ll have to see how that goes. The older she gets, the more independent she becomes from her parents, and in this environment that means exposure to more and more Chinese (friends, homework, etc.), and less English. We’ll have to see how this develops, but it’s pretty likely she’ll soon get a private English tutor once a week, for writing at least.

Luckily she has a couple of mixed-blood friends here, who she can also hang with and shoot the breeze in English.

I think the writing is least developed of her skills, and I’d love to set up something like the workshops Asiababy runs. They sound perfect.

  1. It’s a concern for me. I don’t want her to attend Junior High here, and we may well go back to the Uk when she finishes Grade 6. I wouldn’t be concerned about international schools before Junior High, but if I were to stay in Taiwan, it has to be the best option - if we could afford it.

  2. Cram schools are out. Period. Unless there’s a very good reason, like she gets sick and misses a large chunk of school-work, then has to catch up.

5

Kind of in a similar situation. My three year old son started kindergarten last week. The school is called Li-jen. It’s supposed to be a bi-lingual school. One of the reasons for choosing it is because it’s so close to us. We were told that the English classes were taught by native English speakers, but I’m not sure if that’s really the case. The English teacher made one or two grammatical mistakes in the first weekly report we received. The report was understandably very short, but the mistakes were the kind you’d expect of a native speaker of Mandarin. Her English name seems a bit cutesy/made up… perhaps she’s just shortening it for the kids? Not sure what to do here because it is just the first week. But it’s also fairly expensive, and I’d rather not be paying for someone to mess his English up at school. After all, we payed for a bilingual school with native speakers of English.

I was also wondering, what’s the average tuition fee for those international schools? We’re planning on living here for good, and after elementary school we don’t want our kids getting devoured by the examination system.

6

My kids are in a bilingual international preschool. But after two years I am starting to have second thoughts. We will be here for another year or two and I wonder if I should have put them in a public Chinese preschool in the beginning to expose them to the language. Then hopefully we can continue at a Mandarin immersion when we move back to NA. Immersion schools are in such high demand in SF, I feel like I should take advantage of it while we are here. We do have a baby who I will enter preschool next year, so I might experiment with sending her to a local preschool next year. My older child has 45 minutes of Chinese class daily, my middle one does not. They both refuse to speak any Chinese.

7

  1. Your kid will need more than just you. My first speaks quite well and is more fluent than her Taiwanese teacher. I haven’t spent enough time with the 2nd one and his English is lagging a bit.

  2. Yes, just the way it is here. There’s always homeschooling.

  3. Required, No; but there have been cases where a teacher has only taught part of the test material at school and the other part in his cram school classes. I’ll let you decide, probably a senior and junior high school thing.

Our daughter goes for a half day to a private immersion English kindy. She goes to Grandma’s in the afternoon and switches between both languages seemlessly. I read to her a lot and she has seen all 5 seasons of Dora, along with Superwhy, Curious George, Blues Clues and My Little Pony. She has 2 mixed friends she sees 2x a week now. They play and speak English together.

8

[quote=“Dr Jellyfish”]

I was also wondering, what’s the average tuition fee for those international schools? We’re planning on living here for good, and after elementary school we don’t want our kids getting devoured by the examination system.[/quote]

50kish a month.

9

[quote=“tomthorne”][quote=“Dr Jellyfish”]

I was also wondering, what’s the average tuition fee for those international schools? We’re planning on living here for good, and after elementary school we don’t want our kids getting devoured by the examination system.[/quote]

50kish a month.[/quote]

Thanks. That’s quite a fee, especially if you have more that one kid. I’ll keep my fingers crossed and hope that something changes in the system soonish (for the better), and in the meanwhile I’ll get saving :doh:

10

I think it depends on what your hopes and goals are for your child/ren. We sent our boy to local kindy (3 years) through the 8th grade. Then we sent him to Bethany in Gong Guan for an American curriculum where English was the language of instruction, and we had him repeat the 8th grade and then do the 9th grade, there. Our hope and goal was to allow him to be fluently native in both Chinese and English. I think we were successful in our goal. However, it wasn’t as easy as simply sending him to the schools that we did.

Possibly, but, not likely. Are both parents native English speakers? My wife is local, and as a rule never spoke English with the boy. This was helpful in that 1) she could assist with homework while he was in grade school and 2) it helped to support his Chinese language learning at an early age. I always spoke English to the boy, and often took him out with me to places where other native English speakers would be, so that he heard English spoken in accents other than my own. However, the biggest influence in keeping his English up was sending him back to my parents’ house for the summers, where he spoke English daily and interacted daily with only English speakers.

Again, while this is true, whether it is important to you and your child/ren will depend on your goals. Our primary goal in sending our boy to local schools was to attain native proficiency in Chinese. We encouraged him to do his best in his classes, but, never pressured him to compete with his classmates. He did OK. Never burned up the class with his grades. He read lots of stuff outside his school work and learned lots on his own about world history, geography, and even science and nature. But, this type of personal exploration will be difficult unless you support the same and are not too concerned about grade competition in the local schools. We were able to manage this way because we knew that we would be taking the boy out of the local schools and putting him in an international/American school for a couple years to get him ready to go to the US for high school and college (uni).

We never sent our boy to a cram school. Again, this was due to our primary goal of attaining language proficiency.

As indicated above, our boy went to local schools from kindy through the 8th grade. We then sent him to Bethany to start getting used to English as the language of instruction and an American curriculum. It was expensive, but, only half the price of Taipei American School. Was it worth it? Absolutely! The folks at Bethany frequently told us that they had a good school, but, we had no independent verification of this. However, our boy did well there, he loved it there, and he still hangs out with his friends from there when he returns for summers in Taiwan. After only 2 years at Bethany, we sent him to live with my parents and to attend the same public high school that I went to. He did very well there even with difficult classes such as advanced placement economics and government classes. He’s now in college and tearing it up, there.

As stated above, our first goal was always language proficiency. As our boy is a US citizen only (no ROC citizenship), our second goal was getting him into and doing well in the US system. I think we have succeeded in both goals. He just started his junior (3rd year) at college (uni) and is doing very, very well. My wife (a long time Chinese language teacher) says that his Chinese proficiency is native. He did an internship this past summer at the Pennsylvania Office of Trade and Investment in Taipei, and he was the only student intern who was fluent in both Chinese and English. The students from the US had virtually no Chinese proficiency and the Taiwanese uni students had low levels of English proficiency. As a result, the boy was very busy and I think he had a solid internship experience.

So, before you even ask the questions that you (the general you, not you personally) have posed above, it makes good sense to first understand your own long-term goals for your child/ren.

1 Like
11

Thank you all for your detailed replies. Judging from this advice, it seems that the best (and most economical) option is to put him in the regular local system for kindy through elementary, and then look at other options (international or go back to Canada) for junior high and above.

[quote=“tomthorne”][quote=“Dr Jellyfish”]

I was also wondering, what’s the average tuition fee for those international schools? We’re planning on living here for good, and after elementary school we don’t want our kids getting devoured by the examination system.[/quote]

50kish a month.[/quote]

This actually seems low to me. We did some research and found the following. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Taipei American school: $200 000 NT per year plus 480 000 NT per semester
American school in Taichung: $280 000 NT per semester
Morrison Christian school in Taichung: $320 000 NT per semester

I assume a semester is 3 months?

12

[quote=“Adam_CLO”]We did some research and found the following. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

Taipei American school: $200 000 NT per year plus 480 000 NT per semester
American school in Taichung: $280 000 NT per semester
Morrison Christian school in Taichung: $320 000 NT per semester

I assume a semester is 3 months?[/quote]

That looks about right (per my admittedly poor memory).

Bethany in Taipei is part of the Morrison system, but, it only has grades K - 9. We had considered sending him to Morrison in Taichung, but, there was an increase in tuition and costs (at the high school level) that made sending him there nearly as expensive as Taipei American School.

Thus, our decision to send him home (the US) to attend public high school was partly economic and partly due to our desire that he be bi-cultural as well as bi-lingual.

13

Geez. Based on those prices, my future children will be doing local school up through 12th grade. :-/

Edit: And based on the price below, I guess these schools are intended only for diplomats, loaded Taiwanese businesspeople whose children aren’t TW citizens, or people on the mythical “expat package” that doesn’t seem to exist anymore.

14


A very quick check of the TAS tuition and fees for 2013-14 for first time applicants for grades K - 5 looks to be, at a bare minimum, [color=#FF0000]NT$ 862,430[/color] (approximately US$ 29,025)

That amount does not include lunch fees and or transportation fees.

:astonished:

That’s a lot of money to pay for one year of schooling. Its a bit more if you are entering as a first time applicant for grades 6 -12.

15

Like a few others, I also plan on sending my kids back to home for around 2 months each year, so they can more opportunities to speak English. When my kids are at home, I only speak and read to them in English and my wife mostly speaks to them in Chinese. We hope to let our kids develop their own interests, so they’d be encouraged to pursue less academic activities, perhaps like art, martial arts, cooking, whatever they enjoy. And as much quality family time as we can manage on weekends and evenings. We don’t want them going to cram school every day - why have kids if you don’t want to see them? With this is mind, I’d just like to know:

  1. Has anyone here put their kids through the Taiwanese system all the way until college/university? If so, how has it worked out?

  2. How possible is it for kids to do well in the Taiwanese education system without going to all the cram school lessons? I’m just thinking about the previous comment about teachers splitting school material between official class time and cram-school lessons.

16

Tangentially related: tw.news.yahoo.com/%E5%8F%B0%E7%8 … 46432.html

A German girl who grew up in Taiwan since age 6 says she was often favored by teachers and adults for being unique, which made her run afoul of a lot of local kids. She’s graduating from the dance program at NTUA but has been unable to participate in a lot of activities/events/competitions because she doesn’t have a national ID card. Now that she’s facing graduation, she is unable to find a job because of the stupidly restrictive work regulations, can’t stay on a parent-based JFRV anymore because she’s too old, and doesn’t want to go back to Germany which is at this point totally foreign to her.

Just some food for thought for you lifers out there.

17

[quote=“Dr Jellyfish”]Like a few others, I also plan on sending my kids back to home for around 2 months each year, so they can more opportunities to speak English. When my kids are at home, I only speak and read to them in English and my wife mostly speaks to them in Chinese. We hope to let our kids develop their own interests, so they’d be encouraged to pursue less academic activities, perhaps like art, martial arts, cooking, whatever they enjoy. And as much quality family time as we can manage on weekends and evenings. We don’t want them going to cram school every day - why have kids if you don’t want to see them? With this is mind, I’d just like to know:

  1. Has anyone here put their kids through the Taiwanese system all the way until college/university? If so, how has it worked out?
    [/quote]

I know of at least one American friend whose daughter went all the way through at least high school in Taipei. She went to the First Girls High School (beinu), which is along with Jianzhong, is considered to be the best high school in Taiwan. Admission is extremely competitive and in my experience, graduates from these schools are academically ready for anything in Taiwan or abroad and professionally tend to be at the top of their field. I have no idea whether she went to cram school or how she fared there. I suspect quite well.

All of my many other friends with children have taken their kids out of the Taiwanese school system by junior high school either usually because the parents disliked kinds of education they were getting their. In a few cases, the kids wanted to go to schools where they would not always be different from the other kids.

[quote]
2. How possible is it for kids to do well in the Taiwanese education system without going to all the cram school lessons? I’m just thinking about the previous comment about teachers splitting school material between official class time and cram-school lessons.[/quote]

Every year the Taiwanese newspapers run stories on kids who got the highest entrance scores on the high school admissions exams. What is very striking is that most of these high performing students say that they did not go to cram school at all or only very briefly. They say that they did their homework, paid attention in class, and did a lot of reading outside school. The experts all agree that it is entirely possible to test into the top schools without crams schools and they urge parents to let their kids develop a love of learning outside of school through reading and other interests. Obviously, this advice falls on deaf ears for the most part.

Here’s a typical story about the top scoring student on the university entrance exams. As is common, he never went to a cram school during his entire high school career.

mag.udn.com/mag/edu/storypage.js … _ID=467078

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18

Thanks, Feiren. It’s good to know that kids can do well in the Taiwanese education system without relying on the cram schools. I imagine this doesn’t just happen by itself, and that parents will need to encourage good habits like independent reading. I was starting to worry about the need to send them to an international school, as I doubt we could afford the fees for two kids. I had initially planned to keep them in the Taiwanese system and just give them as much exposure to English at home and on holidays (I will stick to this plan for the time being). I just didn’t like the idea of the constant exams and long hours at cram schools. At least I know I can (probably) remove the cram school problem.

19

I think it is possible to do without cram school. But don’t underestimate the insidious power of peer pressure both on the parents and the students to conform and cram. Apparently, the other parents are often actively working to pressure the teachers and the schools into keeping the students for ‘optional’ study halls before and after school and even to go to cram schools. One important way of accomplishing this mission is by placing parents in the classroom as enforcers. It can be tough for kids to stand up to this pressure.

Also, one of the parents is Taiwanese, the teachers and other parents will go to work on that parent to get them to conform. It really is a kind of bullying that even principled parents may have trouble resisting. All of this is a bigger problem at public schools in Taipei where many families are making great sacrifices to live in Taipei for the sake of their children’s education. I suspect that more relaxed parents and their kids are much happier at alternative schools like this one in Toucheng or in rural Taiwan. One big plus is that now there are a certain number of places guaranteed at national universities for graduates of public high schools (the ‘Many Stars’ 泛星 program). Still, the truth is that a very high percentage of kids who go to NTU, NCCU, and Qinghua are from a few elite public schools in northern Taiwan with a smattering from similar schools in Taichung, Tainan, and Kaohsiung.

Also, I don’t think you will be able to do anything about the constant exams. Taking them and practicing for them takes up a lot of classroom time from what I hear.

20

I get that nothing can be done about the number of exams. I’ll probably start worrying about cram school or extra tuition if my kids are struggling at school.

I’m not liking the idea of these parent “enforcers”. My wife (Taiwanese) is also against the idea of sending the kids to cram school. She wants to work at home so she can spend more time with the kids, I work from home as well. Hopefully we can stick to our principals and not be pressured by the system. We returned to Taiwan to give our kids a better future, not to get rid of them.