High school options for non-millionaire expats?

Taiwan Parenting
61

[quote=“Scuba”]No more bizarre than a Taiwan Minister of Education feeling comfortable sending his children to a school outside the Taiwan Education System.

Reminds me . Quite a few comments above re: the lack of “real” foreigners at TAS. This is not really surprising. The school was not set up for foreigners. It was set up by the rich Taiwanese for the rich Taiwanese & that is the mission it fulfils.[/quote]

TAS offers quality education for an exhorbitant price. Its best suited for for students who intend to continue their education in the US. It ranks very high in comparison to other International Schools around the world.

By ‘real foreigners,’ do you mean people who are not ethnically Chinese/Taiwanese?

My parents went to the states in the 1960’s from Taiwan, i was born in the states. I spent 13 years there. Over there i spoke English and Taiwanese, learned chinese when we moved here.

I attended TAS. Later attended uni in the States.

Am i a ‘Real Foreigner?’ Should i be white, latino, black? Should i have a Ukranian passport?

How about all of your wives? Seems just about everyone around here is married to a local. Are they simply Taiwanese citizens, or did you apply for citizenship of your home country as well?

Are they now ‘Real Foreigners?’

Are you a ‘Real Foreigner?’

TAS was set up as an embassy/military-family school. Look at any early yearbook from the 1950s-1970s. Plenty of ‘real foreigners.’ :unamused: Look at any current yearbook, still plenty of ‘Real Foreigners.’

If you can’t afford it, fine. Thats no big problem. Theres no need to belittle the school because you can’t/refuse pay up. IMHO, You’re only cheating your kids out of better opportunity.

As for more affordable options: I suggest Morrison Christian Academy in Taichung. Quality education for less money. We still always kick their a**es in exchange games tho.

-chris

62

[quote]By ‘real foreigners,’ do you mean people who are not ethnically Chinese/Taiwanese?
[/quote]

Well, it wasn’t me, but my guess is that he meant people actually born and/or raised outside of Taiwan, (such as yourself) as opposed to rich Taiwanese who have managed to get American citizenship for themselves and their family. It annoys some people (like me) that Taiwanese are easily able to get foreign passports and keep their Taiwanese citizenship, whereas those of us born elsewhere, would have to give up our original citizenship to get Taiwanese passports. Big double standard.

Brian

63

[quote=“Bu Lai En”][quote]By ‘real foreigners,’ do you mean people who are not ethnically Chinese/Taiwanese?
[/quote]

Well, it wasn’t me, but my guess is that he meant people actually born and/or raised outside of Taiwan, (such as yourself) as opposed to rich Taiwanese who have managed to get American citizenship for themselves and their family. It annoys some people (like me) that Taiwanese are easily able to get foreign passports and keep their Taiwanese citizenship, whereas those of us born elsewhere, would have to give up our original citizenship to get Taiwanese passports. Big double standard.

Brian[/quote]

Yes thats is what I meant & I agree with the double standard point.
Sorry if a caused offence with the “real foreigner” comment it was not intended as a racial slur as it appears to have been interpretted by mungacious.
I have no doubt that the academic standard at the school is very high. I personally dont like thier ethos in certain areas. eg if your child has any kind of learning difficulty they will not be accepted & if discovered while at the school will be thrown out on the streat to be picked up by one of the other international schools who have a somewaht more enlightened attitude.
I dont have a child with learning difficulties (or a local wife for that matter mungacious…) but these attitudes make me feel that TAS would not be for me. I would be interested in the real history of the school. I was told it was set up/funded by Taiwanese businessmen although under the guise of being a support for the embassy etc. to make things look legit. My info on TAS is all 2nd hand so it could be wrong.

64

Before my whore of an ex-wife ran off with a German, I had also planned to move the family to Guam. It’s a great there. And the kids can continue to study Chinese.

guam.net/list.htm?catno=22

65

just guessing, but i figure they must have close kmt connections to have started the school and gotten their rent deals. when chen shui bian was mayor he tried to scotch their lease.

66

Does anybody have any experience with the Dominican school? Are they good? Expensive? What’s it like in general?

And what year do they stop using local languages and start being taught exclusively in Latin? :stuck_out_tongue:

67

Here’s a link to the Dominican school’s website

68

Gadzooks, for me that’d be about a month’s salary per semester, for EACH kid.

Okay then, so much for Catholics. How about Buddhists? Do they run schools? Maybe in Nepal or somewhere…?

69

I don’t have kids, but I have heard nothing but bad things about the Dominican School, and that includes cruel and unusual punishment on the students. I had a run-in with Sister Begonia once, not sure if she is still there or not, but she’s surely on my Top Five List of biggest pains on the island, which is quite an achievement, if I do say so myself. (No. 1 through 4 have since left this precious island, thank goodness.)

70

Try Grace or Morrison. They are not cheaper than the dominicans. (Weren’t they supposed to live in poverty?)

71

From what I can see of the Domincan website photos, not a lot has changed at that school in 30 some years. Kind of scary!
My sister and I went to that school for a year because my mother did not like TAS, but after 1 year at Dominican she sent us back to TAS. It was different back then becuase the student population was mostly american at that time.

72

Kids 6 and 4, and I am so sad. I’ve read every single page of this thread and it seems that my only solution is to go out and be a money mongering whore for the next 8 years… or leave Taiwan and live in a North Carolina trailer park near Alien.

Chou

73

I’m with you on this, ChoDoFu. The kindergarten where my boy goes has agreed to let him stay on a bit longer, spending the mornings in the da ban, then moving to the an ching ban in the afternoon.

My biggest fear about public schools here isn’t the education, it’s the fact that he’s a blonde haired blue-eyed boy going to a school where he’ll be the only one. The kindergarten he’s at spent a good deal of time acclimating him to the school and the other kids to him. However, with the class sizes at a public school I certainly don’t expect them to make that sort of effort. Children are all about picking on the weak, different, etc. (at least they were when I went to school) and I don’t want to expose my boy to that sort of experience, if I can at all avoid it.

74

Toughen the lad up a bit. It’ll be good for him.

Brian

75

ahem I’m going to take that comment as being tongue-in-cheek. There is time enough in his life to learn that people can be bigoted a**holes without tossing him into it at such an early age.

76

[quote=“Muffin”]Chessman

No thats not true. My son attended the local primary school. All you wife needs is to take her household registration down to the school with your ARC, your Sons ARC and enrol.

My sone does not have ROC nationalty but just graduated from 6th grade at a local school.

77

It’s pretty funny how all these things are being said about TAS. Yes, I attended TAS for high school, but before that I was born and raised in California.

It’s true that the main student population are rich, but this is natural considering that most of the students parent’s went to the US to get an education, probably lived there for a few years, then moved back to Taiwan for business opportunities.

TAS does have a lot of naive, spoiled, closed minded children. However, I made the best of friends there, as well as an international perspective. The tuition is quite expensive- but all american schools, SAS, ISM, HKIS, etc are higher I have heard.

TAS was started back in late 1940’s for US soldiers.

It’s immature, and naive on everyones part to say such negative things about a school based on its tuition- or the fact that yes, many rich american born chinese students attend the school.

78

I have had several of my students go on to TAS from my buxiban class. I’m expecting to lose one more to them after this year. I can’t speak as a student or as a parent, but from the times I have spent there during early childhood educators meetings held in the lower school, and knowing my former students who are attending school there, I feel that the school and its teachers are very competent and excellent at what they do. From what I understand of the basic requirements to even be a potential candidate, I can see why. TAS, unless I am mistaken, asks for no less than two years teaching experience in an American school in the States and encourages candidates to have at least one year experience abroad. I don’t know for sure since I have no experience with the personnel department, but of the two teachers who went on to teach there from my school, they were both great teachers with strong credentials and experience.
Their resources, materials, facilities and services (especially with ESL and special ed.) are amazing. And to get not only such an excellent American school, but an excellent American school on another continent takes moola. The kids that moved on were more or less kids that a teacher would love to have in his or her class, all intrinsically motivated in their education, funny, well-rounded, very smart, and pretty good speakers of English. I have two in my kindergarten class who I am sure are already being groomed to join the TAS student body when they get into elementary school. I do recall that my first time going into there, I overheard two mothers bragging in a one-upmanship manner about what Ivy League school their kids had gotten into for the next year. They were talking casually, but you could just hear the competetitive tone in their voices, although I’m sure that they were also proud of their children and not just treating them as trophies of their parenting skills.

As far as TAS’s mission showing bias in favor of rich local families, I think someone needs to work on their reading skills:

[quote=“Taipei American School’s historical perspective on admissions”]Taipei American School (TAS) was established in 1949 to educate children of expatriates. TAS is an educational institution owned and operated by the Taipei American School Foundation for the education of children of foreign businessmen, technicians, scholars, missionaries and other foreigners in Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China in accordance with American educational concepts. Taipei American School enrolls students without regard to race, religion or gender.

TAS receives more applications than it has space available and therefore has initiated a priority system that reflects the school

79

[quote=“chodofu”]Kids 6 and 4, and I am so sad. I’ve read every single page of this thread and it seems that my only solution is to go out and be a money mongering whore for the next 8 years… or leave Taiwan and live in a North Carolina trailer park near Alien.

Chou[/quote]

Don’t be sad.

There’re more and more public English/Chinese elementary schools in Taipei.

Public elementary school like XinSheng elementary school should be good for your children. And it should be cheap.

http://www.snes.tp.edu.tw/

Application Policy for the Bilingual Education ClassAt Taipei Municipal NanGang District NanGang Elementary School－For Children of foreigners and return scholars working at Academia Sinica,NanKang Software Park, or NeiHu Technology Park
http://www.sinica.edu.tw/~hro/IS/Education.pdf

http://www.stes.tp.edu.tw/english/englishindex.html

80

I would really not recommend Hsintien (Xindian) Cambridge for your kids. The school is not bilingual, as they claim to be. They have 2 classes of English per day but all their regular classes, such as math, science, etc. are all taught in Chinese.

The majority of their teachers are made up of foreigners who have some teaching experience but do not hold teacher licenses, which they should as they are a registered school. They are regulated as regular Chinese elementary schools are, so all their teachers are all suppose to have teaching licenses - they work around it. The teacher turn over rate is incredibly high as they have major management issues and their pay is lower than buxhibans/anchingban (considering the hours they are supposed to teach).

The kids are usually from wealthy families that reside on the Xindian mountain. You’ll find the usual snotty kids, but that’ll be the same everywhere. The problem is, their English is poor, especially the pronunciation, because they learned it in Taiwan and they are all Taiwanese. This is a school for rich Taiwanese kids that have rich Taiwanese parents who want to brag about their expensive school. They do plan to send their kids abroad for University but will eventually find that, since their English is so poor, the kids will run into quite a lot of problems getting/fitting in.

The Chinese teachers are actually teachers that have their teaching degrees and are pretty good.

Also, the spaces are very limited as most of their students start attending since kindergarden and have priority.

This information coming from teachers currently teaching there or have taught at Cambridge.

I have attended Dominican School a while back and in my class of 25, I was the only student there that was comfortable conversing in English. The rest of the class had poor pronunciation and was all Taiwanese. They had travelled abroad and some had lived there for a year or two but was mainly rich Taiwanese kids that started attending Dominican since they were in kindergarden. So, actually, my Chinese improved, even though all of the classes were taught in English, albeit by heavily accented Philipino nuns.

No wonder my classmates all sounded slightly Philipino and were all prudes. :smiling_imp:

As for the education, it was ok. Nothing special. Competitive. They used to rank all the students and post that up in front of the class. I don’t really know if you want your kids to go through that kind of pressure. Back then, I had private tutoring after school and my life was basically all studying. There were no sports teams or after curricular activities.