Hey there, we are looking to move back to Taiwan in September. Currently looking for school for my grade 8 daughter and she doesn’t speak much Mandarin. We want to find school that are similiar in curriculum as North America such as IB … howeverwe find that TAS / TES extremely expensive. What are some other options that we have? We’ve current looked at Wego, Kueishan … anything in the $80k - $150k / semester range?
Taipei Fuhsing Private School might fit your needs. They offer a bilingual program.
There are a lot of schools but most aren’t very good. If you’re not going to put her in a religious school and can’t afford TAS or TES, get her started with mandarin now because no matter where she goes she’ll need it. Some (or possibly a lot) of the bilingual schools are bilingual for Taiwanese kids, not the other way around, and your daughter might end up drawing or reading on her own during classes taught in Chinese instead of being taught anything.
I can’t stress this enough: Chinese lessons now from a Taiwanese teacher. Find a teacher on iTalki or find a school in Taiwan that will do remote classes. Maybe try Shuo Hao in Da An. When she gets to Taiwan keep the classes going.
Eighth grade is a tough year to jump in. She’ll get one year of possibly having friends and then 9th grade will be everyone studying constantly to test into a good high school. She might feel like no one wants to be her friend but in reality the other kids are all just in cram school and studying constantly.