Hello:
My family will be spending one semester in Hsinchu City (We are Canadian, on sabbatical).
Would you recommend attending the local Chinese school, or forking out for an International School?
[quote=“macbohle”]Hello:
My family will be spending one semester in Hsinchu City (We are Canadian, on sabbatical).
Would you recommend attending the local Chinese school, or forking out for an International School?[/quote]
I guess it depends on how old your children are. If they are 1st or second graders or below, I think they will have a hard time adjusting but they can get by and pick up Chinese along the way.
If they are older than that, and have 0 mandarin skills, there is no equivalent of ESL program here in Taiwan’s public schools, and they are going to have a tough time. Since Taiwan’s school system is all about reading, writing and testing, and Chinese writing is especially difficult to master in a short amount of time, it might overwhelm them.
If they study the language before school starts for over 2 years, then they might do alright…
I’m sure they will make friends, language isn’t a problem for kids making friends, so it depends on what learning experience you expect your children to have. If the experience of starring at tests over and over again and not understand a single question isn’t an issue, and they are mature enough to take it in strides, public school can be an interesting experience.
For public high school, the tuition would be higher than local students. For both public junior high and high school, you have to live in the school zone and the school will only accept additional foreign students up to their quota. For senior and junior high school students, schools would typically assign them to a freshman class (high school in Taiwan is for 10th, 11th, 12graders) to reduce the workload. Some schools will have them skip regular classes to take one-on-one Chinese lessons, Taiwan’s version of ESL i guess.
by the way, IBSH inside Hsinchu science park has a bilingual scool. That might be another way to go in Hsinchu.
ibsh.tw/academics-info.asp?id=79
Seconding hansioux. If the children are grade 3 or higher, a semester of local school in Taiwan is going to be frustrating and boring. There’s no point in putting children through that unless they’re going to be here for the long term.