Re:locate magazine | Employee Support | Education

Just what are the educational options for relocating parents? Fiona Leney reports.

The thorny issue of choosing a child’s education is all too often one of the most stressful and emotionally draining of any parent’s life.

How much more acute that anxiety becomes for the mobile expatriate juggling housing, health and career issues becomes clear when you consider a few statistics:

The solution that emerged from Re:locate’s recent Solving Family Issues event, which brought together educational experts from the consultancy, state and private sector to discuss the options, was that parents should consider carefully a host of issues that are less obvious than that of pure academic excellence. How likely, for example, is the family to have to relocate again? Does it adapt easily to new cultures? Above all, it’s the child’s needs that have to come first. In short, it’s ‘horses for courses’.

As international educational consultant Richard Pearce pointed out, what may be the ideal school for, say, a Scandinavian or US family – a relaxed, informal environment where parent involvement is actively encouraged – might horrify an Asian family used to a more formal, hierarchical structure.

So where does one start? Begin by looking at the family’s lifestyle, and further career options first, say our experts. If the move is likely to be only the first of many it makes sense to choose either a school system that will be easily transferable, or a good boarding school, which would provide the child with continuity and stability even if his parents are mobile.

Among the most ‘transferable’ options are either the American school system, with schools dotted around the world, or the many international – and now British – schools offering the International Baccalaureate. With almost half a million students in 120 countries, the IB has enjoyed phenomenal growth in the last few years. Its appeal to the globally mobile is that it is not aligned with the school system of any particular country. Its broad subject base, and teaching philosophy, based on encouraging students to research, compare and debate findings, has earned it a reputation for being more academically taxing than A levels.

Its drawbacks, according to critics, is that it is not widely accepted in certain countries, while universities may be uncertain about how to rate applicants with an IB. Not so, argues Heather Mulkey, Admissions Associate at ACS International Schools. “UCAS [the British university adjudicating body] has now come out with a tariff for the IB. They recognise that it gives them a far more accurate means of identifying excellent candidates,” she says.

Like the IB, the American school system aims to offer broad-based study. American schools in England are fee-paying, but a family likely to move to the US could take comfort in the knowledge that, once there, schooling would be free. And of course, there are American schools pretty much all over the globe.

Within the state sector, GCSEs and A levels have faced mounting criticism over recent years, with doubts over the value of course-work that can be plagiarised from the internet, the narrowing of the curriculum at A level stage, and the ‘feeding’ of information to students to get them through the series of exam hoops. It seems inevitable that A levels will be tweaked again in the near future to encourage a broader learning base. With this in mind, let’s turn to the non-academic advantages of a state education.

Firstly, of course, it’s free. More importantly, for the child, a local school will provide local friends, and, hopefully, a short-cut into feeling at home in the new environment. Children will also come into contact with a cross-section of society – an environment that reflects more closely their outside world – something that’s crucial for developing a child’s social skills.

Of course, there are caveats – the most glaring being the arcane nature of school admissions in the UK. To save themselves from nervous breakdown, returning/relocating parents will need to acquire the following pieces of information, as far in advance of the move as possible:

Gill Bowker, a learning education consultant who has many years experience of helping relocating parents find their way through the educational maze, warns that, because there are no standard admissions dates and criteria, parents may find themselves caught out. There is very little flexibility in a process that needs to be seen to be fair to all applicants – a factor that relocating international and UK employees need to understand. “If you miss those dates, your child will not be considered until all the other children who have applied have been let in. The school may then be full, and refuse your child admission,” says Gill Bowker.

What then? Or indeed, what if parents move to a catchment area in the expectation of automatic admission to the local school, then find there is no place for them? “Parents can be misled by assuming they have absolute rights about where their child goes in the state system; this isn’t so. They have a right to express a preference, which is not the same,” says Gill Bowker.

It is not an ideal system to try and enter without a good knowledge of its workings – which is where employees or their HR departments need to do their homework. Disappointed parents have to be offered the right to appeal when a place is refused, but this, too, requires time, research and the energy to fight. Mrs Bowker, a veteran of many appeals undertaken for clients, has this advice for companies that want their employees to be able to get on with their work: arrange appeals representation for them.

Of course, where a child has special educational needs, parents are in a far stronger position. Indeed, in many instances a state school – either a special school or one that incorporates a specialist unit, or indeed simply one run by a dynamic local authority that’s prepared to put in extra support staff for a special needs child – can be a far better option than the private sector.

But for parents who still can’t choose between the private and state sector, what about a half-way house particularly suited to the mobile parent – the state boarding school? There are 31 of these dotted around England, with fees around a third of those at prime independent schools. Unlike their competitors in the independent sector, though, they will only take UK or EU citizens or children who have the right of residence in the UK. They could work well for parents settling in the UK in the knowledge that they are likely to move again, and wanting to spare their children more upheaval.

© 2007. Article taken from pages 28-29 of the winter 2006 edition of Re:locate magazine, published by Profile Locations, Spray Hill, Hastings Road, Lamberhurst, Kent TN3 8JB. All rights reserved. This publication (or any part thereof) may not be reproduced in any form without the prior written permission of Profile Locations. Profile Locations accepts no liability for the accuracy of the contents or any opinions expressed herein.