One of the greatest concerns of families about to expatriate is how the move will affect their children's education. Our newly launched E-special brings together the views of parents, students and teachers taking part in our recent education poll and, hopefully, covers all your questions concerning this vital topic.

Parents are often faced with the dilemma of which school to choose for their child. International schools are often the first option considered. Designed to ease the educational transition of a move from one country to another, such schools are a good choice for the children of foreign parents who are staying temporarily in the host country.

However, for families planning to settle into a country long-term, the national school system could be the most effective path.

Each country will have its pro and cons and parents will have to consider such factors as the age of their children and language(s) spoken in the host country before making a selection.

Professional advice from organisations at the host location can help the expat come to the best solution for their children, or even themselves, should they be seeking to continue higher education. But who do you contact to access such information?   

To help families and individuals living in and moving to one of the Expatica countries - Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and Switzerland - we ran a poll to find out your views on how make the most of the education system in your chosen country and how pleased you are with the current situation.

Readers also went further and commented on international and national education outside the six Expatica countries.

To find out how the teachers themselves viewed it from the ‘other’ side of the system, we also ran a poll asking teachers what they felt were the greatest challenges of teaching outside of their home countries.

For both surveys, the majority of expats responding – about a quarter – came from the UK, followed closely by those of American origin. The diverse mix of other countries of origin includes Australia Angola, Belarus, Belize, Canada, Egypt, France, Germany India, Iraq, Lebanon, Switzerland, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

So do Expatica readers feel that their children are benefiting form schooling abroad? Do they find that sending their children to international schools allows for easy integration into their home-country school system upon return? What do you consider to be the drawbacks of the system in your Expatica country and what are the advantages?

Read reports on both surveys, along with a selection of features related to education and surrounding issues, in our just-released Education E-special across all the Expatica countries.

E-special Belgium
E-special Germany
E-special Netherlands
E-special Spain
E-special Switzerland

February 2008 

[Copyright Expatica 2008]