Considering how often family issues affect an international relocation, HR managers should be prepared for questions on education. We provide some guidelines for parents and suggestions for HR.

• Questions parents should ask themselves
• What HR professionals can do to help

Often employees will preface a conversation about their children's schooling with a statement such as “My child is going into high school, it is too late to take on this assignment?” Or a spouse will say, “My husband will have to commute, because I can’t move my child at this point in his or her education."

There is no right time to move a child, or no specific time at which a child becomes too old to relocate. Each age presents trade-offs. Sometimes the secondary school years are the threshold that employees, who also are parents, are unwilling to cross.

 But for many families, the age cut-off can seem quite arbitrary, coming as early as 4 years old or as late as 18. Clearly, younger children are more malleable, and therefore easier to move.

Older children resist leaving friends more vocally and experience more complicated issues in terms of curriculum. But they retain far more, and therefore gain much more, from the experience.

Employees thinking about an expatriate posting always should consider how an international relocation will affect their children before they agree to the assignment.

Here are some factors they may want to consider to help them evaluate how easily their children will adapt to school in a new country. These are particularly important when a child is getting closer to the teenage years:

• What kind of student has the child been academically? In what educational circumstances has he/she thrived and where has he/she struggled?

• What kind of person is the child socially? Does he/she make friends easily or is it particularly difficult for him/her to do so? Does the child have any interests that can be continued in the new country that will make it easier to make new friends?

• Is the child doing well academically as well as socially at the present time? Ironically, it is easier to move a child at a good stage of development rather than when he or she may be running away from something.

What are the values of the employee and his/her spouse?

• What kind of person do the parents want their youngster to become? Do they feel strongly that they want their child to be open to new cultures; to taking on new challenges; to confronting risks? Can they effectively support him or her during this difficult period?

  If the employee and the spouse’s answers to all of these questions are yes, then timing may be less important than welcoming the opportunity at any age.

• On the other hand, if your employee moved a great deal as a child, he or she may have promised him/herself not to do this to his/her own children.

If, for any reason, your employee (or spouse) has a strong commitment to having their children complete secondary school in one place, you may not want to move this family. No potential benefits may outweigh the disadvantages according to their value system, and the result may be a failed relocation.

What are the academic considerations for a child the age your employee will be relocating, and how do they fit the long-term plans of the family?

• Timing:
  From the standpoint of the educational program alone, there clearly are certain times that are better to move a child than others. This is not only true of the teenage years.

  For example, a British child who has completed reception class is not at an ideal stage to embark on an American curriculum. Unless the child moves to a school where the reading programme is individualised, children who already are reading will be taught phonics again.

  A British child educated in the United States who returns at the age of 14 or older, during study for the GCSE (General Certificates of Secondary Education) will be behind his or her peers in test preparation.

• Coordination of curriculum:
  At any age, but particularly for a teenager, it is essential for a parent to consider the curriculum that the child is leaving and try to co-ordinate it with the curriculum he/she is going to, unless the family makes an affirmative decision that they wish for their child to experience the local education.

  In addition, it is wise, although not always possible, to anticipate the educational program that he/she will attend upon repatriation or the next move.

Parents moving abroad generally have three kinds of curricular choices in the destination country, all of which should be investigated by your employees before making any decisions:

• international schools
• national schools of the employee’s culture
• local schools

Despite their importance, curriculum considerations never need be the reason for an employee to forgo an overseas assignment.

International schools have been established all over the world to allow for continuity of program and coordination of schooling.

As a byproduct, teenagers will find peers who are accustomed to moving regularly and faculty trained to understand and accommodate varied curricular backgrounds.

• Understand your employees and what is important to them. Traditionally, relocation packages have focused on housing and moving of household goods, when education is of higher priority to many parents.

• Maintain a list of other parents from your company who have had positive experiences moving school-aged children to each destination country. Many of these would not mind being contacted by new employees taking on overseas assignments. Nothing can be more reassuring than talking with other parents who have been through it successfully.

• If possible, put families in contact with international school personnel to have them reassure families directly. These teachers and administrators have a wealth of experience and can be extremely comforting.

• Allow your employees time to visit a number of schools during their look/see trip to the new country. Wiewing schools in session and speaking with teachers and administrators can give parents a sense of what the experiences of their children will be like.

• Be willing to pay for registration fees at a sufficient number of schools and, if necessary, tuition deposits to hold places until your families have been able to visit the schools.

• Consider hiring an educational consultant to walk your families through the process. It is extremely stressful and difficult for families to research and apply to schools from afar. This is particularly true when the rules, both written and unwritten, are culturally different from those your employee will understand, and there is not much time to decide.

The decision for an employee to move his/her family abroad during a child’s teenage years forces parents to reconsider their definition of education.

Those who think of education simply as schooling are likely to have difficulty confronting their youngsters and encouraging them to embark on an overseas move. It certainly will require many adjustments, both of a social and academic nature. Helping children make these adjustments are very difficult unless your employees are entirely committed to the opportunity they are affording their offspring.

If, on the other hand, your employees can be helped to view their children’s education as the total experience, it is never the wrong age to expose them to new customs, teach them to adapt to change and seize an unanticipated opportunity.

This case can be made by an HR professional, but is sometimes best argued by a third party who does not have a perceived vested interest in the move.

If your employee can be encouraged to think of education broadly, problems related to schooling, both on assignment and on repatriation, always can be solved. Resolution of these issues in creative ways is part of the journey, part of the learning.

When we returned on home leave after our first year of living in London, my daughter said to me, “Now I know, Mom, that there is nothing I can’t do.”

If that isn’t education, then what can we teach our children?

August 2002

Elizabeth Perelstein founded School Choice International, an educational consulting firm dedicated to helping relocating families find the right schools for their children, in 1998. Before that, Ms. Perelstein had been a teacher, a school assistant principal, a university administrator and a board of education trustee. She and her family lived as expatriates in London from 1997 to 1999.