3 High-Income Families Dictate: Why Did I Escape from International School with My Baby?

streak

2024-05-24 15:54Posted in Anhui Life Field Creator

In the past two years, there have been frequent ridicules on the Internet:

The child attends an international school,

It is the first step for the middle class to break the defense.

One observed such a trend on social media:

More and more middle-class families are taking children

from a private international or bilingual school, to a public school,

Nine-year compulsory education curriculum within the study system.

But the factors behind it are far more than "money".

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Interviewee Laura and her daughter pose for a photo at the kindergarten

International schools in Chinese mainland charge between 150,000 and 300,000 yuan per year, and a child spends at least 2 million to 3 million yuan from nursery to high school graduation, not including the cost of studying abroad in the future

One found 3 parents from Guangzhou, Hebei and Haidian, Beijing,

We talked about their educational philosophies and choices.

Tina transferred the baby from the international school in Hainan back to the inland city.

Compulsory education courses within the system;

Laura and her husband from Haidian, Beijing,

After transferring the child to the public government, he saved more than 100,000 yuan a year, but regretted it;

Kary in Guangzhou found that the child was reading material,

decisively turned to the public, and the baby has since become a "scholar".

We found that when a middle-class family makes an educational choice,

and changes in policies and rules,

It is related to the family's financial situation and the educational aesthetics of parents.

At the heart of it is the child's personality that is gradually revealed.

For the choice of education,

There may not be a standard answer.

Editor: Zhang Ruijia

Editor-in-charge: Chen Ziwen

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Kary's family of four, picture source: Xiaohongshu @ There are two gold-swallowing beasts at home

Mother Kary, Primary 3, International School to Public School, Guangzhou

My eldest son, who was born in 2013, switched from an international school in the suburbs to a public school in the city last summer when he was in the third grade of primary school.

Neither my father nor I am a top parent, and we want our children to be less stressed. There is no relationship to find a public school near my home, and it is difficult to get in, so I want to go directly to an international school and choose an international school that ranks second in Guangdong.

Reading and reading, I found that the child is quite powerful, it is the kind of baby that can make me chicken, he has self-motivation, and I realized that he is suitable for hard work. At this time, I happened to give birth to a second child, and it was always inconvenient in the suburbs, so I wanted to transfer him to the city, and by chance I entered the top 1 public in a district.

The reason for transferring schools, on the other hand, is that international schools are not as easy as we think.

Before imagining that the international school is happy education, easily admitted to the world's top 50 schools, really read only to find that this is not the case, international school students and parents are also a top volume, the school because in the suburbs, our children are accommodation, but many parents who live close to the school have to take their children to the peiyou class, we are very worried about the children left behind. You will find that you still have to work your parents to go to any school, even if it is an international school.

My husband and I are in the anti-aging industry, and although there has been no significant decrease in income, the epidemic has indeed affected our income management in the past few years. I thought it was okay before, but then I felt that even if I had more money, I would rather save more money and hold the money in my hands, so that my sense of security would be much stronger. We have become more cautious about spending money.

For example, in the past, in order to study happily, international schools did various activities every day, and went to plant rice seedlings during school time, but they really didn't go to class, but now they are more concerned about how much knowledge they learn. Now after transferring to public schools, I find that children with good grades in public schools have very solid basic skills, and they can also have excellent transcripts.

Our family's income is at the middle class level, so we will care about how much money I spend, how much effect I will have, and whether the overly relaxed way of reading can really go to the top 50 schools in the world in the future? But some very wealthy parents who drive Bentleys to pick up their children may not care so much about this, and it is good that their children can grow up happily. On the one hand, they don't have that much time to care; On the other hand, they have a stronger ability to support their children.

My son belongs to the very "e" people, so he has made a lot of friends at the new school as well. I often ask him if he is happy at school now. He said, "I'm happy," because his Chinese has improved a lot, and he said he would love to go back to his old school. I said why? He said that he wanted his former classmates to know how good he was at his current language. He is enjoying the pace of learning.

The current public is not the same as I used to imagine, I used to think that the public to give children is cramming education, but now I find that there is no ah, there are not so many rigid homework, the teacher is really very attentive, sometimes at noon he does not eat on the day of the homework, after the change can go home, reducing a lot of burden on our parents; And it's hard to imagine that tennis, baseball, and golf are taught in public schools, and perhaps very few in the whole of Guangzhou.

Of course, the awareness of parents themselves is also important. I usually pay attention to my son's emotions, pay attention to what he wants, I like to discuss with my husband, is our education right, the plan we used before seems to be not working recently, do we need to adjust it?

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My husband and I are both out of the job, he is my senior, so we are looking for a partner in the circle around us, of course, it is not that we have found the wrong person for each other, we have been married for more than ten years, we still go out to the next ten fingers, there are two separate trips abroad every year, but we realize that if I can give the child a different starting point, is he will have a lot of choices? If he sees higher, I believe that he will also have a higher vision when he meets his other half and when he makes career choices.

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Summer camp in an international kindergarten where Tina's daughter does her homework with her friends

Image source: Xiaohongshu @ Wendy and Ercat

Mama Tina, Grade 3, International School Converted to Private Curriculum, Hebei

In 2022, when my daughter was 9 years old and in the third grade of primary school, we took her back to Hebei from an international school in Hainan to take a nine-year compulsory education curriculum in the system.

In 2016, my husband and I bought a suite in Hainan, and in addition to the investment, it was also because my daughter was 3 years old at the time and was at the age of kindergarten, and the community we bought at that time built a supporting K12 international school (providing education services from kindergarten to high school), and we thought that she could grow up in a better natural environment.

My husband and I have been working in a bank before, and we usually live in Hebei, and after our daughter went to Hainan to go to kindergarten, she was mainly taken care of by her grandparents. Slowly, she went all the way to the third grade of primary school, and I quit my job to go to Hainan to accompany her in life and study, and also joined her school, working in the administrative post for two years, so I also have a deeper understanding of the inner workings of international schools.

Now that my daughter has been transferring schools for 2 years, the elementary school she is studying in now is a 9-year compulsory education curriculum within the system, but it is a private school. The management of public schools in Hebei is very strict, and I am afraid that she will not be able to keep up, after all, she did not wear a red scarf before the third grade, and she didn't even know what the Young Pioneers song was, so we chose a private school with a curriculum within the teaching system.

The decision to switch back to the system was discussed back and forth within the family, and we evaluated the pros and cons of transferring from several aspects.

There are many advantages of international schooling, first of all, the language environment, my daughter's spoken English is now equivalent to IELTS 6; In terms of vision, the teachers and curriculum of the international school focus on broadening the knowledge of students; Compared with public schools, international schools are also very good at cultivating children's ability to think independently.

But there are also many problems with international schools. Almost all of my daughter's 20 or so classmates at the international school have left, and now there may be only three or four left.

First of all, the teacher resources are unstable, taking the international school we studied in Hainan as an example, a foreign teacher who has worked in a school for 2 years is already considered an old employee, and most of the teachers are left in a year to achieve a salary increase or appreciation, resulting in children adapting to new teachers and styles every year. The teacher's personal ability is particularly important for children in the initiation stage, and may even affect their lifelong interest in a subject.

From the perspective of our classmates, we originally thought that the parents of international schools were mostly knowledgeable, but later we found that many parents actually have financial resources, but the quality is not good, and many children have various psychological problems.

In terms of fees, in the past, the tuition fee for kindergarten was 100,000 yuan per year in international schools, 200,000 yuan per year for elementary schools, and now more than 30,000 yuan per year for schools. Although my family is relatively financially free, many of the students around me who have transferred to public schools have had to think about tuition fees because of their poor family income after the pandemic.

And, of course, the impact of policy rules. IN 2021, THE COUNTRY BEGAN TO IMPLEMENT THE DOUBLE REDUCTION POLICY, AND THE CONSTRAINTS ON PRIVATE SCHOOLS HAVE ALSO INCREASED. However, children's time and energy are limited, which often leads to two sets of courses not being learned well, and finally becoming four different. Many of the children around me who have left international schools have probably changed because of this rule, in addition to the fact that they have returned to poverty because of the middle class and feel that tuition fees are too expensive.

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Equestrian lessons at top high schools in the United States

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I always tell my friends: start with the beginning. What is your ultimate goal on the road to educating children? For our daughter's education, we did not require her to go to a prestigious school abroad in the future, nor did we exclude the college entrance examination. What we ask of our children is to find something they love. Because one of the regrets in my life was that I didn't have my own hobbies, and my upbringing environment didn't allow me to have them.

I am quite surprised that the children are adapting very well now, the current teachers do not have the same pressure as traditional public schools, and the overall teaching atmosphere is relatively relaxed. My daughter asked me why I hadn't brought her back earlier.

She now loves to write, likes to draw, and her future dream is to come up with a book, and she also wants to be a swimming coach.

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Shenzhen's public kindergarten has been renovated, and the environment is beautiful and comfortable after the transformation

Many people think that Chinese education is too exam-oriented, and I think family education is actually very important. If parents also think that these courses are too mechanical, why should they let their children memorize texts and poems? I just feel that there is no point in learning this, and it is a waste of time. Rather than that, try to understand the original intention of the course designer.

Take Chinese as an example, for example, spring is to learn spring poems, and in the beginning of summer, the content of learning is related to the climate and seasons, which can make children empathize; Whether it's Christmas or a holiday in Mexico, children don't realize it, it's cut off from their lives. Not to mention how solid the math is.

It's just that in high school, it may be easy for test-taking education to solidify thinking, but as for what happened at that time, we will talk about it then. After all, everything we planned didn't go according to our plan, and now we want to live the present.

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Laura tells stories at her daughter's kindergarten

图片来源小红书@La Little Red Flower

Mother Laura, kindergarten transfer, private school to public, and then to private, Haidian, Beijing

I grew up in Haidian, Beijing, and then spent 10 years in Canada, where I am currently living with my husband.

Last year I transferred my child from a private nursery to a public primary school, but I quickly regretted it.

In fact, the reason for transferring to the public school is very simple, that is, to recognize the education of public schools. I grew up in Yishui Haidian Public School, and the middle school is Liuxiaoqiang (Beijing Liuxiaoqiang specifically refers to the six key middle schools in Haidian District, namely the High School Affiliated to the National People's Congress, the High School Affiliated to Peking University, the High School Affiliated to Tsinghua University, the High School Affiliated to Beijing Normal University, the 101 Middle School, and the 11th School). I remember not making up for it much when I was in school, but I also learned it all, and the teachers at the school were very responsible. Later, I went to Canada to study, thinking that even if my children wanted to go abroad in the future, there was no doubt that the International Department of the Six Little Strongs would definitely surpass even the top private schools.

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Laura's daughter is in Canada

From my experience, there are a lot of public schools that are not suitable for my daughter.

First of all, the child was born and raised in a Canadian environment, which is still Western-free, and the public school we transferred to may never even confiscate foreign children, so the child is very uncomfortable after entering.

My child is very good at expressing herself, what she likes and dislikes, she is firm and optimistic, and she thinks it doesn't matter if she makes a mistake, she says that she can do her best next time - this is a very good state for me. In my opinion, public children may not be so brave to explore the world, and teachers are not so encouraging.

In addition, there are relatively few public teachers, and they not only have to teach, but also have to deal with a lot of administrative work, such as various inspections and meetings, and companionship may be the most needed thing for kindergarten children.

Eventually, we switched back to private school.

But public kindergartens have an irresistible advantage, that is, they are cheap, with a tuition fee of about 1,000 a month, while private kindergartens are nearly 20,000 a month, which can save more than 100,000 a year.

I calculated our family expenses, and it was scary. The child's living expenses and tuition fees are at least 20,000 a month, and we invited more than 10,000 aunts to go out to play during the winter and summer vacations every year, and stay in Dalian and Hainan for two months is all money, and the cost of raising children is really unbearable.

My husband used to be in the manufacturing industry and originally had a stable job in Canada, but the opportunity in China gave him a higher salary, so we returned to China and I gave up my PR card. Now it's basically the child's father making money, we have no concept of money when we give birth to the eldest child, and when the second child was born some time ago, I obviously felt the pressure of his father, which was much greater than when I gave birth to the eldest child.

In fact, the better education abroad is a private school, and after entering, they have to make up classes, and they are relatively transparent in terms of competition, but there is still a principle similar to the alumni's children first, and they have to fight for resources. Education is actually much the same, but second-generation immigrants will be more conflicted and struggling with identity than our generation of immigrants.

I don't have very material expectations for my children, what kind of university they must go to, compared to literacy and playing skills, I think the most important thing is to cultivate their mentality, perseverance in the face of problems, and a firm heart. On the surface, I may let my child learn the piano, but in fact, I want him to play the piano as a goal to achieve it.

Like our children's generation, there are not so many people, the competition is relatively less fierce, and the material life should not be the focus of their lives, but the pursuit of the spiritual level, which is more difficult. Perhaps the biggest challenge for them is how to live happily and resolutely and find the love of their lives, which is far more difficult than the sense of accomplishment of buying a house and a car in our generation.

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