For ex-pat workers with families, suitable training can be one of the maximum steeply-priced and irritating hurdles to navigate when transferring to a foreign project. To ensure that children can transition lower back into their domestic machine on the quiet of the undertaking, circulate on to a top college or to every other worldwide venture, its miles top-rated for them to have been following an international school curriculum with English language instruction. In contrast, we will look at the cost and a number of the considerations in locating a worldwide school in two popular ex-pat destinations: Zurich and Hong Kong.
Cost of Living and Cost of Education Don’t Always Match.
As a baseline, we’re going to use a London, England private, worldwide school inclusive of the ACS International School in Egham or Kings College Wimbledon and compare that to each Hong Kong and Zurich. While standard Zurich and Hong Kong (HK) rank within the pinnacle ten top expensive cities for ex-pats while London sits lower back at #17 properly, training is a one-of-a-kind tale.
It offers a relative bargain for worldwide personal schooling with faculty expenses 7.7% decrease than London while Zurich area worldwide colleges are more significant than 20% higher. If you had school-aged youngsters, then taking a task to Hong Kong over Zurich would appear like the price-conscious preference. However, fees don’t paint the complete picture.
Hong Kong
Since the established order of the English Schools Foundation (ESF) in 1967 for the education of ex-pat youngsters, there has been a sturdy international college presence here. There are over one hundred global colleges, in most cases coaching in English; however, the increasing reputation of global faculties among permanent citizens, the HK equivalent of the citizen, has created an overwhelming call for.
While Hong Kong recognizes English and Cantonese as respectable languages, and officially, English is a vital element of government-run schools, the reality is one of a kind. Even if you are a figure who would love your infant to experience a “local” training in this city, a current survey by the Native English Speaking Teacher’s Association in HK discovered that even though authorities policy permits public schools that educate in Cantonese to accept English-handiest speak me, kids, they do no longer.
In addition to demand, numerous different factors are placing upward pressure on international faculty fees in Hong Kong. The 20 faculties operated via the ESF have misplaced their subsidy hooked up below the original 1967 government ordinance. Starting with the scholars entering kindergarten in 2014, the support has been removed. In the year, ESF has already raised their prices extra than five%.
At the same time, its schooling bureau is trying to make more extensive academic opt using making a handful of development sites and empty faculties to be had with the aid of bid to involved international schools. Among the interested schools is the distinguished British boarding faculty, Malvern, trying to open a campus catering to fundamental stage training. They plan to order 90% of their to be had placements for students that maintain overseas passports.
While worldwide private colleges do now not obtain subsidies from the Hong Kong government, they’re supplied preferential lease phrases and get entry to a chosen inexperienced space. Still, the absence of space in the town makes it extremely difficult to open new international colleges, so the demand for spots at the prevailing schools continues to grow. The Hong Kong education bureau estimates that ready lists for most global colleges are several years lengthy, forcing mothers and fathers to forget other options.
