Grazy

My son is 17. He studied in a Spanish state school until he was 13 and then we sent him to a fee-paying English International College. It was an expensive process for us, but now he is completely bilingual and I can strongly recommend this mix of state and private education, for children of average intelligence or above.
I would like to know if any other parents have taken this route and how it worked out for their child.

lynnxa

my oldest is only 11 at the moment - both she & her younger sister are in Spanish state school and are completely bi-lingual (tri if you count valenciano). A lot of us have been discussing whether or not to send our kids to (english) International school as they get older, so what you say is interesting.

aspeangel

This is interesting, my son is now 5 and has been here in Spain for 3 years now and has been attending school for 3 years now too. When he is going into secondary years then I think we will opt for the private international school option (that's if we are still here then!). I worry and have heard that state secondary schools here in Spain are not very good and they don't have any kind of separation of abilities in classes like they do in UK. Another worry is also that Spanish, by that point, will be his first language and his English will not be up to scratch!

lynnxa

A lot of us have private english lessons for our kids, so that they 'keep up' - in fact I teach english!
We are lucky in our school, in a way, that there is a high proportion of english kids, so when they start English in year 3, they are actually taught separately from the spanish kids, & at English school level.
I understand your concerns about the 'institutos', although like everywhere, there are good & bad.

Grazy

This is great news! Like anywhere a lot depends on how good or bad your local school is. We live in Estepona, where state schools are pretty poor and don’t compare at all with British state schools. My son was born in Spain. His mother is Spanish/Chilean and I am Anglo –Irish. My son learnt to speak English by watching English videos (Mary Poppins etc) from the age of just 18 months. He started Spanish school at the age of 4, but was never accepted by the Spanish children. In those days is was unusual to have “foreigner” in the class and also being a non-catholic meant that he got bullied on a daily basis.

He was thought by the school to have learning difficulties and at one point failed Mathematics. He had completed a full terms course work, absolutely correctly, but the teacher failed him because he had done the work in the front of his exercise book, instead of the back. We really didn’t want to have to pay for private education, but given the situation what else could we do but move him. Don’t get me wrong; if your child is in a good state school, that’s fantastic (at least until the child is 14), but bad Spanish schools really are bad!

My son took 9 IGCSE’s with 6 A’s and was subsequently offered bursary places in 3 international colleges. He is currently doing his A/S levels in; Guess! Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Business. He will have the option with his A2 levels of entering either a Spanish or British university.

Choosing the right educational path for our children is a real maze, but I hope that the story of my son will help other parents to make the right decisions.

Grazy

My first language is English and my wife’s is Spanish, but even so by the time our son had reached 12 his English was only adequate, it was at this point that we moved him to an international college. He struggled for the first 2 years, but then he never looked back. At IGCSE he got A for Eng. Lit. with C for Lang. (He took 9 IGCSE Camb. with 6 A’s).
My experience in Andalusia has been that the Spanish system is sometimes good enough up to the age of 13 or so, but then if your child is academic forget the Institutos (they are terrible) and fork out for British education leading to either British or Spanish university.

lynnxa

Having experienced state primary education (for my children) in america, england & spain, and private International school here in spain too, I have to say that state spanish school wins hands down - well at least ours does, anyway!

It really is difficult to know what is best - we'll probably be back in the states in a few years anyway

aspeangel

We are lucky my little man has been totally accepted into his class, maybe as he has been there since the beginning, or maybe cos times have changed although he is still the only English child in his school. I would like to think that the schools in this area will improve before he has to go off to secondary school but who knows what the future holds. We will probably go down the root of private lessons for him with English its just a case of finding someone who will do that for us. As we are in a small town I don't think he will get much help from the school!

I can only hope that educationally we are doing the right thing for him here in Spain, I always think as long as we are happy that's all that counts. I have a degree but chose to live here in Spain and scrap a living together in order for my son to have a better life. I don't think that being bi or tri-lingual necessarily gets you further in life esp when you meet builders that speak Spanish, English and French. Lets face it, I am pretty sure that Alan Sugar isn't bi-lingual but he has an empire worth more than £800mn!

Grazy

Hmm! Alan Sugar is probably not the role model we would choose for our kids and yes he just about speaks English, but he doesn’t live in Spain.

England will always have more jobs and better jobs to offer kinds with A levs or degrees, whilst Spain has a much poorer job market. At the end of the day we must evaluate the needs, interests and aspirations of each child as an individual. My son wants to attend a British uni. and go on to work in London, but another student may prefer to study and eventually work in Madrid or Barcelona.

One thing that is really important is to get to know parents who have students in Institutos in your locality (when the time comes) and find out how good or bad individual Institutos are and then you can make an informed decision.

A quick note on the instrumental value of languages: I speak Eng, Fr and Spanish and have studied some German and I can honestly say that I have been appointed to several very good jobs in various European countries, because I could communicate better than other applicants. I have worked as an Automotive Model Maker for Ford Germany, Audi and Citroen, so languages have helped me a lot and given me the chance to enjoy living and working in different countries. I am therefore encouraging my son to have at least 3 languages (He will be spending part of this summer exploring Paris on his own).

For the moment just concentrate on each academic year as it comes and make sure that your child does loads of creative stuff and give extra help in academic areas, where you see a need. Don't forget to reward your child when he/she does well. I have had to remind myself to reward my son a lot thru his IGCSE's and A/S stages.

I hope that you find some of this stuff helpful.

jdr

Seems to me as you only talk about your sons education, or lack of it in Spanish schools, you are living in the wrong country.
Why not move to London and get it all for free, but don`t move too close to Alan Sugar, or is there something you like about Spain and you are keeping it secret from us. ;-)

lynnxa

We have 2 institutos in our town.........some parents are happy with one, some with the other - so it is hard to decide what to do. I think that a dedicated child - with dedicated parents - will do well in any school.

I agree with you jdr, why pay here when you can get it for free in the UK? We only put our 2 in private international school for the first year we were here because we had already moved UK-US-UK-Spain in just over a year & it seemed grossly unfair to impose a new language on them initially as well as a new country...and we were just going to give it a year to see how it went.

In 20/20 hindsight it was the worst 10,000 euros we have ever spent......the school (well known & supposedly with a good reputation) was behind the state UK & US schools they had been in, and I believe they wasted a whole year, educationally speaking. I have several friends who would agree with me, who now also send their children to the local state schools.

We will definitely not be going down that route again - although if funds permit there are some very good private bi-lingual boarding schools in Valencia that some of our spanish friends send their children to. Alternatively, we are considering moving to a different area.