jitterbug

Hi,

I plan to send my 10 year old daughter to the local Spanish school when we move across to Alhaurin el Grande in January, we have a spanish teacher here in the UK so she will have some basic grammer and grasp of the language but I am concerned that this could be too traumatic for her as she will be by no means fluent and i dont want her to end up hating school and us.

Has anyone else put their child into a Spanish school? How do they cope, did it take long for them to settle down?

I would really appreciate any comments from other parents in this situation.

bokeh

My personal opinion, apart from whether or not you consider this an act of cruelty, is that at 10 years old it's going to take at least 2 years to get to a good communication level. The myth is kids just pick it up, language that is, but it's not true; anyone who's has learned another language to a high level knows this, but, normally the ones saying this nonsense are not in a position to be able to judge another's language skills because their own are so poor. I know a family of Brits with 5 kids that have been in Spain 2.5 years and the kids go to state school. Their level of Spanish is still very basic and certainly not enough to follow studies in other subjects. The 8 and 9 year olds are completely illiterate in both languages.

My son, his first language is Spanish, went to state school for one year but we took him out of the state system because we considered the standard to have been extremely poor (and that is in a decent area). Another parent told us that when she asked the head teacher why we left she says she was told that we had realized that unlike the UK the level of state education here is crap.

Malaga province might be different but Valencia and Murcia are 2 of the 3 lowest spending communities, per student, on education.

Here are a couple of other threads you might like to read:

1. http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=531827
2. http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=532999
3. http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=522092
4. http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=530722

Pugsy

It seems most people who post on here go with state spanish school so I'm sure you'll hear lots of positive reinforcement. However, we went private with 3 kids aged 10 and under and it was the best decision we've made. We love our children so much and couldn't put them through the trauma of 'picking it up' as they went along. When we did a pro's and con's list, private had mostly pro's and a few con's in the column, however spanish state only had one pro - you guessed it, it's cheap. It wasn't a good enough reason. My kids love technology, sports and arts and love learning, history, science, math.... I cannot think how they would have managed to learn anything in the last year if they were in a foreign language school. Or how I would have communicated effectively with tutors or even be able to gauge how they were doing. In our school in the UK (a great state school), there were a few foreign kids, all with the same glazed, fearful expression but at least there they got extra one on one classroom support.

Good luck with process, but for us it was a no-brainer.

pwwm

I have not been through this but friends that have say th children are put back a year until they improve with their spanish, so far they have all done well here and speak excellent spanish.

bokeh

How do you know that? Is your level (or their parents') such that you (or they) can make that judgment? The parents of the kids I mentioned above think their kids are doing great in the language too.

me me

I know what you mean, I know people like that, and when you listen to the children they can only speak in the simple present, give them a conditional and they are stumped.
In the kingdom of the blind the one eyed man is king, so to speak.