lombok

Hello,
I'm new to the forum and to being an expat so I'll be grateful for any advice. We are being posted to Madrid for 3-4 years with my husband's job. We will probably live on the north side of the city. My main concerns lie with my two sons who are 4 and (nearly) 7. I have two questions really...
1. I would like them to really benefit from the posting by becoming bilingual and absorbing the Spanish life but I am concerned that they will struggle at a Spanish state school where they don't speak the language and also that they will then struggle again when they get back to the UK in a few years after not studying English fully. I would obviously help them at home but would this be enough? Any views?
2. This has all been quick and we are due to move out there in July (after Spanish term finishes). This means that we can't really look at schools until September when everything opens again. Will we struggle to get them into a school? Looking at some of the other threads regarding queueing through the night has worried me!

Thank you very much for reading my posting.

keithwalters

They may find adjusting to spanish state school difficult at first, but should only take a few months to become good at communicating in Spanish, the 4 year old in particular. You have all summer to enrol them in a Spanish academy so that they have a little Spanish by the time term starts in September.

I shouldn't worry too much about them being at a disadvantage when they return to the UK. Maths is maths wherever you are. They might be behind in some other subjects, but being bilingual FAR outweighs being a little behind in English and spending a few months catching up.

This is too good an opportunity to miss. By the time your husbands posting is over, your 2 sons will be completely bilingual.

lombok

Thanks for your reply, helps to make me feel we're doing the right thing! I'll look into the summer academies - I hadn't considered that, good idea.

coralsoft

If you put them in to a British school, then they will keep up the English, but become proficient in Spanish because most of their peers will be Spanish and speak it outside the class. That was our experience, although the two oldest (3 and 5 at the time) already knew some Spanish. They could even learn a bit from CDs with you before you go out, as well as doing a course when you arrive.

Assuming your partner's posting is to Alcobendas, San Sebastien De Los Reyes, then there is a big expat community in Moreleja apparently. I don't know about schools there, but we looked at 1 in the north of Madrid, one in Alpedrete a long wait out along the A6 and plumped for The English Montessori School in Aravaca, where we ended up living. After a couple of years we moved all the children into the excellent Collegio Bernadette in Aravaca, a concertado.

If you want information about any of the above, please ask.

I also have an American friend up in Moreleja who, I'm sure, would be happy to help if you want it.

tim hortons man

Speaking of expats, does anyone know of board dedicated to Spain only?

This and Expat Focus are great but Spain is only 1 of 25 forums. I'm specifically looking for something along the lines of Toytownmunich.com

there is expactica but it has a bad reputation.

Secondly any meetups for couples? Been to a few meetups but its all singles.

thanks rob

lombok

Thanks very much for the information and offers of assistance. I went out last week to have a look at the area and someone drove me to Majadahonda, Las Rozas and Torrelodones. The office is just a bit west of Chamartin. I see on the map that Aravaca is in the same sort of area so I will look there too. Do catchment areas apply to concertados and if so, do you know what sort of size they are - depends on local populations I guess.
Thanks again for the info. Not knowing Madrid at all I feel a bit blind going into all this!

firtreesix

We used to live in Tres Cantos and my SO taught at Willoughby College, near Chamartin. The school is run by an English lady but most of the students are Spanish from pretty wealthy families. A lot of emphasis is put on learning English but of course Spanish is the language for all the other subjects. Another school that comes to mind is Runnymede, which is modeled after British schools....somewhere in my memory I seem to recall that the Beckams kids are enrolled there, don't know if that is good or not!!

Richard

tim hortons man

Do they not have a relocation specalist to handle all those details? If you don't speak the language I don't know how you'd get the kids into school etc. More importantly the relocation won't be a sucess if you can't get your kids schooling issue sorted out.

coralsoft

Careful about being too far from where you need to go for school/work then being reliant on the A6 - traffic in can be horrendous from 7:30 am to 9:30.

Trains into Chamartin from Torrelodones, Las Rozas, etc are pretty good and usually have good station parking. We used to live out past Villalba and the school run to Aravaca was doing my wife in. Suburban bus routes are pretty good, too, though some of the routes might get stuck in traffic and every couple of years the bus lane into the centre gets a major blockage: there have been a couple of times when hundreds of people have walked down the centre of the motorway for the last 3/4 of a mile.

You might want to look at Pozuelo, which my wife wishes we'd bought in: close into Madrid, but outside the municipal limit, so it has its own excellent facilities, schools and events, many of which are very child-oriented and there are good, cheap extra-curricular activities which being a resident gets you preferential access to. Good access into Madrid and Casa De Campo, as well as out to the mountains.

Distance from school counts towards the points you need to get into a school, but parents at Collegio Bernadette near us come from central areas of W. Madrid as well as further out in the commuter towns.

Rental markets are OK as a result of the large amount of building that's been going on over the past 8+ years, with premiums for newness and closeness to transport.