International schools

[yadav]

Please advise if Delia School of Canada is a good option and sicne ESF admission is tough what are other feasible options Thanks !

[chingleutsch]

Delia is AN option, although I don't know if many would describe it as a GOOD one ... some expats use it as an interim place while they are waiting to get into another school.

"Feasible" options will depend on your budget, location and the system in which you want your child(ren) to study. Are you thinking of British National, IB, Canadian, US, Australian, German, Singaporean, Japanese, French, Korean, or ?? Note that schools like German Swiss, Japanese and other "foreign language" schools also have English language streams of one curriculum or another as well as teaching their "home" language as a second language to the English stream students.

[bryant.english]

Another IS question!

I am going down this route:

1: Local kindergarten
2: Government primary teaching 50/50 Mandarin/English
3: Maybe an International School

What kind of ballpark figure am I looking it for annual fees for International Schools?

[Mat]

BE: here:

Hong Kong Schools

[MovingIn07]

They are going to leave a hole in the pocket!

[Satay Sue]

Indeed and then just when you think you have it covered, there are annual levies, PC fees, after school activity fees.....

[bdw]

The Australian school have invented a new thing called a "Depreciating Debenture" to suck more money out of you. Normally a debenture is something you get back in the future, but at the Aussie school they depreciate it by 12.5% every year, so that after 8 years it is worthless. Then if your kid is still at the school after 8 years, you have to buy another one of these bloody things at HK$100k a pop.

I did some research on "depreciating debentures" (well, actually just a google search) but came up with nothing. There is no such thing in existence!! I cant believe the nerve of the Aussies. They just completely made up a pile of crap and created a new financial instrument out of nowhere for the sole purpose of ripping off the parents in a sneaky way (instead of just increasing fees which must have been too boring for them to do).

The Aussies started this 2 years ago. I notice the Brits (Kellet School) have started copying them last year and also introduced the same depreciation debenture. At least the Aussies are being creative, why you Brits have to copy everything and cant make up your own bogus rip off schemes?

[MovingIn07]

These debenture things - are they tradable or are they just an extra "fee" ... pay it and lose it?

[shenwen]

australian school are selling the depreciating debenture as a lower cost alternative to capital levy. which it is if you stay for 8 years. the dd is actually quite desirable for parents. works out at 12.5 k per year, compared to 15k for CL. Also, at other schools - esf is an exception - CL is even more costly. I think ISF is about 25k a year I think.

[shri]

These debenture things - are they tradable or are they just an extra "fee" ... pay it and lose it?

Depends on the school and the debenture type. Many school debentures can be tradable... some schools do charge an administration fee in addition to the cost of purchase.