Singapore Expats

My daughter was born on Sept 21, 2003, and she is turning to seven by September. She will be finishing her G1 at Emarr International and going to have her G2 in the new semester. But we are considering transfer her to SAS as SAS has G1 opening for her.

However, based on the school's policy, if she is going to transfer, she needs to re-start her G1 at SAS. We are not sure of this. On the one hand, we want to transfer her to SAS given its better reputation; on the other hand, we are not sure whether it is worthwhile to re-take G1. My daughter does not seem to be happy with the idea of re-do G1.

I know both SAS is hard to get into. But if both my husband and I have not decided that we would stay in Singapore for long, what would be our best choice?

Doc wrote:My daughter was born on Sept 21, 2003, and she is turning to seven by September. She will be finishing her K1 at Emarr International and going to have her K2 in the new semester. But we are considering transfer her to SAS as SAS has K1 opening for her.

However, based on the school's policy, if she is going to transfer, she needs to re-start her K1 at SAS. We are not sure of this. On the one hand, we want to transfer her to SAS given its better reputation; on the other hand, we are not sure whether it is worthwhile to re-take K1. My daughter does not seem to be happy with the idea of re-do K1.

I know both SAS is hard to get into. But if both my husband and I have not decided that we would stay in Singapore for long, what would be our best choice?

A few things come to mind:

~ with the waitlists, it might be a moot point

~ if she doesn't repeat the grade they suggest, then she'll be the youngest in her class by far, not usually a good idea. The goal is to put her in the grade with children her age.

~ SAS doesn't have K1. It has Kindergarten (5 year olds) and 1st grade (6 year olds).

~She's not 'keen"? Not meaning to offend, but how can she know? It's a different school, with different teachers, and different friends, what difference does it make what they call each grade level. Explain to her it's just semantics.

I think SAS is open to negotiation on this. That was what they told us anyways, as our daughter is a similar age - early September birthday. With her current school she would be off to grade one, at SAS technically she would repeat kindie due to the August 31 age cut off. They said they would evaluate her to see what would be the best fit for her. So I would discuss it with them.

Sorry, I meant Grade 1 rather than K1.

well, it is not that simple.

1.SAS only has opening for her for G1. They don't have opening for her on Grade 1. So if my daughter is not going to re-start G1, that means she cannot get into SAS.

2. we are concerned about her being bored in the classroom. My daughter is doing well in Emarr, each subject has "excellence". And she already knew all the math well in advance than most of the students in G1. Re-starting G1 may not be challenging for her.

3. SAS said we can put her on the waiting list for her grade, of course, they need to evaluate her. But that creates some uncertainty, as we are not sure how long it it going to take before she can get into her grade without re-doing the schooling she has taken.

Doc wrote: 1.SAS only has opening for her for G1. They don't have opening for her on Grade 1.

Still a little confused by this, but here's what I would do. Have her evaluated independently of SAS by a reputable educational assessment organization to determine what grade she should be in a variety of curriculums. Then try to get her into the appropriate grade at SAS, wait list or no wait list. If that doesn't work, then go down your list of options.

Just remember ~ their success in school isn't all based on academics and the being bored thing is highly over-rated in my opinion. There is no prize in finishing before everyone else. In fact the deficits in maturity can do more to sabotage a student's overall success in a school setting than anything else. If she is a year younger than the class average, she may have classmates whose parents who held their children back, creating a close-to-2 year gap. Huge at this age.

Before you turn around she'll be graduating and you'll wish more than anything you had one more precious year...