Singapore Expats

OK..

Private International Schools all have pretty steep application fees. ( our company will pay most of the tuition- so cost is OK with us) We want to choose housing close to the school where our kid will attend. It seems that we will have to apply to several international private schools and HOPE for a open spot. It does not make sense.... it seems like a scam... pay tons of money for app fees for schools that may or may not have a spot??

How can I find a place to rent, not knowing what school my kid will go to? We will be going Jan 1st 2012. Any help??

Thanks!

I would call each of the schools you are considering and ask them specifically about the grades your children will be attending, don't rely on a lot of secondhand anecdotal evidence. If they have room or a short list, go see it.

In the meantime, try to negotiate with your company for an extension on your temporary housing and (no kidding) plug in the different schools on google maps and take a look. With the exception of UWC East and SAS, I think you'l find there are some locations that are somewhat central to most International Schools.

Relocating from USA, I guess you'd like your children to continue to be educated in the US education system. If that's the case, it would be advisable to try out Singapore American School, which might be a good choice. Otherwise, you might want to place your child into the local education system or other International Schools

Oh David--thanks for two belly laughs this early in the morning. That was like a Monty Python answer....um, yeah, the Singapore American School. Brilliant!



(SMS-Where is the ROTFL emoticon??)

SAS, or local school, or other International School. Genius.

And he does this for a job.

I can't figure it--shame him to make him stop or just hope with time he'll get better? Glad I'm not a Mod.

And ya'll wonder why we get acerbic at times!

Actually, he's got something up his proverbial sleeve and I'm just tic...tocking quietly waiting.

Ooooh, I can't wait, I hope it's candy for all the good kids. Seriously, for those of us in education--just stick to your personal experience. Adding work angle just gets too hard. And makes you sound like a 4th grader.

Wow-I just Googled David Asaph. I had no idea. Asaph hummm. I just learned something.

LMAO. It all makes sense now. Perhaps I should spam them with some social media courses.

Hi Dandylion,

Regarding your point on finding a place to live, Mary Hatch Bailey made a good point earlier about some locations in Singapore being fairly central to many International Schools. For example, there are a few clusters of International Schools that are in and around the Bukit Timah, Dover and Orchard areas, so if you were to live in one of these areas you'd be relatively close to a number of schools.

However, one thing to note is that if you plan to make use of a school bus service to send your child to school, living close to the school does not always mean a short journey - it will depend on the route that the bus takes, which may be a bit circuitous if the same bus is picking up other kids from nearby neighbourhoods before heading to the school. Of course, if you live close enough for your child to walk to school, then this isn't an issue.

Regarding application/registration fees, you should note that some schools will refund a portion of these fees if your child is not offered a place in the school within a given timeframe. So while you do have to pay the money up front to apply, you may get some of it back eventually. However, this varies from school to school, so it's important to ask individual schools about their policies on this before applying.

Lastly, you should note that there are (at last count) 29 international schools in Singapore offering schooling in English, although admittedly they vary widely in terms of what they offer. So before you start applying, it may be worthwhile to fully explore all of these options to at least have a clear understanding of all that's out there.

SCinSG wrote: So before you start applying, it may be worthwhile to fully explore all of these options to at least have a clear understanding of all that's out there.
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www,internationalschoolguides.com

Would you happen to have any suggestions as to how one go about this exploratory process? Maybe there are some resources that you could recommend.

Hi JR8,

There are a number of steps that you can take to make a bit more sense of the International School selection process (this is not exhaustive):

- Find out about all of the International Schools that are out there. As mentioned, there are 29 international schools in Singapore offering schooling in English, so this means you need to look beyond the page 1 results of a "international school Singapore" search on Google. While not all of these schools will meet your requirements, if you don't at least find out what all the options are, then you may be missing out on some good ones.

- As Mary Hatch Bailey suggested, plotting the location of these schools on Google maps is a great way to get a visual feel for where they are located in relation to residential neighbourhoods where you might like to live.

- Find out which schools charge application fees (not all do; e.g. Global Indian International School, NPS International School, Overseas Family School, and San Yu Adventist School do not)

- Find out which schools will refund a portion of the application fees if your child does not get a spot, and under what circumstances/timeframe this refund occurs (e.g. St. Joseph's Institution International will refund $535 of the $1,605 registration fee if your child is not offered a place in the school after completing the admissions testing and interview, or if a place is offered but not taken up)

- Contact individual schools to ask whether they have wait-lists for specific year groups. While you might hear anecdotally that a particular school always has wait-lists, there may be specific year groups for which spots are available, so it's worth going directly to the schools to find out about this

I hope this is helpful!