Please help need some guidance

[canasian1]

Hello there everyone. I will be moving to HK this year with my wife and 14 month old baby girl. I am a complete noob with the schooling system in HK. It seems so overwhelming with so many school choices. We are from Toronto and will eventually return home. I just wanted to make sure our daughter is on the right track so that her education in HK is sufficient to allow her to apply to either CDN high schools or universities in the future. I hope someone can help me. Because i will not have the benefit of any corporate debentures, etc., price may become an issue. What would you all suggest? Ideally we would love to put her in an international school but I heard that ESF schools are another cheaper alternative. Will the education at ESF schools allow her to be able to survive high school or university in Canada? I will be ordering the Unique Hong Kong Schools Guide as well in hope that it can help us. Any information would be greatly appreciated.
Warm Regards.

 

[howardcoombs]

Please define "eventually". Is it 2 years or 10?

The best choice (and probably most expensive) will be CDNIS which follows the Ontario curriculum.
The least expensive choice will be a local school which could be English medium or if you so choose Chinese medium - there are a lot of other choices in the middle.

Your choice will be determined by budget, how long you intend on being here as well as your outlook and wish towards multi-lingual education.

 

[lesliefu]

What do to mean by "eventually"? How many years? The reason being it won't matter which school your baby went to if she were here for only 2 years as it'd only be kindergarten shed be going to. Canadian international school would be the best, but you'd probably have to check the tuition fee etc, being Canadian you do have a bit of an edge. Also what languages you would like your child to be exposed to will also help yea determine what you are looking for.

 

[yonge]

Other schools with a Canadian curriculum are Delia School of Canada and the Christian Alliance International School. They should be somewhat less expensive than
CDNIS. Good luck and welcome to Hong Kong!

 

[canasian1]

Thanks for all your responses. I thought I had posted a reply but
it didn't show up so to answer your questions, we will be in HK for
at least 5 years. If my job situation is good we can envision living in
HK indefinitley. My wife and I are true urbanites and love city life.

 

[howardcoombs]

As your outlook is 5-25 years, I would highly encourage you to look into and give serious consideration to getting your child trilingual as we have done for our family.

Kindergarten == Cantonese; once your child picks up the local language, you will have many new doors and opportunities open to you. The child-activites available for cantonese speakers are plentiful and cheap. Activities for English only speakers are far fewer and generally a lot more expensive.

Primary School == Mandarin. Its the language that will be required for commerce and trade if your child has any intention of staying in this part of the world. Will be very beneficial in the rest of the world too.

Secondary School == English to prepare for university here or abroad.

 

[lesliefu]

Would have to agree with howardcoombs. Victoria international is a good in-between....local curriculum yet teaching the IB system. They offer bilingual / trilingual classes from 21/2 years onwards and have many locations. Price is cheaper than international schools, more expensive than local schools.