Dear Kunmingers,

My family and I may be relocating to Kunming from the U.S. in late 2009. I will have a second-grader and a kindergartener, and am wondering what schooling options are available apart from Kunming International Academy and local Chinese schools.

Thanks very much for any help you can provide!

Best wishes,

Jason Patent

The only other option is homeschooling. KIA has a new building for next year. It's got great sports facilities and lots of classroom space.

Unfortunately KIA or home schooling is your only option for your 2nd grader, there are plenty of inexpensive chinese language tutors here though, who can help him with the language. How old exactly is your kindergarten child? There are some fantastic pre-schools here that he/she should be able to get into. It would be a once in a lifetime chance for him/her to pick up the language at an age when these things come quickly and easily. Have a read of the following posting, it may help clarify the school situation here www.gokunming.com/[...] Good luck atomic.

Unless you feel like splashing out 155.000 kuai for your two kids for the first year at KIA your better choice would probably be to find a regular quality Chinese non-Christian school. 155.000 kuai can buy you an AWFUL lot of private tutoring and language training considering that you can hire a Chinese person with qualifications full time 60 hours a week for 2000 a month. Throw them both into a regular Chinese school and they'll probably be close to fluent after a year.

I can see how the younger child could go straight into the public system, but I think the older child would struggle. Chinese students, even in the 2nd grade, are further advanced than their western counterparts and have a higher workload as regards homework, etc. The only way I can see of getting a foreign schooled 2nd grader into the public system, assuming he isn't a genius, would be to move him back a grade, combined with a good mandarin language tutor. Even then I'm not sure the school would be willing to take on the potential disruption.

Thank you, everyone, for your responses. I'm not concerned about my girls learning Chinese. We'll find a way to make that happen. I am concerned, though, about my kids having a holistic, child-centered education. We lived in Beijing from 2004-07 and had our older daughter, then 3, in a local preschool, and it was awful. I won't go into details, but she was so far from thriving.

Do any of you have experience with KIA? How is it? 155,000 RMB or not...

I appreciate everyone's help.

Jason

Jason, I have 3 kids at KIA and will have 4 there next year. We are very happy with it and very excited about the move to the new campus next year. You can check out there website at kia-china.org. There is financial aid you can apply for and tuition prices are on the website. You can ask me any specific questions you have and would be happy to answer them. Also they do take chinese at KIA everyday.