Public Schools vs. International Schools

I have been looking into the possibility of placing the kids into a local primary school... however its a big maze... a rather big process is involved. The standard of public education is very high but there are limited chinese based schools. Priority is given to alumni (we are not), children holding PR (we are not [yet] as that involves the boys needing to serve the army), parents that volunteer (ok this is doable but I will have to start soon if we want to get nate in) and the home must be 1km from the school (hmm I need to go buy a map and do radius circles!). Now add in the fact that we want a higher chinese content and not related to a missionary school, then we are down to less than 10.

Now, even if we save money by sending them to a public school, my friends say that we will spend all the money back on tuition classes just to keep up with the class! (which is then equivalent to private schools)... incredible, so maybe its not the school but all these extra classes that the kids are taking that are boosting exam results? I think Nate would thrive but the chinese content even in chinese schools is 47% (imagine they even know the %! and its only the non-core subjects that are taught in chinese, not even math).

The other day I was at my cousin's house, her son who is born the same year as nate and will go to their neighbourhood school (not even a top "ranking" school), already reads (in some program that my cousin thought is quite miraculous... he could read after lesson 1 and in 10 lessons he is quite proficient, now why go to school at all??? these extra lessons/programs seem to be alot better!) and writes... many by the time they go to primary one can write short compositions.

On our walks we see kids doing their homework at night. Tasks for tomorrow, will buy map to see if our house is within the perimeters of Nanhua Primary. If not... second line of defense... will need to go look for alumnis that can get me an appointment with any headmaster!

For now, they stay in their school. Nate is progressing quite well, here is a pic of him doing his homework, he seems to quite like homework. He comes home knowing the sounds of alphabets like on the cusp of reading... As for Ike... he still whispers instead of talking in school. Today he said "mao" (for cat) before the teacher said anything, they were so thrilled. He also ran back from the toilet, came into class and said to the 2 teachers, "tisooo, TiSooooo", when they gave him toilet paper, he ran with it (a tail trailing) and took it to yuyu (the class helper) as they ran out of paper in the toilet for another kid. He got many stars today.

Here's Max, Nate's best friend. They were both born in Taipei only about 2 weeks apart. Both declaring the other best friend instantly. Nate also likes his cousin, Caden and they will likely take swim and drum lessons together.