Affordable School in Beijing...is there such a thing?

Hi,

We have recently moved to Beijing from Australia with our 2 sons aged 4 and 10 and are having great difficulty finding a school that is reasonably priced in or around Chaoyang District?


Our main priority at this stage is a daycare/kindy for our 4 year old - any suggestions greatly appreciated!

Isn't it shocking - most schools are well over 100,000 RMB per year, most being 125,000 - 150,000. I have heard there are some 'local/international' schools that are more affordable, but less reliable. Did you have any relocation assistance moving to Beijing? Maybe you can ask that company or your moving company or your HR dept.


It will be very interesting to see more constructive replies to this post as this is a question I have heard a lot from friends in Beijing.

The biggest challenge we have is finding a kindy that has english speaking staff and a couple of english speaking kids. We did find a great kindy that was reasonably priced but the lack of english proved to be a traumatic experience for our 4yo - so still searching!


As for our 10yo, we are lucky because he is doing a distance education course provided by the NSW Dept of Education. None the less we wanted to give him the full cultural experience and after much searching found a local school that was happy to enrol him, but this turned out to be too good to be true.


The initial cost we were given was 6000-8000rmb per semester + uniform etc, however upon completing the enrollment tests at a cost of 500rmb, this price increased to 14000rmb, and then to top it off we were kindly informed that he could not commence until we made a 20,000rmb 'donation' to a mystery bank account!!


Unfortunatley this tipped the scales and as result we had to withdraw him from the enrollment process, and then had to argue to get a refund of the 500rmb on the grounds that we were not informed of the 'donation'.


Nothing is as it seems here - so we have pretty much given up on finding a local school for our 10yo which is unfortunate but the cost for education here - local and international schools - is just crazy, and in my opinion totally unjustifiable.


Not happy!

jakay- that is exactly the sort of stories I have heard about the local/international schools, apparently some school fees went up 100% this year. It was not like this in the past.


So in some ways while the international schools are more expensive, at least there are fewer 'hidden' fees.


Have you read this article:

http://www.beijingscene.com/V05I005/feature/feature.htm It lists both international and alternatives like #55 middle school.


Not mentioned is: http://www.ivyacademy.cn/

Thanks, we have had a look at these places but I work for a local company and get paid a 'local' wage, which puts such schools totally out of our league in a finacal sense.


I must admit that we expected things would be difficult over here, I am just shocked as to how difficult they have turned out to be and the lack of support and information availabl from the local authorites/departments.