School Choice

How often over our years in Beijing have I wondered at those words, "school choice." 

There are foreigners (and Chinese families with the means) for whom "school choice" in Beijing means considering dozens of educational institutions within their geographic limits and their (or their company's or government's) price range. In the most recent edition of the jingKids (formerly Beijing Kids) annual education guide there are thirty-seven different secondary schools listed in Beijing and Tianjin. There are even yet additional schools recruiting foreign and Chinese students but not included in the print guide. For some people, there are an overwhelming number of choices.

I do not know what criteria other families here use if the tuition price tags are not an obstacle. I actually do not envy anyone faced with that many choices. What if IB isn't right for my child? What if my child could thrive in a British system and I enroll them in a Canadian school? What if my child hates whatever program we have stuck him in? What if after spending all that money on high school my child does not get into as good of a university as his classmates? What if after spending all that money he does not even want to go to university? 

See? Even when I am trying to imagine people who do not have to worry about the money, I cannot stop thinking about the money. 

Few of the schools that admit foreigners are in or near Changping, which has been our problem all along. Those that are have tuition rates similar to those above. None of our neighbourhood public schools have authorization to accept foreigners as full-time students. We have been resigned to the limited/no choices Changping gives us, and we homeschool for another year.

For the last few years we have discussed occasionally getting Myles into a high school already. In 2019 the kids and I even attended a school fair. We thought about starting in the 2020-2021 school year, which would give Myles two full years of high school. I had hoped to use the spring of 2020 to work with him on admissions and financing to make it happen. But then COVID-19 hit, and all the schools in Beijing and much of China remained closed after the New Year holiday. All I could think was how grateful I was that we hadn't paid that kind of tuition to have the government shut down the school. I could not imagine being out all that money with no school to show for it, and, later, to pay that much for online school when that was how some of the international schools started the fall semester.

Then in March of 2021 we learned that if we wanted Myles to still live with us in China, we had to shell out some amount of money, regardless of any COVID-19 related interruptions.

Faced with our new Visa problem, we were determined to find even a small number of school choices, so Myles and the rest of us could feel like we we had some control over the situation, and that we were able to take a full measure Myles' present needs and future goals. We would sort out logistics of getting to school and the financial side if only the schools would entertain admitting Myles. Heck, we even thought about boarding schools in the area. Most of all, we didn't want any of the schools to sense our desperation.

The day after Easter we met up with two of my foreign friends, one family visiting from Shanghai and the other family fellow Beijing residents in the midst of their exit from China. Both of them have had children enrolled in local and international schools, and both of them are education professionals. They brainstormed how to tackle our student visa problem. They suggested a few schools that they thought would have some flexibility to admit a long-time homeschooled autodidact. They also suggested looking into Chinese language programs around the city. I remarked that it was funny they said that, because we live so close to 石油大学, home of the "least expensive Chinese language program in Beijing," as an online promotion declared years ago. I remember I followed up with something about the programs of that kind might require a high school diploma, though I had seen a foreigner on the campus of 石油 a few times whom I knew to have not completed high school. I filed this idea of Chinese language school away for later.

The tuition price tag still hung over our heads, but my friends had suggestions how to defray some of that. We didn't end up using any of these ideas, but they are too good not to share. One option is to barter into a lower tuition by offering to teach a class, or somehow make our areas of expertise available to the science and math teachers. Another way would be to offer some sort of internships or shadowing experiences for students interested in manufacturing. Another possibility is---and this was big news to me that this is even a real thing--to purchase tuition insurance. Yes! This exists! If your child cannot complete the school year, the balance of the insured tuition can be refunded. This is such an amazing idea. 

In May we started to narrow the possibilities, which will be the next post.