Hello All,
we are a family of 4 moving to Brussels in August 2018. I am currently looking for a school for my two children, 7 and 11 years old (they will be 8 and 12 next September). We have currently got offers from EIM, BIS, ACE and ISF, all those are within our financial limits (the other schools as BSB etc. are not:). The kids are bilingual English/Czech (we are a Czech family speaking Czech at home but have lived for 5 years in the US and henceforth their English is on a mother-tongue level). We would like to keep their English on this high quality level and since we don´t speak English at home (we need and want to keep their Czech as well:) we have to enroll them to an English speaking school. On the other hand, the biggest advantage for them of coming to Brussels is to learn another language, i.e. French. I know it won´t be mother-tongue level but I still want them to speak fluently. We will be in Belgium for 4 years and then will return to Prague where we want them to do their IBs in English eventually. I am sure the easiest way for them would be to go into a local school but I know how quickly the kids might loose the fluency in a language they do not speak on everyday basis (I have already an experience from the States with Czech and we did speak Czech at home and our girl even had a Skype teacher every week but still her Czech did decline) - and that would for sure happen with the little one. As for the bigger one - she is already enrolled in a bilingual school in Prague, it was very difficult for her to get there, she must have gone through really hard testing so she must stay in "an IB path" because she is going to do every summer an assesment test back home at that school and we want her to continue there after we will return to Prague. Anyway, back to the initial question - please, do you have any experiences with the above mentioned schools - EIM, BIS, ISF and ACE? I am for example not sure if BIS is really bilingual as - at least according to what they say - EIM is. And I know that the ACE is relatively new - do you think that the quality of the academics is good there? They do not have either the IB programme or the A levels...
Thanks a lot for all answers!*