Schools

2POSTS

13 years ago

We are a family of five with children aged 10,8 and 5 at the beginning of a year in Chile. We are trying to decide how to choose a school (and town to live in) and then how to go about getting the children in. We are keen for the kids to go to a chilean school rarher than international and not particularly fussed about going private as we are here for the experience rather than academic gains. Can anybody share their thoughts or advice please?

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Melissa346 ViP

861POSTS

13 years ago

hello Jappgap,

Welcome to expat-blog!

I hope the members will be in contact soon.

Melissa

jonke12 Member

1POSTS

13 years ago

Hello,

If you are planning on staying in Chile for a number of years, I would recommend sending your children to a private school. My family, who live in Santiago and Concepcion, have told me that in order to have a good shot at getting into a good university, your kids should go to a private school, as the gap is very large between the quality of public & private systems.

However, if you are staying for a relatively short time and are just there to experience the nation and the culture, I don't think it would matter as much.

Public schools in Chile are very poorly funded compared to Australia, Canada, USA, etc. They may limit opportunities and learning compared to a private school. There are many private schools that are partly subsidized and reasonably priced; a private school is not only for the elite in Chile, there are also schools for the average family.

The public school system was one of the focal points of the student protests over the last few years, in which students called for an end to the large inequality gap between the public and private systems.

To put some perspective on this, only about 45% of Chilean primary & high school students study in public schools, compared to 92% in the USA.

Hope this helps,
-Jon

ricardopadro Contributor

130POSTS

13 years ago

Hi,

As Jhon said, in Chile the public schools aren´t good (academic and social too), so i recommend a private school for your kids too, you could check this site that published the national map with the results of SINCE , a national test that every child have to do every 4 years in school: http://www.simce.cl/mapas/

Regarding where live, if you want to get many job opportunities, Santiago is the place, actually if you can speak english you will have more good opportunities (in Chile just the 2% of people speak advance english), but the life in general isn´t good too much smog, traffic, stress.

Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, are better for live, because you have the sea, the people is nice, no smog and the transportation is better than Santiago, but there isn´t good to get good jobs easily.

I hope give you a basic idea, if you have a specific question just let us know,

Regards and good luck

Ricardo