Moving to Portugal with children 11 and 13

Hi,

Portugal is a great place to be and with all that is happening in the world, I consider it to be a safe place too.  I'd rather be here than anywhere else at the moment.  I am in Lagos, western Algarve.

I moved here 18 years ago with my children who were 2 and 7 at the time.  They both went through the Portuguese schooling system and unfortunately found that a lot of ex-pat kids didn't do as well as the native Portuguese.  This was down to a whole host of reasons, but just not understanding the whole system was one of the major problems. 

Where I am in Lagos, there is a fabulous International school in the nearby village of Burgau.  The kids there follow the UK syllabus and seem to do extremely well.  The school is called Vale Verde, if you care to look it up.  I didn't go down this route as I simply couldn't afford it, but if I had my time again, I would have moved heaven and earth to provide a better education for my children.

Just out of interest, my elder is now 25 and running one of my businesses and the younger is 20 and at 17 year old, returned to the UK to go to college.

I have a couple of other things to mention to you. 

Firstly, there is an organisation called AFPOP (I think it is Association of Property Owners In Portugal), who are very well informed and have some great social events.  You don't need to be a property owner to join and their annual membership entitles you to all sorts of discounts, which amount to far more than the membership fee.   I saved about 100 euros on my car insurance and almost the same on a club membership.  The local private hospital give about a 10% discount too.  So all in all well worth joining...........I'm not on commission - honest!

The second thing is that if you are for a long term rental, you may find apartments for rent, but houses are like gold to find!!  Most empty properties are rented out for holidays, as owners can make a tidy profit in that 12 week summer period.   If you are interested, I have a 3 bed detached house in Lagos that has just become vacant and I am looking to long term rent it - or possibly sell it.  I'm asking 1,250 euros a month plus bills and it's a great family home.

I hope the above helps.

Best wishes.

Heather