If you moved abroad on a temporary assignment because of your work, or expatriated with the full intention of maintaining your life overseas but have come to realise that you’d rather return home, then the challenges of repatriating to your original nation need to be addressed.
One of the biggest issues for those who moved abroad with their family is addressing the education challenges of repatriating children. The issues that arise are everything from getting your child into the school of your choice, to helping them settle back in to their old life when they feel isolated and different even though they are in their own ‘home’ nation.
In this report we will take a look at the challenges facing parents who want to get their children into a good school upon their return, the issues surrounding gaps in schooling and education, as well as how to help your child face the real challenge of making another move and coping with the stress that goes with losing friends, making new friends, learning to fit in and missing your old life.
How to Get Your Repatriating Child into a Good School
The Schools Admission Code in the UK was revised earlier this year, but the revisions don’t seem to have helped repatriating families get their children into schools – or even on to waiting lists of schools – of their choice.
British parents are all too well aware of the postcode lottery that exists when you want to get your child into a given school. You have to reside within a given school’s catchment area to be considered for application for a classroom place. In many areas this doesn’t matter, there is no choice or the schools in the area are all as good as each other. But in high population density areas such as London and the south east, it matters a very great deal where you live and which school your child goes to because the educational establishments themselves differ so greatly in terms of the quality of facilities and staff, as well as the abilities of fellow pupils. We Britons are disgusting snobs when it comes to schooling our children – fact! And it is this fact that repatriating Brits have to contend with.
Even if you have a home in the UK already, if you’re applying for a school place from abroad, repatriating Brits have found in the very recent past that they have been negatively discriminated against because they are applying from overseas.
What’s more, those who are planning well in advance to get their child a place at a given school but who have not yet established the base they will be returning to in the UK, will perhaps find that their application is not even considered because they are applying for a place in an area where they don’t even have an address.
So how do you get your child into a good school in the UK? Well, you can rope in the assistance of any family and friends you have who live near your home or proposed home in the UK and who also reside in the catchment area of the school you want your child to go to. Perhaps they will ‘lend’ you their address for correspondence purposes. Alternatively you can contact the school you want your child to go to and enlist their help with the application process – it is unlikely they will assist you though because they don’t have to, and if they assist you then it could unleash a whole host of other parents needing their help. But if you don’t ask, you don’t get.
You need to apply well in advance of your needing a place, if at all possible. For example, those who want to get their child into school in September 2010 are applying now, (Summer 2009). Alternatively you could place your children into the private school sector in the UK. However, of course this has massive cost implications – and if you’re repatriating because of financial issues, this is unlikely to be a choice for you. Also, you have to apply well in advance to get into the best public schools too as of course they fill up fast with children whose parents can pay whatever is required for the privilege!
The only thing you can really rely on is the fact that your child has to be schooled and educated by law, therefore a place for them will be found in the system – if it is not at the school of your choice then you can appeal, and if that fails then you can reapply for the next year.
Coping With Education Gaps and Schooling Differences
If you moved abroad knowing you would one day repatriate, chances are you took your children’s education seriously from the point of view that they too would one day need to re-enter their ‘old’ school system. Such parents often find an international or private local school that follows the same or similar curriculum to that taught in the pupil’s old school. This of course minimises the education gaps your student child will have to contend with. That said however, there will be differences even in the most similar schooling methods. For parents who placed their child into the local system abroad, these gaps will be more pronounced and perhaps more serious.
Having lived abroad the first things to note are the positives – your child will be more knowledgeable, have a more international and mature outlook on life, may have learned a foreign language whilst living overseas, may have learned about foreign cultures and even religions perhaps, and will go back to the UK a more well-rounded individual. You can help your child by focusing on all of these positives. And to assist them with any real gaps that are damaging or limiting, it may be necessary to a) work with their new teachers in the UK to identify these issues and b) enlist the assistance of a private tutor to help your child catch up.
Don’t leave them struggling in school in the hope that they will ‘catch up’ on their own – the struggle and battle they have on top of having to fit back in, make new friends and cope with the stress of having moved and having left an old life with familiarity and old friends behind can be too much for some children, and they give up on their studies.
Helping Your Student Child Adjust to Repatriation
When you moved abroad you were probably well aware of the struggles and stresses your child went through – they had to say goodbye to friends and perhaps family members too. They had to say goodbye to all that was familiar to them – and for children who have never known great change, the stress can be more acute than that which you felt when you moved abroad because you, as an adult, are aware that change is inevitable. Your child also had to make new friends, make a new house their home, become familiar with their surroundings, with the new culture and society they lived in – and it takes a lot of time before somewhere feels familiar enough to be home.
Returning back to the UK, you may think that your child will not feel any of the above. But you would be wrong to assume so. Your child will have made their new life abroad, and returning to the UK will present them will all of the above stresses and more. For example, they may feel pressure to fit back in easily and seamlessly, but even if they go back to their old school they will see the things that have changed, and they will realise that their friends have grown up without them and changed. They may react badly to all the things that have changed.
You can help your child by focusing on the positive experiences they have gained as a result of living abroad and how these give them a real advantage and edge. You should then also address the concerns they may well have about repatriating such as that they may miss the excitement of living abroad and of being ‘special’ and unique in that environment. They may feel homeless, isolated, bored, frustrated, lonely, angry and even depressed by the change for a while. Don’t ignore these negative feelings, help your child work through them. Try and get them to articulate what it is that is worrying them, and try and convince them that the UK will soon feel like ‘home’ again.
It will be very important to enlist the help and support of your child’s teachers to watch out for adjustment issues, bullying, your child being isolated or falling behind with work or falling out with fellow students. A difficult short transition can be expected, but with careful management and close support, the transition period should end and result in your child feeling ‘at home’ back home.
