Evaluation of international schools

I must thank the many mommy bloggers out there for helping make my research on school options that much easier. These days there is just so much info out there in cyber space. After synthesising what I've read from other parents in blogs and forums relating to primary education and schools (mostly their views and first hand experience), my conclusion is that unless you want to spend more than RM3,000 a month on tuition fees (mind you the fees go up as you move up each academic year) in an established 'real' international school, don't bother!

By 'real' I mean:

1. International schools that are run by real educationists, not some developers trying to make their properties sell better
2. International schools that hire qualified and exprienced teachers, not just some expat interns claiming to be teachers
3. International shcools that have strong track record. Many private schools have recently been converted to international schools to satisfy the demand for international curriculum. However the same teaching staff are retained - overnight they have to change from delivering the national syllabus which they've been trained to, to delivering the new interntaional syllabus  

Since hubs' criteria is also for the school to be near our house (we just can't bear the thought of having to sit through the morning rush hour traffic to send the kids to school, not to mention that our poor kids will have to wake up extra early in the morning just to beat the traffic), we essentially are down to 2 schools that meet the above criteria. Unfortunately both these schools are way off our budget.

So I guess it's back to the drawing board. H will probably be going to a chinese primary school. We just need to make sure that we supplement H with the right out-of-school activities to counter the negative effects of a chinese school education. I shall talk about this another time. Next assignment - find out what people are saying about the chinese primary schools I have in mind, and pay the schools a visit :-)