Children and relocation: where should you move?


Being offered a new job abroad is an exciting and motivating challenge for most of us, being an unique opportunity to progress in the professional ladder. However, any relocation is a family issue and therefore, it is important to prioritise not only your professional prospects but also the educational and career opportunities for the rest of your family members.

Despite the existence of international schools in all the countries, that ensure global and homogeneous education standards if a child relocates to a new countries, some families prefer to have their children enrolled in local schools, so they can have a more immersive experience into the local culture. If you are planning to do so, which countries offer the best education systems?

1. Finland

This Nordic country is well-known for the quality of its education. Despite entering the school relatively late compared with other countries – Finnish children start attending school at the age of seven-, they score extremely high in international evaluations such as the PISA report and 70% of the expats in the country consider the Finnish education system excellent – according to the latest Internations Survey. What does it make the Finnish system different? It might be the fact that no matter the student’s abilities, they are all in the same class – so the students who complete an exercise sooner can help the other ones who struggle the most -, the quality of the teachers – becoming a teacher is a long and tough process in Finland – or just the weather conditions which help children focus more on studying!

2. Switzerland

Even though, Switzerland is well-known for its international schools, only 5% of the Swiss children attend to private schools. In fact, Switzerland’s public education system is also one of the best one’s worldwide. The diversity of national languages implies that children are taught in different languages (French, German, Italian), according to the region they live in, and they learn the other national languages as secondary languages. However, differently from the Finnish system, in Switzerland, students are distributed in different school types from secondary level onwards.

3. Singapore

This Asian country obtains incredibly good results in the international evaluations and according to the latest Internations Survey, 53% of the expats consider its education system as excellent. However, it is worth to notice that Singapore school system has an high cost compared with other systems.