Primary School Education in English in Copenhagen

1POSTS

14 years ago

My wife and I are in the beginning of investigating an expat opportunity in Copenhagen.聽 We have two children - a boy aged 4 going into kinderkarten, and a girl aged 8 going into grade 3.聽 Both have been educated to date in Canada in the English language.

Our kids education is our top priority, and we won't take a position and leave the comforts of home unless we can be assured our kids will get a good education in the English language, so that they are academically and socially prepared to reintegrate into Canadian society in 4 or 5 years.

What options do we have?聽 Does anyone have any experiences they would like to share?聽 Copenhagen International School seems to be well known, and equivalently priced.聽 Rygaards also seems to be popular and partially subsidized, and there are various others on the internet (Byorn's, Horsholm...).聽 At this stage I'm particularly curious generally about cost and accessibility of the various schools.

Thanks everyone who may have gone through this same exercise.

Phil

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campbdy Member

3POSTS

14 years ago

My daughter is at CIS. Most important thing to say is watch the year your child will be in, the cut off at most schools is 5 October (which is different from the UK) and our child had to miss starting kindergarten because her birthday was 25/10. She, therefore, had to repeat a year of UK nursery, which was very traumatic for us. The Danes do not budge on anything, so beware.

That said, school okay, though wouldn't say it lives up to the prestigious hype that seems to surround it!

A few gripes:

In pre-k, my kid only gets one hot school dinner a week, which we pay for, the rest of the time they take packed lunches. Even in the UK, at state schools, kids get a hot meal every day!

Re school cut off date above, this affects loads of parents in all years. I know some parents whose kids can read and they are being forced to start to learn to read again, just cos they missed some arbitrary cut off date! It is scandalous. Yes, I do have strong feelings on the issue. Because parents have so few choice,聽 if they want their kids to go to an English speaking school, they just have to suck it!