Chile Forum

as per you wonderful people, I've been looking into Nideo, Grange, Santiago College, and redlands... Honestly, overwhelming.... But I would like to know why Nideo? I wouldn't even question it, if I were only paying for my 3 boys, but this is the situation: we will be bringing my Aunt and Uncle down in January if this goes through. He will be working for us in the mine, we will be paying for their 4 kids to go to private school as well. I want my kids with theirs, they are all very close... Plus that's an advantage to bringing family down with us. That said, Nideo is about 10,000 (us) per child (I don't know what their discount is for additional kids yet) and from what I can decipher, Grange and Santiago are a about 6,000 (US) for the first kid with it going down for each additional.... So is Nideo worth it? Or are the others comparable? I want the best education for the kids, but don't want to pay 70,000 a year, ( that is without a multiple child disciunt because I'm not sure what it is for Nideo), if I can pay half that for a comparable education base... As for Redlands.... it seems even less but I'm thinking is a Montessori... feel free to correct my assumption if I'm wrong... Thank you for any input on this subject because I'm not sure. If all goes well at the end of the month, and we get the contracts we are trying for, we (My husband and me) will be coming down in June to look into homes and schools, but I'd like some honest opinons on the schools before hand if possible. If you have any other suggestions on good schools, I'm open to them as well!

Also how horrid is traffic around Grange,Santiago College, Redlands... I think I've read enough to know it's pretty awful around Nideo, are the others as bad? Should I be looking for homes as close to these schools as possible?

Perfectly functional students emerge from schools that are not Nido. What you are getting with Nido is the creme de la creme, plus snob appeal, connections, etc. Cuico on overdrive.... Connections matter in any country but in CHile more so than most. This is the school where CHile's richest families send their children. As well as diplomats, etc. It has students from all over the world. Many gringos, CHinese, ambassador kids.... But the other ones you mention are all schools that are better than 99.5 percent of the schools in CHile.....

If you want your children to come out of high school able to enter any US university (Harvard, Stanford, etc.) then you want to choose wisely..... Nido teaches in English but so do others.....

I know Nido uses a US based curriculim.

I guess what I'm saying is if money is no object.....

But I am sure any of those schools would be happy to show you around..... Don't know if they would even offer but jeesh if I was putting 7 kids in private school I would expect a bit of a deal..... Even a tiny bit.

Having said all this, if you end up moving back to states, nobody will care that your kids went to Nido as opposed to Grange in grade 3. Heck I have seen better computer lab facilities in some public schools in Canada than Nido has....

As to the price, is that including matricula and mensualidad?

As an aside:

The one dirty little secret most people won't tell you is that many Ivy League educations are a bad investment in relation to more modest schools. If you ever want to read a good essay track down "Going to an Elite College Won’t Get You More Money; Being Good Enough to Get Accepted at One Will."

It's like telling people what food to like or which sport team to support. You either want to put them in the best school (that you can afford) and scrape together the cash to do so, or you don't.

I have spoken to a lot of people who are ex alumni of various private schools in Santiago and the Nido bunch are the only ones who speak English without a heavy Chilean accent and whose English vocabulary and grammar matches those of English first language speakers. That was important to us, as we will probably end up sending our children to Australian universities.

If you can afford it, send them there, if you can't, send them to the school you can. Simple, imo. We don't know how much money you have and from what I can gather, from teh people we speak to, every Chilean who lives in Santiago would send their kid there if they can afford it, mainly for the strong English education. We had our daughter in a Chilean private school (Craighouse) and pulled her out after a year as the level of English taught in this supposed English school was mediocre, to say the least. It is also a jock school, which didn't work for us. Nido is more modern, not such strong gender stereotypes as the other schools, gentle teaching methods, very strong academically (every year a string of Nido kids get into American Ivy league schools) etc.

That said, it's not perfect, it IS American after all

The traffic around Nido is fine, they have a big car park, so drop offs and pick ups are not a huge issue, however, they have a pretty slick bus system and it is very common here for children to take the bus. Mine has been since kindergarten when she was 3 1/2.

I would have to agree with Tombi. Get them the best education that you can afford. The only part I might disagree with is the emphasis on the English accent. Nido teaches in English with American teachers. I have met kids that were born in CHile to Chilean parents and they have gone to Nido all their lives and they do indeed speak English with no accent.

Having said that, PP is American. The children could go to an all Spanish school and there is no reason that if they speak English at home they should not speak perfect English.
My little brother was born in Canada. But since Spanish was spoken at home, he speaks perfect Spanish and writes it at the same level as Chileans.

The other factor is the cookie cutter Chilean education system. I have had my kids in Nido and would still have them there if we lived in Santiago (we have moved North). We have since experienced 2 schools, both excellent chilean private schools, one that teaches in Spanish and provides lessons in english each day, and now one that "teaches in english". Aside from the fact that unless you are asking a student about something specifically related to their current school work most of the students can't actually converse in english, there is the constant testing. I am talking about a minimum of 20 assessment items PER MONTH, from first grade onwards. Miss a day of school? Take catch up classes after school or bring someone else's books home and copy the work the next day or else! The assessment items range from a simple spelling quiz or times tables, through to 8 page written exams on the last 4 units of science work etc.

I will say that content wise, the chilean system is delivering a lot of information. And, the systems are changing, so perhaps in more enlightened colleges in santiago there is more play based and interactive learning, but none the less they will have to work with in the chilean ministry of educations mandates to tick every box every month. My kids enjoy their schooling, and I am not trying to say that Chilean schools are bad, but I have to work hard to convince my 6 year old that she really DOES NOT need to study for her upcoming maths test etc. 6!! I would prefer not to have that conversation.

Oh and the green grass. Nido has a lot more, might be astroturf, but at least they have the space for it .

The children could go to an all Spanish school and there is no reason that if they speak English at home they should not speak perfect English.

In my experience this was not the case. My daughter's English (vocab, accent & grammar) deteriorated dramatically during just the one year at Craighouse. We speak English at home and I was not working that year, so was at home every afternoon with her conversing (and correcting!) in English.

Anyway, I think what the OP is trying to gauge is whether Nido is worth the extra $$ for THEM, which is hard to say for this peanut gallery. I have no problem going without certain stuff to be able to afford sending my child there, whereas others who are going back to their English speaking countries after a period of time here, might see it as a phase where their kids can learn Spanish, experience a bit of Chilean culture and then go back to their schools at home with no damage done, so they don't need to spend that type of money on 2-3 years.

For us, it's a long term decision (and trust me, my husband has a nose bleed every month when the bill comes ), which is why I used the Sport's Team and Food analogy. Depends on the individual criteria.

Tombi wrote:so was at home every afternoon with her conversing (and correcting!) in English..

Agreed.

Our second school (the puro español one), my second grader at the time had a teacher who was fluent in english. The spelling words came home. Past tense for teach. Teached. From a teacher, who queried our insistence on the correction... and this school runs the IB program and the kids sit the cambridge english speaking test. My children will sometimes get words incorrect on an english spelling quiz because teachers have pronounced them wrong (steak pronounced as stick for example), and their past tense shows a tendency to add "ed" or "ded" to the end of words (put-ed, kick-ded, etc), which is not getting corrected at school unless their is a native english teacher present. We do a LOT of extra english work at home in order to keep the kids at the place they will need to be should we move back to Aus or another english speaking country anytime soon.

Again, it is not the end of the world and we are certainly happy with our schools which is much more important than anything else, but if I were to move back to stgo, first stop would be nido, and I would eat beans and rice to make it happen if I had to.

I think U all misunbderstood me....
If you are going to send kids to a school where they are taught English by a CHilean, by all means their English will deteriorate. But if the only English is at home with the parents and the parents are educated which I know that you all are then I can't see their English accent or grammar ever being in danger. I kept my Spanish through osmosis and I came to Canada when I was 9...

But I fully agree with you all. Nido has excellent teachers who are native speakers. SO if OP wants kids to receive an English education I would make sure that teachers are native English speakers or it might do more harm than good.... Songs like Happy Birthday will come out soundling like "japy verdy tu you jew verdy tu jew"....

BTW Steph thanks for those links on the other thread..... Very good blogs.....

PDC, agree in that case on the proviso that your children can already read and write. My two oldest could read and write in english before going to Chilean schools. My youngest could not and is not learning it at school, the way she would in aus (or at Nido). So I am doing that with her, which is a lot for a 6 year old to do outside of school hours. My husband and I speak pretty good spanish also, and my husbands is much more technical and grammatically correct than mine due to work demands. But neither one of us could help our third grader sit the test on hiatos, agudas and esdrujulas last year , and it made me realise that my kids' english would be like my spanish (fine to speak, read, and perhaps write, but definitely sounds like a foreigner) if we did not do the extra grammatical work ourselves. The upside of course is that my kids' spanish will be (and already is) way better and more correct when necessary than mine could ever be.

That happy birthday song is hilarious - my kids' english definitely changes when they speak to chileans, they say "chort" instead of shorts and tank-u or tank-ju instead of thankyou, but they don't even realise they are doing it .

I do know that most schools offer discounts for 2nd 3rd 4th child not just from the same family but often to cousins. The one issue is they all have to pass the entrance testing. The Grange has classes for native English speakers in the higher grades, they study more Spanish where the other classes study more English.

I know families that have children in all of the schools that you mentioned, and every one of them is pleased with the education their child/children is/are receiving. Several of them could have afforded Nido but chose not to go there. Another school to add to your list is TIPS (The International Preperatory School) if your children are younger. To answer your questions - no, Redlands is not Montessori. The traffic around all of the schools is bad, so I think you should live as close to your school as possible. Currently none of the schools that you listed are very near one another (although all are on the eastern side of the city), but Santiago College will be moving out in the direction of Nido in the next year or two.

Thank you all... I will give each of these schools mentioned a tour while down there in June. I think I'm leaning to Nido though, English is very important to me because I don't feel like making the kids learn more English on top of the other. That being said, Grange looks pretty awesome too! This gives me a lot to think about (as if I din't have that with packing the kids and moving them thousands of miles) Truth be told, money shouldn't be the issue with us as out MSHA approvals have just went through, and that has nothing to do with the fact that we may be doing business with Chile's mines as well (the reason for the move)! Haha, I guess paying more for one child then my college has cost me per year just makes me gag a little thank you so much everyone!