Hi Jo,
Don't think I have narrowed it down actually!! Basically I have to choose a destination which has flights from Bournemouth airport in the uk. That means the choice is Malaga, Alicante, Barcelona, Valencia or Mallorca??? I thnk they all have international schools, but not sure which offers the best quality of life and which is the best place to bring up a young family? Any thoughts?
Yolly
Well my thoughts are going to be based on what I've done. My husband works in Southampton - logic would tell you that he would want to be near an airport this end that flies into Southampton airport. After extensive research however, the best, most frequent and cheapest routes that we could find were Gatwick to Málaga! Hense we live near to Málaga airport. The trip in the UK to Gatwick is about 45 mins
and this end we're about 20 minutes. There are a wide variety of flights that go several times a day and at the moment flights are about 30€ return.
So then we looked at schools - well how do you choose?? Because we'd established that Málaga was our chosen area we loooked at the schools in the area. They all looked ok I guess, but what I look for isnt the school that tells me how good they are, or how great their academic results maybe. What I look at are the children. How they seem when they go in and come out of school - are they happy, are they polite, what are their parents like??? I found a school that I thought was perfect - and IMO it is!
One thing you must remember is that most international schools teach towards the IGCSE (international) qualification, which, yes is english and excellent, but isnt necessarily compatible with the GCSE, so you may need to work out when you leave to go back to the UK, to avoid starting the course work (this would be at 14yo). That said, I'm sure that it wouldnt be a major problem??!!!
So that was the "jigsaw" nearly complete. It was then a matter of finding a town/village/property near to the school and the airport - which after three attempts we finally have! The first two properties were ok, but not perfect!
Anyway, here we are and so far, so good. We're just coming up to our 2nd year aniversary of being here and the time has flown and no regrets
Jo xxx