Ask expats what their biggest challenges are as expats, and at the top of the list will consistently be providing education to their kids. The challenge is inherent to an expat’s life. Even if there are good schools nearby, education is a challenge because your child may not be fluent enough to participate in local schools, the curriculum may not prepare your child for life in their passport country, there may be propaganda present in the school, or you may not be legally allowed to attend local schools! And these are just some of the factors to consider when choosing a school. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to solve these problems as an expat; instead, you’ll need to manage the trade-offs inherent in choosing one schooling option over another.

Sometimes at The Prepared Expat, I share a “solution” for you, like how to get bank code text messages on your phone or how not to be raging mad at your host culture.
Education, though, is simply too complex a topic with far too many values and variables for me to give you “one solution.”

Rather, in today’s article, I’m going to share a bunch of different variables that you should consider as you make an education choice, and then offer a means by which you can sort through those considerations so that you can make the best choice for you and your children.

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Schooling options

Typically as expats, we face these options for schooling. You may not have all of these options available in your country or city, but these are the typical schooling options:

1. Public local schools
2. Private schools with locals
3. Private international schools
4. Boarding schools
5. Homeschool (alone, with a co-op, or online)
6. Private tutor

The problem is, there are significant and sometimes contrary advantages and disadvantages of each model. A public local school may be an inexpensive choice that helps your child learn the host language, but it may be unacceptable because the curriculum doesn’t meet your passport country’s standards. An international school may meet those standards, but it may be extremely expensive and require that you move to a different city in order to attend. Homeschooling may allows you to do bilingual content without moving, but it may require more time than a parent can provide.

When you compare the pros and cons of each school option, you’ll find that the decision becomes incredibly difficult because the advantage of one school is often the disadvantage of another. Add in the opinion of your spouse and/or your children and it becomes harder still.

The bafflement of considerations

If you were in your passport country, the decision is still difficult, but it will be much easier because there are fewer variables. Since all the schools use the same language and meet the same government requirements, it’s easier to compare apples to apples and make a choice of what best meets your family values and goals.

As an expat, though, there are simply too many variables to make an apples-to-apples comparison. In fact, the comparison isn’t even apples-to-oranges, where at least you’re comparing fruits. School choice often feels like comparing apples and automobiles and, apart from both starting with the letter ‘a’ and potentially being the same color, how do you even begin to compare options when they are so different?

High-quality education may require you to move and be monolingual; local options may use the host language and not require you to move, but may include government propaganda and be of questionable quality. The comparison isn’t clean and so the choice can be incredibly hard.

I’ve come up with over two dozen different factors that expats want to consider in making a choice—and I’m sure I didn’t get all of them—so how do you make a choice between all these different good qualities that you want in a school?

A path forward

We all want a “good” education for our children, but the trouble is that we often don’t have a clear sense of what we define as “good.” When the choices are limited, as they often are for expats, the lack of clarity about what we value in an education becomes part of the problem as we compare schooling options.

Allow me to suggest that the most important thing you can do is to clarify what your most important values are.

If the most important consideration is that your child be able to play American football, then you may have to move in order to achieve that goal. If the most important value is that your child learn bilingually, then you’ll eliminate many schooling options.

Clarify what your most important values are.

As you gain clarity over your most important value, it doesn’t mean that other considerations cease to matter, but it allows you to try to mitigate the secondary considerations or find another means of accomplishing those goals. An international school may give you the highest quality education, but you’ll have to figure out how to give your child opportunities to use the host language if that’s a secondary value. If fluency in the host language, though, is most important and so you go to a public school, then you’ll have to create ways to supplement that schooling with topics important in your passport country (e.g. U.S. history, if you’re from the U.S.).

There’s no one perfect solution, so stop looking for it. Instead, look for what schooling option fits your top values or goals and figure out how to mitigate the downsides of that schooling choice, as there surely will be some downside.

How to discover your priorities

That sounds good in theory, but practically speaking, how do you figure out what your most important value is? Of all the considerations you have, how do you discover which of these is most important to you so that you can make a decision based on your true values?

The answer is a technique called stacked ranking, also called forced ranking.¹ What you do is to consider each variable against each other variable and ask “If I could only pick one, which one would I pick?” As you rank each variable against each other, you’ll create a “stack” of the variables ranked in order of their importance to you. The end result is that you can see how you prioritize all the schooling variables, in order of importance.

Then, with that list in hand, you can begin comparing how well each schooling option accomplishes your top priorities. Knowing your priorities enables you to compare the schools more effectively across the variables that matter most to you.

How to stack rank your priorities

So there is a manual-and-annoying way to stack rank your priorities and an awesome automated way to do it. I’ll tell you about both, but, really, you should skip the manual way and use the free tool I’ve made to help you do it the automated way.

The annoying manual way

The manual way to do it is to list on a piece of paper or in an Excel spreadsheet all the priorities you have for your kids’ schooling. That will give you a column of all your priorities.

Then write a row of those exact same priorities across the top so that you create a grid where every priority meets every other priority. Then go through each possible intersection one-by-one to identify which value is more important than the other.² There’s probably a mathematical formula you can use to rigorously compare values, but the manual approach will probably get you a sense or feel for which value is your top priority.

Here’s a chart of what the manual way could look like.

Hopefully that gives you a sense of how you can do this manually. It would work if you just have a few values. But, honestly, this way is annoying enough to do that you really shouldn’t do it unless you only have a couple things you’re considering.

The awesome automated way

Instead, you should use this awesome automated way of comparing the priorities. I built an Excel program that will dynamically ask you questions about your priorities and give you the result of each value in the exact order of how you prioritize it. It also uses some fancy logic so that it can give you exact answers without going through every possible combination like the manual method does. It’s pretty awesome.

This tool is awesome enough and took enough time to develop that I thought about charging you for it, but instead, I decided to give it away for free to anyone who subscribes to my email newsletter. Just sign up and I’ll email you with details of how to get the free tool. If you’re already on the email newsletter, then you can find the tool via the link in your initial welcome email, or else email me again to ask for it and I’ll send you that link again.

This tool lists over two dozen different considerations that I think an expat should consider when they’re comparing schools, plus gives you space to add your own considerations or delete mine. After you finalize your actual values, you’ll run the program and it will dynamically ask you questions so that it can ascertain your top values.

Here are a couple of screenshots of what the tool looks like in action:

When done, the tool presents you with an ordered list of your values as you prioritized them in the questions.³

Make sure to sign up for The Prepared Expat’s newsletter to get access to this free tool!

After you know your priorities

After stack ranking your values, you’ll know specifically what your top priorities are when choosing education for your child. Now, and only now, consider what schooling options you have in light of those priorities. Your priorities may eliminate some options and point you clearly towards other options. For example, if “not moving” and “child lives at home” are your highest priorities, then you can eliminate multiple schooling options and compare how the remaining options meet (or don’t meet) your other priorities. If a curriculum that meets international standards is your top priority, then this, also, will eliminate options and narrow your field of comparisons quite quickly.

Remember that you’ll never find a schooling option which is perfect in every way. Every choice will contain tradeoffs. The important part is choosing what matters most so that the trade-offs are in the areas that matter least to you. Then, you can work to supplement schooling options so that you mitigate the downsides of whatever you choose.

The results may surprise you. Mine surprised me, but in incredibly helpful and clarifying ways.

Tips for using the tool

Also, revisit and re-use that tool periodically, perhaps once every school year. You’ll find that your answers change over time. Perhaps your results changed because your child’s needs have changed, your child’s interests have changed, your values have changed, or your experience in one of the schools has changed what is most important to you. The point is that life isn’t static, so re-run the tool periodically to check if your schooling choices of the past are reflecting your priorities in the present. What worked for your family one year may not work the next.

For married couples

Go through the tool once by yourself and save the results. Then have your spouse use the tool and save their results. Compare results. You’ll find the discussion is incredibly valuable, as it makes obvious the differences in priorities that you may have. Perhaps you’re in full agreement on everything, but it’s more likely that this tool will make explicit the difference in values which could cause some of the struggle you have making a decision. Then, after you discuss it together, consider running the program one more time, this time answering the questions as a couple. That will give you a solid, mutually-agreed-upon framework for comparing school choices.

For older kids

When kids are older and in a place where they can, and should, have input on their school choice, you can have them run this tool and save their results as well. Those results may provide immense clarity to you in order to understand your child’s perspective, even as the tool may help the child immensely to understand why you may encourage a different choice.

For multiple kids

Remember that what works for one child may not work for your other children. One kid may need support for special needs, another may want support for sports extracurriculars, another may want access to high-quality science equipment, and another may really thrive in a good social environment. You can run the tool multiple times, thinking of each specific child as you do.

If you have multiple kids, then I suggest adding in the variable of “All kids attend the same school,” as the relative importance you place on that value will dramatically influence your choices.

Conclusion

Despite the challenges that schooling children as an expat presents, a wise consideration of your priorities will go a long way in helping you choose what option is best for your family. By identifying all your values and then, importantly, considering which of those is your top priority, you’ll be able to ensure that you choose a schooling option that best accomplishes your most important goals as a family. You can supplement whatever choice you make with other options to accomplish your secondary goals, but knowing your priorities enables you to make sure you’re not compromising on what matters most to you.

What schooling options have worked best for your family? Please share in the comments and in The Prepared Expat groups so that we can all learn from each other and grow together!

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Footnotes

1. No, I don’t mean the HR employee evaluation practice that has gotten a bad rap, though I guess the technique is broadly similar. Stacked ranking doesn’t work that well for managing people because they respond to the stacking/ranking and it can create a toxic work culture. It works fine for school choice variables, though, because the variables don’t care how they’re ranked in comparison to others. ↩︎
2. Because each priority is listed twice, you only need to go through half of the resulting grid or else you’ll double the number of comparisons you need to make. ↩︎
3. FYI, these screenshots were made using random choices, not my actual choices. This ordering is random, not my own, so please don’t pull out your pitchforks if you disagree with them. ↩︎