Not that I’ll ever make enough money to make this personally relevant, but Dulwich College Seoul offers expats in Seoul another option for their children’s education:
The first secular international school in Korea offering a British curriculum through 12th grade is accepting admissions for its primary, or elementary, facility which will open in Seocho-gu Sept. 2.
“We are very pleased to be opening in Seoul,” said Daryl Orchard, head of Dulwich College Seoul. “This is an exciting and successful city which is becoming an increasingly important destination for expatriate professionals.”
The opening of the college is a significant milestone for expatriates in the city as it represents the first kindergarten to 12th grade school offering a British education. (The existing British School has no high school facility).
The other foreign schools in the city offer an American curriculum and are predominantly Christian.
Expatriate parents even in the American business community have expressed over the years their concern about the lack of choice.
Personally, I have nothing against parochial schools — if it were up to me (and it ain’t), I’d send my kids to a Jesuit school — but I know a lot of folk who do, and more choices are always nice.
Read about the history of Dulwich College here.
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
A welcome addition to the neighborhood. How long it’ll last is anyone’s guess. Them Jesus school teachers often work cheap. Faith must be nourishing.
Korea still ban its own citizens from enrolling their kiddies in these international schools?
If Dulwich includes crew as part of its curriculum, it will be a very civilizing addition indeed!
DLB
Thank the lord for secular teaching!
I’m all for seculat teaching after HS, but considering how much bad shit goes out in current K-12 in many Western countries… maybe putting a little “fear of God” into a kid might not be a bad thing.
Besides, how many kids who went to a religious school end up being religious into adulthood?
*secular* not “seculat” and *goes on* not “goes out.”
You obviously are profoundly ignorant of the salary scale at SFS.
Good point, but how many of them also end up with other character and sexual abnormalities of varying degrees of severity.
I blamd 12 years of Franciscans, Dominicans and Jesuits for so skewing my judgment that I voluntarily came to Korea – and I’d been outta school 25 years when I walked that plank.
)
You can join the crew @ any inner city high school in the US; it’s not very civilizing.
I wonder what the ostensible enrollment restrictions on domestiuc students are, and what the built-in work-around is.
Dulwich College’s tuition is W24 million! I’m paying W21,000,000 for seventh grade at YISS next year, and W19,000,000 for fifth grade — what a bargain…
I’m really curious to understand why the international-school tuition in Seoul and other world capitals is so high, especially given the relatively high teacher-student ratio (at my kids’ school it’s over 24:1) and the oft-cited notion that the government has donated the land. Before International Christian School moved to the YISS site, tuition was W12,000,000. It’s a loving school and I can scrape together the money, but gee whiz, I’d like to spend it on something else.
I have to believe that — like health insurance and college-tuition, there is a third-party payer problem. Sky-high international-school tuition seems to be driven by the fact that governments and multinationals are paying the cost for most of the parents other than me.
I remember applying to teach at YISS. After sending my resume, I got a polite message back saying that I had to go through an American Christian agency that runs the school.
The first question asked on that website was, “If you die today are you CERTAIN that you will go to heaven?” After clicking NO, I was told that I was not welcome to apply. Having then being curious and clicking YES, I was then asked if I was a certified teacher.
Luckily I found another job at a secular international school.
Domestic students need a foreign passport or have lived abroad for 3 to 5 years (I’m not sure) or have already gone to another international school.
Many of my students have embassy parents or are engineers for Aramco so their tuition is probably paid for and our school is expecting a land-grant for our new facility in a few years.
#9
Sperwer, up to 30% of the student body in an international school may be Korean nationals, according to the govt. (That has recently changed slightly to children of Korean passport holders – ie, if mum and dad are Korean but you’re American, you’re in the restricted group). Those Koreans must have been in overseas schooling for 3 years. With Dulwich the limit is 25% of the student body. This reflects the fact the land was provided by Seoul City to make the city more attractive to foreign investors. This is the second such school – the first was YISS in Itaewon, which Brendon mentioned, and the third will be in Sangam-dong near the World Cup stadium.
Uh, oh. Looks like an alum from Dulwich has komsaekjil-ed me to inform that the school has only had crew since 1991.
Savages!
DLB
BTW, forgive the probably really stupid question, but are the children of expats allowed to attend Korean public K-12 schools? I know all of my former law firm colleagues sent their kids to private school in Seoul, but do they have to?
Just curious.
DLB
I think they can send them to public school, DLB. I remember seeing something about foreigners sending their kids to public schools in Korea.
“I have to believe that — like health insurance and college-tuition, there is a third-party payer problem. Sky-high international-school tuition seems to be driven by the fact that governments and multinationals are paying the cost for most of the parents other than me.”
Gotta be. The US State Dept rates are insane.
Sure, if they are content that the language of instruction is Korean and that the level of instruction in English is execrable and in other languages non-existent at the grade and middle school levels. Not to mention the exclusion and bullying on account of racial difference. I know folks with fluent Korean speaking children, some of mixed parentage, who even look more or less Korean, who have opted for home schooling because of these problems and the unaffordability of non-subsidized int’l school tuition.
“Not to mention the exclusion and bullying on account of racial difference.”
It’s not only teachers who are the problem; the other students are no picnic, either. Bada Bing! (Seriously, you overlooked corporal punishment — a sanitized way of saying being hit by sticks and in some cases fists by adult male Koreans — as another drawback for foreign parents.)
mbreen,
A quick question as a follow up to your post above. If the student is an American and her dad is American as well but the mom is not (a Korean), would this status put the student in a 30% restricted category?
I’m not Mike, but the answer is no. Students with one foreign parent are lower on the foreign-student totem pole in the event of oversubscription, though. This is government policy, so don’t blame Dulwich.
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