ESF tsing yi offer

jolalee

My son was in ESF Tsing-Yi for a short while but i took him out soon after (when i had better offers). To be honest in hind sight i won't put him there. The kids in his class are mainly canto speakers (my son at that time did not understand much canto) and they were trying to speak to my son in Chinese, which the defeats the purpose of ESF. I agree that it's only worthwhile if you plan to go the ESF route, and you do have to supplement him in ethics, English, math (and possibly Chinese) after school if you want him to keep up for applications to other schools.

Saboc

I also notice many parents are Mainlanders.   but still i want my kid to have an offer

Riesling

原帖由 jolalee 於 15-09-11 發表
My son was in ESF Tsing-Yi for a short while but i took him out soon after (when i had better offers ...

Plus my Korean friend's son experience there, it doesn't sound like an Int school. She tried to put her son there also for the purpose of going esf primary, but his son's teacher 'complain' to my friend that his son is not concentrating and participating at school, my friend was pissed off as his son has no such problem before, and as a teacher of an international school, she didn't try to encourage n understand but just blamed the kid! My son was a good friend of his son in previous another int school, I could see he was a happy, bright and good kid .....my Korean friend withdrew him from esf tsing yi at the end n lost interest to apply esf since then...

FattyDaddy

jolalee 發表於 15-9-11 10:01
in hind sight i won't put him there. The kids in his class are mainly canto speakers ...

In hindsight, this point seems irrelevant because you WANT him to be able to speak Cantonese and if I'm not mistaken you now speak Cantonese to him full time, right? :)

However I agree that if the aim is not to proceed to an ESF primary school, then there isn't much reason to attend an ESF kindergarten.

Mamamu1126

Anyone can tell me more abt ICS primary ？ is it good ? I heard from my friends is better then ESF in all aspects . If so . That wil be so hard to get a place in primary ?

lovecasey

回覆 Mamamu1126 的帖子

Hard to define "better" , each Esf  primary and secondary is difference and there are pro n con in each school. It is better to get into the ICS kindy if your target is ICS , most of the primary spaces are taken by ICS kindy and only a few spaces for the out comer.

Riesling

ICS is great! Teachers are caring n kids are disciplined. It's not easy to get in, so u better start from kindergarten, still not guarantee to go primary, but need in class assessment.

lui

原帖由 Mamamu1126 於 15-09-11 發表
Anyone can tell me more abt ICS primary ？ is it good ? I heard from my friends is better then ESF i ...

大部分prince Wales 醫生也send 仔女去ICS. 競爭非常大

keep-calm

原帖由 lui 於 15-09-12 發表
大部分prince Wales 醫生也send 仔女去ICS. 競爭非常大

Is it very difficult to get in ICS Primary for non ICS kinder students? Does the school offer higher priority for Christians? Thanks

lui

原帖由 keep-calm 於 15-09-12 發表
Is it very difficult to get in ICS Primary for non ICS kinder students? Does the school offer higher ...

Yes the competition is very keen. I was told by a 兒科醫生 ( focus on 兒童心理及體能發展的）whose Kid got IB full marks that ICS is very competitive. My gal is her client and we seek for advice on schools. Many of her doctor's friend send kids there. The competition is extremely keen on higher form ( I mean for insert of primary and secondary).

hong0706

jolalee 發表於 15-9-11 10:01
My son was in ESF Tsing-Yi for a short while but i took him out soon after (when i had better offers ...

That esf ty is not reputed to provide high quality education is well know, but as to speaking mostly in canto, i cannot agree. In my kid's class of 22, 8 are non-chinese (judging by surnames) of which 4 are caucasians, rest are indians, koreans and japanese. Of the other chinese parents, i heard at least 2 speaking native english (one british and one american accent). Of course, i won't know if their kids speak cantonese or not.

jolalee

FattyDaddy 發表於 15-9-11 11:18
In hindsight, this point seems irrelevant because you WANT him to be able to speak Cantonese and if  ...

As many parents have taught me here, the aim is to have one language per environment; hence we hope for full exposure of Chinese at home and full exposure of English (minus all grammatical errors and limiting accents to US/UK) in school. For a school where over half the kids who probably do not speak English at home, the exposure is not ideal. Yes this is double standards, but if one of the main purpose is to have good English exposure in a school setting, then one must look into that as well (if it is not then that's fine).

jolalee

hong0706 發表於 15-9-12 13:38
That esf ty is not reputed to provide high quality education is well know, but as to speaking mostly ...

Yes I should rephrase it as "many kids in his class are mainly canto speakers". If you look at it, 4 Caucasians (who could be speaking Spanish, Dutch or French at home) plus 2 native English speaking Chinese parents (I'm one of them), so give and take (perhaps there are more native English speaking Chinese and some Caucasians may not be native English speakers) we say there are 6-8 out of 22 kids that speaks English at home with their family. That's about 1/3 of the population, which is not that ideal. Anyhow, i understand what you're getting at and apologize for the over generalization in my previous post.

FattyDaddy

jolalee 發表於 15-9-13 02:05
full exposure of Chinese at home and full exposure of English (minus all grammatical errors and limiting accents to US/UK) in school. For a school where over half the kids who probably do not speak English at home, the exposure is not ideal. ...

If most parents follow this and have full Chinese (or whatever non-English language) exposure at home, then naturally the school would have the majority of their kids not speaking English at home.

It seems the "ideal exposure" could only be achieved if the school's admission strongly favours children who speak 100% English at home but somehow accepts your child who speaks 100% Chinese at home. Not easy :)

AJW2010

原帖由 FattyDaddy 於 15-09-13 發表
本帖最後由 FattyDaddy 於 15-9-13 16:23 編輯

Good catch.

in the end, parents are allowed to discriminate their own peer when finding the most suitable school for their children.  

Anyway, everyone has different expectation on the schools.  do the research and know what you sign up for your own kid.

21Ckid

講真，就算英基青衣百般不是，例如質素一般、校舍細又似係騎樓底、甚至金頭髪人太少，總不至於平曰在校用廣東話交談吧！我孩子學校近全部Chinese,但學校文化下，都用英文（可能冇鬼仔學校如woodlands咁好吧！）。只有別人用廣東話才用廣東話回應！

人地真的用廣東話，你個仔咪用英文咯，如果對方回應唔到，都好難考入去啦。

其實你個仔唔識廣東話，應該高興，有機會學呀。

有時見到D人點踩以前學校，都幾心寒。

FattyDaddy

AJW2010 發表於 15-9-13 18:06
Good catch ...

Ha, I'm not here to catch anything or anyone :)

We all have ideals, just discussing how practical or impractical they might be.

jolalee

FattyDaddy 發表於 15-9-13 16:22
If most parents follow this and have full Chinese (or whatever non-English language) exposure at ho ...

I understand the dilemma. I was learning as we grow. We spoke English at home before getting into our school of choice, and only switched over after learning about this method of speaking Chinese at home from fellow parents here.

A funny incident my son once told me: his classmate gave him a new name, "Dung Dung". I had no idea where that came from, so I asked him why his classmate would call him Dung (manure)? I was intrigued. My son told me one day he wanted to go to the bathroom and the boy inside the water closet told him "dung dung"! Then I realized the boy was simply asking him to wait, not giving him a new name. I had a good laugh over it.

Anyhow for potential IS parents who wish to put their children in an English immersion environment, there are certain schools that do not provide it. Just be aware, that's all.

jolalee

21Ckid 發表於 15-9-14 00:32
講真，就算英基青衣百般不是，例如質素一般、校舍細又似係騎樓底、甚至金頭髪人太少，總不至於平曰在校用廣 ...

I have no intention of stepping on any school, just stating what my son experienced while he was there. Apologies if that's how I came across as.

At that moment I was keen on getting son into another school, so learning Chinese was far from my mind. However, now that he's in, I do welcome Chinese classmates who can converse in Chinese. We do teach them about social etiquette though: if there is someone in the same room who cannot understand Chinese, it is best that you converse in the common language.  That's how I was taught growing up and I think that is a sensible way to handle multiple languages.

FattyDaddy

jolalee 發表於 15-9-16 16:40
We spoke English at home before getting into our school of choice, and only switched over after learning about this method of speaking Chinese at home from fellow parents here...

I know what you mean, it reminds me of some discussions that went on in this forum about 3 years ago when ESF still had the Category 1 and 2 classifications. In order to maximize their children's chances some parents spoke only English to their children but switched to Cantonese full time once they had gotten through primary admissions. Personally I think doing this is fine but if you jog your memory you might recall there were some members of the moral Taliban who vehemently criticized this practice