Offer from Abacus ESF - urgent advice pls!

justjust

I just got a phone call from Abacus ESF that they offer a place for our girl in coming Feb PM session.

I replied immediately saying that we'd prefer her to join in Sep as we feared that she may not be able to catch up with the classmates who started last Sep.  I also told her that we would prefer AM session anyway.

The lady said their offer for PM session wouldn't change even if we choose to wait till Sep.  In fact if we decline the offer now we may lose it at all because they will have an even larger queue for Sep.  She also said that our girl (born in Jan) would be fit for joining K1 now since she has just turned 3.  (ESF's min. age for K1).  By Sep she may be too big.

Our girl is now taking pre-nursery classes at Think (int'l stream).  She is happy there and we are quite happy with the teachers and the school so far.

We are truly concerned that she may not be able to catch up.  She was a slow speaker although she has improved a lot in the past year.  Actually she was offered an opportunity with YMCA last year but at the advice of her YMCA playgroup teachers we declined the opportunity as well and told YMCA we would like to join only in Sep 05.  But YMCA let us stay in the queue and now Abacus tells us to take it or leave it.  

What should we do?  Any advice?  Thank you!  We need to reply by next week.

WYmom

So your girl is required to join K1 2nd term, will she need to repeat one year (K1 or K3) before she can go to primary?  Maybe this is not necessary if she joins ESF primary, but will be necessary if she joins other primary schools.  This may need to be considered.

In ESF kinder, it is known that there is very little Chinese, so don't know what you are looking for.  .

It is well known that the queue of ESF is very very long, so they won't wait for you. So if you are really keen with ESF, you have to take the offer, then study up to primary and secondary in ESF schools if your girl can pass all the entrance exams.

Good luck.

justjust

Thanks for your response WYmom.

We submitted the application in around Apr 04.  I'm not sure whether she needs to repeat K1 or K3 to enter primary school.  But my colleague said it would be better that she repeats K1 to have better school performance records for applying primary schools.

So far we use Eng only at home and the language used at Think (int'l stream) is also Eng only.  Not that we don't want her to learn Chinese ... just that she encountered language confusion when we exposed too many languages (3) to her at the same time at the beginning.  At the advice of medical professionals and social workers we reduced the no. of language to just Eng.  That's why we applied for a handful of Eng-only kindergartens.  We saw her progressing very fast in the last year and particularly after joining 5-day pre-nursery.  We even begin to have the luxury wish of re-introducing Chinese to her... subject to medical/expert advice.

Frankly we are not too keen on suddenly changing to ESF, particularly that they called me at the end of Jan to join in Feb already.  But knowing that it is so difficult to get a place there, we would like to have the valuable opinion from other experienced parents here.

Please keep on throwing in your ideas!

WYmom

My kid is also studying in Think nursery, half day bilingual and half day International.  I have not asked for medical or expert advice.  For us, we know that Chinese is more difficult to learn than English, so we just let her learn both languages as early as possible.  So far so good.   My sister's kids learn English only since birth, and they are not quite willing to learn or speak in Chinese any more when they grow up as Chinese is really difficult.  That's just what I know, may not be applicable to you.

So afterall, going into ESF or not really depends on what you are planning for your kid in future.

Sandrine

Justjust,

From what you said, it’s like accept ESF Abacus now or forget it.  I have the impression that you’d rather wait for the next opportunity in Sept 05 as you already told the lady that you wished to join in Sept.  I understand your fear that your daughter seems to be a few months behind her classmates if she starts in Feb but if she’s already going to pre-nursery, will there be such a great difference?  Ask yourself what you like about the school and why you’d like your daughter to study there.  Is it fairly close to where you live? Is p.m. session acceptable to you? Is ESF primary your target too?  If everything is positive, then have trust in your child that she can pick things up real fast.  You never know, she’s only a child and has lots of potential.  Being slow in speech doesn’t mean she’s slow in other areas!?

If you’re going to re-introduce Chinese to her at this point in time, ESF Abacus is suitable too as it provides access to Putonghua every day.  

If you still have reservation about ESF Abacus, then I think you should explore the other options available.  Being difficult to get in is not the reason for you to accept the offer. If you all are happy with Think, would you let her continue there?  Have you got offers from other kindies?  How do these kindies compare with ESF Abacus and Think? Where does ESF Abacus stand on your priority list?  

If you don’t have any other offer for the time being, have you considered accepting ESF Abacus now and switch to another kindy if a preferred one is available in September?  That may be too much trouble though.

Sorry no easy answers for you.  

cpmummy

Just Just,

I think if you would like to let you kid to study in ESF, this would be right time for her, as normally kids should go into K1 when they turn to 3, so I think all the other kids in the class will be more or less be the same age as yours. But I just wonder why did ESF ask you to join in Feb, as there should be two intakes in a year (September and April). Are they have more intakes now?
Moreover, ESF will not allow you to change to September intake, as all kid they born by the earlier of year should start K1 in April intakes, study for two years and then goes to ESF primary in Easter (if the primary schools offer Easter intake).
So you have to consider deeply whether you are going to let your kid to study ESF primary or some other international school in the future, if ESF primary is your target then you should choose ESF kinder now, if you target for the local primary school, then you should not choose ESF.

CherylMum

Re: Offer from Abacus ESF - urgent advice pls!

[ 本帖最後由 CherylMum 於 09-11-6 09:34 編輯 ]

justjust

Thank you Sandrine, cpmummy, CherylMum.

I've called Abacus today to decline their offer.

Your opinions and comments made me rethink why we applied for Abacus at the beginning.  It was very simple - because the language medium is Eng, the language we agreed to adopt at home.

We have no preference on ESF KGs over other KGs like Think, YMCA, KBCK ...

We have no preference on ESF primary schools over other primary schools either.  We only want a school that will nourish her and let her enjoy school life.  Eventually, probably in the medium term, we will move and she will continue her education aboard.

Abacus is not near our home.  We are supposed to apply for Tsing Yi ESF but since we live in Kowloon East, Abacus is relatively nearer.  There is no public transport or school bus between our home and Abacus.  We need to drive her there every day.  Even if our girl gets in Abacus, she can't be allocated the ESF primary school in the Abacus school net.

I asked Abacus about their teaching approach - interactive; learning thru' playing; doesn't differentiate K1,K2; ... quite similar to what Think (int'l stream) is doing now.  Can't say both are the same because one can't possibly know it all from a phone call instead of really studying at the school himself, but we begin to query the benefit of changing school.

Re-introducing Chinese is also our consideration as we believe Think can give us more help in this aspect.

Lastly I think our inertia to change makes us resist to the idea of changing school immediately without any preparation.  I also remember the intakes should be in April and Sep and have no idea why they asked us to start in Feb.

We hope we've made a good decision.

Sandrine

Justjust,

If you have thought it over, you won't regret it.