Move to Thailand with their children for sake of education
Yuan Jing decided to bypass the cut-throat competition to enroll her 6th grader in an elite high school in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province.
While many Chinese parents obsessed about buying high-priced houses in good school districts, Yuan prepared to move her family to Thailand.
Yuan chose an international school in Chiang Mai, a city 2,000 kilometers away from Guangzhou. That's where her 11-year-old daughter Yoyo who will take her junior-high school courses in September.
Yuan and Yoyo are not alone. Thailand has recently witnessed an influx of Chinese students and their parents, who are attempting to provide their children a better but less expensive education than they could receive at home and to prepare them for European and US universities.
Family relocation
After travelling in Thailand in 2013 and being lured by the cheap commodity prices, a slow-paced life and beautiful environment, Yuan, a small business owner, looked into what international schools in Thailand had to offer.
Originally planning to send her daughter to an international school in Guangdong Province, Yuan took Thailand into account because her favored Chinese schools charged 200,000 yuan ($32,000) for annual tuition fees.
"Our business can start over again, but our child grows only once," she said. "Our nationality is not a problem for international schools in Thailand. More importantly, their ethnic makeup is more diversified than domestic schools, while the tuition fees are half the price."
The school she chose runs International Baccalaureate (IB) courses and saw 35 percent of its K-12 students admitted by the top 50 universities in the world.
Lynda Rolph, deputy headmaster of the school, said it is attractive to Chinese parents since each class has 24 students at the most while there are 40 to 50 students in a class in China.
The 500 students of the school are from 40 countries and regions. The annual tuition is 88,000 yuan and accommodation is 6,000 yuan.
In addition, the rent of a condominium apartment and even a row house ranges from 1,000 to 2,000 yuan a month, much lower than that in Guangzhou, according to Yuan.
In a bid to attract foreign students, the Thai government issues dependent visas to their parents.
Yuan and her husband plan to move to Thailand with their daughter and attend a language school before considering how to make a living there.
Recent years have seen a surge of internationals students in Thailand. A father surnamed Wang, a Beijing resident who sent his daughter and son to a bilingual school in Chiang Mai, said parents followed the lead of their friends and acquaintances and brought their children to Thailand.
"A few years ago, we selected schools, but now my friends were often informed they must wait in line for a spot," Wang said.
According to a 2013 report by Bangkok-based Kasikorn Research Center, the number of students enrolled by Thai international schools continues to climb. In 2013, the total number of students, including Thais and foreigners, rose by 10 percent year-on-year to 43,133. The average annual tuition increased to 463,050 baht ($13,753) from 441,000 baht in 2012, an increase of around 5 percent.
Failing grades
Many parents have been satisfied with their decision to educate their children in Thailand, but not everyone.
Liu Li (pseudonym) from Kunming, Yunnan Province, accompanied her daughter to Bangkok for two years. She said the move was an acutely painful experience for the first year.
"Many foreign teachers worked part-time in schools when travelling in Thailand. They neither graded assignments, nor did they take attendance. English class was all about memorizing several words," Liu said.
The quality of education slightly improved when she switched to an American international school. "There are so many international schools in Thailand that parents were unable to discern the quality upon arrival. They later have to change schools occasionally."
A teacher surnamed Lin in a bilingual school in Chiang Mai said, "The students are indulged by the teachers. Even 7th and 8th graders in my school still recited times tables and some senior high school students cannot speak simple English."
A father surnamed Li from Shanghai who earned 3,000 yuan each month in Thailand sent his son back to Shanghai just half a year after he brought him, because living there cost more than he had expected.
"The registration fee for a kindergarten is about 2,000 yuan. Every school year is divided into three terms, the tuition fee for every term is 9,000 yuan, excluding board expenses and extra-curricular classes," he said.
Bound for Europe, U.S.
Yuan pointed out that most Chinese students who study at Thai international schools are expected to go to European and US universities.
Some 45 percent of private high schools and only 4 percent of public high schools in the U.S. recruit international students, the University World News reported in 2015. The tuition fees of private schools are hefty. The average tuition fee of private high schools in 2014 is above $40,000, according to news site Business Insider.
Relatively inexpensive education and easily obtained dependent visas are the major attractions for sending children to Thailand, said He Chugang, a general manager at the South China branch of Amber Education, an overseas education agent.
Certain international schools in Thailand that provide standardized curriculum like IB courses are cost effective since their grading is widely acknowledged among top universities, He said.
The majority of those families are middle-class whose annual income ranges between 200,000 yuan and 500,000 yuan, He said.
Even rich families that can afford primary schools in the UK and the US may send their children to Thailand, because dependent visas are hard to get in the UK and the U.S., He noted.
