Year abroad during high school?
My husband and I are considering going abroad during his next sabbatical, when our son will be a sophomore in high school. Our daughter will have just graduated. We are considering Spain, Mexico, Australia, the UK, or maybe Germany. Has anyone done this? Are there ways to make the schooling transferable? Or do they have to do an independent study? I’d be very interested in advice from anyone who has done this with a high school student.
Jun 5, 2021
Parent Replies
Hi, we are doing this right now. We moved abroad in December and my daughter is a sophomore. We were supposed to only be here (South Africa) for 6 months, but are extending for at least another year. It's been amazing for our children. They are attending an American school so the schedule stayed the same, so she won't have any issue with transferring credits, but mostly I found international schools are very well versed on students that are coming from other countries and other curriculums. There are kids who move every few years for various reasons so international schools are prepared to make sure their schooling keeps up.
Hello,
My daughter spent a semester abroad in junior year ( pretty difficult but totally worth it)
I guess it depends on the school he is currently enroll in. In our case, my daughter went to Bishop O'Dowd and we made an agreement. There are some requirements for graduation and maybe to completed junior year, so she took extra classes here via K-12 online school. You will need to translate and certificate all his grades but it is not a big issue. The big issue was how they account for his grades here and the fact that evaluation in the US tends to be easier, so many kids have A's....that is not that common in other countries, therefore his gpa maybe compromise to enter in college, if he lower his grades...
We would not had done it in any other way, she had a great experience even though her grades did not allow her to get into the UC system...She graduated with honors from USF :)
I wish I would had taken that time as well to go with her.
Good luck!!
Your best bet is to go somewhere with an American high school. The curriculum in other countries is likely different enough that otherwise there might be problems getting credit. For example in Germany high school is less of a course system. You have more subjects per school year but fewer time with each. But you have each subject over several years. So your child would likely end up with lots of partial credits which are of no real use.
I spent a year abroad in Brazil as a high school sophomore and it was a wonderful and formative experience. Highly recommend it for anyone considering. I attended the local school and completed a few courses (by mail!) through independent study. I think most of the foreign courses didn’t count toward graduation. But I did become fluent in Portuguese. I made up the rest by enrolling in summer school the year I came back. If your child attends an American school abroad she may lose out on some of the language learning and cultural immersion.