David

We are in the same position as you. We are currently selling our house in order to move to Gaurgacho nr Las Galletas. I have been enquiring for ages regarding schools. There is Wingate and Britannia in the areas you are looking for but they are private English schools. From what I have found out if you want your children to attend a Spanish state school you have to go to the Town Hall for the area you are living in and find out what schools are in that area and then start applying. I have had no luck with replies about Spanish State schools whatsoever but it is pretty much like in the UK, you can only attend a Spanish State school that is in your catchment area, where with the Private English Schools it doesn't matter, the children can attend whatever one you want them to regardeless of where you are living. Basically you will have to wait until you are there or make a special visit beforehand to try and sort out the schooling.

Hope this helps
Regards Jackie

I understand that it is difficult to get a child into LosCris school because it is oversubscribes and popular because of the location.

You do need to sort it quickly because the new school year is about to start. You need to take along the following paperwork :

1) You need to provide one of the following for each parent ;

'Certificado de Residencia' or the Certificate from the Ayuntamiento that you are resident at your address.

Empadronimiento (get this at your Ayuntamiento too).

'Tarajeta Censal' or Census Card (if you are on the voting register you will have this. Also from the Ayuntamiento where you live, if you need to get one).

2) A photocopy of the DNI/NIE of both parents and the child (if he or she has one). This can be the piece of paper you got from the Police station, or a copy of your residencia. It's also a good idea to take the original along with you too... that goes for all the documents listed.

3) Your Libro de Familia and a photocopy of the child's page from it.

4) Photocopy of the 'Declaracion de la Renta' of both parents. This is obtained from the Hacienda near the Green Hospital in Las Americas. Get there early and pull a ticket, as it's one of those queuing jobs! It's basically a tax return, but it's the official stamped one. Tell the people there that you need it for matriculation for your child and they'll sort you out. If you are on the dole you need one, however if one of the parents doesn't work and hasn't claimed, you only need it for the working parent. You will need at least one though, so if you're planning to get your kid into school in the future, make sure at least one of you has a contract of some sort!

I think you also need an up to date copy of all your childs innoculations

Great advice thanks... we are going over for a week soon, so can update the thread with what I learn to..... keep the exeriences coming though - all greatly received

I moved to tenerife in 2005 and enroled my 2 children aged then 3 and 6 years into the EEC school on the GOlf del Sur. They attended there for 1 year. I have just moved them for this year to a Spanish mainstream school in Los Cristianos so I may be able to shed some light on this.

Basically, the decision should really reflect on how long you wish to stay on the island. If it's a short stay, or you undecided as I was then go for one of the private ENglish schools such as EEC or Wingate. The curriculum is exactly the same as in the UK so if you do return home, the child will suffer minimal disruption.

If you are staying long term then go for a mainstream school, it's a pain to get the child enroled but they will integrate much better, obviously they will pick up the language & have more prospects for the future.

I found that you do not necessarily get a place in the school in your area. It doesn't work like the UK. A lot of schools are full to capacity, so you may have to travel to take your child to school. The way I did it was to spend a week visiting the schools I was considering and just asking if they had any places. Las Americas & Los Cristianos are very hard to get in to as they are the most popular, but if you travel further afield to such as Las Galletas, El Fraile, Adeje, it's not so bad.

The list of required documentation given in a previous posting is pretty much spot on but it does vary for each school. A couple of things I would make sure you bring from the UK would be a FULL Birth Cert for your child. I say full because they will not accept the ones without parent's names. Also bring a vacination certificate, as they will definately want this.

Hope this helps.

Hi,

I have just happened upon this thread, as it's something I'm trying to address... i.e. give foreign parents a better support system for health, schooling etc. in the canaries.

With this in mind, I have set up a website called http://www.canarianmum.com. It has all the information about putting your child into school on it, and I'm currently in the process of adding all the school contact details on there (all the primary schools in Tenerife are on, however I have a LOT of work to do for the Secondary schools and all the schools and health centres for the rest of the canaries).

The site is a wiki. What this means is, you can add to it or edit it (like the online encyclopaedia, Wikipedia) and if anyone has and info about a particular school, please feel free to add it to help other parents.

I must stress for the mods, this is a free community based website. I'm not making any money out of it, so this is not an ad! I basically felt that something was needed, as there are always lots of questions about this. Sorry if this reply is breaking any rules, it's not meant to.

djkirstyjay

Thanks for the info. will check it out.

Rgds Jackie

How old are your children Jackie? Do you intend to put them into the spanish system or the english one?

Sue

My daughter is 16 and just finished her GCSE'S, and my son is 14 and just beggining to study for his GCSE's. At the moment my daughter is working part time and going to college in the evening to continue learning Spanish, which she has already done to GCSE level. It's all a bit of a mess at the moment regarding her as the house was sold so she didn't want to enroll at college full time for a few weeks and then have to leave. Now the sale has fallen through. I would be putting them in an English school because of their ages really, had they been younger then I would definately have put them in a Spanish school.

Rgds Jackie

At that age, Spanish schools probably wouldn't be a good idea, as they would find it hard with the language, regardless of GCSE's in the subject, as I doubt that would be sufficient for day to day conversation.

Where abouts in Tenerife will you be? You'd be surprised how many Private schools there are dotted around...!

We're trying home study for GCSEs as the English school we tried here in Mallorca, besides being around 9,000 euros per child per annum, seemed to be just a holding area. Their academic targets where so low that we despaired.

My daughter (nearly 14) wants to be a Vet (at the moment!!) and was simply not going to get the grades. We have started her on 8 GCSEs through Oxford Open Learning. Up to now (touching wood) her enthusiasm is great and the support from OOL has been all we could ask for.

Her Spanish is pretty good (we've been here 2 years almost) so she will take the exam next June (2 years earlier than standard) which gets one in the bag and her a bit of experience of examination pressures when, in fact, the pressure is off!

We are quite new to this but are happy to exchange experiences.

Paul

Thanks Jackie I think you're absolutely right to think they need to go into the English system at their ages. I did the same with my older one, as, at that time, we had only committed ourselves to living here for three years. I didn't feel I could disrupt her education any more than I had done already!!

VirginPaul wrote:

We have started her on 8 GCSEs through Oxford Open Learning. Up to now (touching wood) her enthusiasm is great and the support from OOL has been all we could ask for.

Do you have any more information on this? Is it done online? It might be a useful thing to add to the website I've set up so that other parents can find out more about it as an option.

Hi,

For those of you with kids in the 14+ age range it's also probably worth doing some forward planning with regard to their higher education too. In particular, are you thinking of sending them to a Spanish University or will they come back to the UK? If they're likely to be going to a Spanish Uni, then while it might make it easier for them in the short-term to go to an English medium private school now, it's only putting off the day when they'll have to acquire a decent fluency in not only conversational Spanish but the academic discipline they want to study. Believe me, it is no easy task! I always thought that I could get by reasonably well in German until I had to arrange a placement for one of my own students with a German University - I simply didn't have the specialist academic vocabulary to explain what she had been studying with us and what she would be looking to study with them!

But if you have established residency in Spain in order to get them into a local Spanish school then unless they are returning within a short space of time for Uni then they won't be treated as 'home' students for which they need to have been ordinarily resident in the UK for the 3 years prior to entry. This is unlikely to have any impact on them being offered a place - in fact most admissions tutors would regard the experience of living in another country to be a positive thing - but it could have implications with regard to access to financial support. As EU residents they will on the whole be treated the same as 'home' students with regard to fees and won't be charged the exhorbitant 'overseas' rate but they won't automatically be eligible for the cheap student loans etc and they probably won't be eligible for the bursaries that some Universities are able to offer in addition to these to students from low income families.

It's a bit of a minefield really and either way needs some careful thought with regards to both the short term and the longer term.

SM

Looks a great site - well done !!

SM. Very good advice there I had a devil of a job getting my son back into the UK education system, after 8 years here in Lanzarote. As he said, if he had been an illegal alien it would have been easier. It is a minefield, as SM says, and much too complicated to go into on this thread, but something for people to seriously go into before moving overseas.

As he said, if he had been an illegal alien it would have been easier

Not anymore it isn't! That's probably one of the reasons why you experienced difficulties. Universities really carefully scrutinise applications from outside the UK because they were having their time wasted by too many 'phantom' students who were applying in order to gain entry to the UK but the never showed up on campus. I know that that was probably galling for you if he was born in the UK but they would have wanted to be sure that he really was who said he was and that it wasn't a case of identity theft.

As both an HE admissions tutor and an organiser of an annual international academic research conference, I've found that many inquirers just fade away when told that I am not in a position to help or assist with visa applications. The genuine applicants persevere and in some ways I must admit that we use 'perseverance' as a test of genuineness.

SM

Glad to hear that SM This was six years ago now, when he wanted to go to tech. I had to provide birth certificate, marriage certificate (mine!!), dates and places of all schools he had ever attended, and probably more I can't remember now!! Then there was the problem of why he didn't have a NI number. Luckily, when he wanted to go on to university he was able to with not too much trouble as he satisfied the "three year rule", although he had no UK "O" and "A" level qualifications.

Although this is off topic, it is relevant in a way, as we were told by the private schools here in the canaries, that there would be no problem at all getting into UK colleges and universities. But, they did omit to say we would probably have to pay for the privilege!!!

David

How was your trip to Tenerife?

Did you find out anything new on your trip?

Rgds Jackie