Do We Have to Pay For International School?

This is not the best way to decide.

Continuing our discussion of education benefits policies and the workshops we recently offered our corporate clients, today our focus is on international school tuition and the question of necessity. 

Understandably, if a relocating employee is going on a three-year assignment with three children, and the annual cost of tuition is $40,000 per student in the destination location, the company is looking at $360,000 in fees before there’s even a discussion about the add-ons like books and uniforms, lunches, transportation, computers and field trips, not to mention the tax costs of providing the benefit. Not an amount to spend without due consideration.

So, how are different companies approaching this, and what advice can Bennett offer?

First, it’s worth noting that no two employers are exactly the same. Our many clients offer different levels of benefits for different relocating employees—C-suite, long-term assignees, permanent transfers, etc. So below is a summary of some of the common approaches across employee level and types of relocation.

In no particular order:

·      In many instances, policy is flexible and regional, allowing for international school support in some countries but not others. In one instance, for example, families relocating to the US are expected to use public schools, and private or international schools are supported by exception only.  In other parts of the world (Asia, Africa and the Middle East), international school is an automatic benefit for most move types.  In some instances, clients taking this approach have conducted an assessment of different locations’ education options to determine where usage of local schools is or isn’t viable.

·      Most clients have some kind of statement in their policy to indicate that they support international/private school in instances when state/public education is not “sufficient” or of a quality to ensure that the student can return to home country at grade-level.  Wording is different across policies, but the intention to avoid disadvantaging a student by committing them to a poor education was almost universal in the policies we reviewed.  As always, our advice is to be as specific with language as possible and to think through the exception requests ahead of time.  Answer the question: Who decides if a local school is “insufficient"? What are the metrics?

·      Tuition caps:  some of our clients have established tuition caps for specific locations and if employees choose school with higher fees, they cover the difference themselves.  For clients who might decide to take this path, we encourage them to make sure that the research done to establish the caps is thorough.  In many parts of the world, there are different kinds of “international” schools, some of them created for local (not international) students, and which would not be appropriate for incoming students. Incoming students would probably not use these schools, and their lower tuition fees will skew averages. Be sure that your researcher understands the difference in the different types of schools and can establish an accurate average.

·      One approach that we did not see frequently represented was policy by age of student. The education needs of younger children differ significantly from those of secondary level students, for example, and clients in some locations might explore tiered offerings by student age.

·      Finally, it is important to consider the organization’s global compensation philosophy and practices when considering schooling costs at the host location. For example, if the employer uses a home-country based compensation system, employees from higher-paying countries will have a considerably easier time paying schooling costs at the host location than would employees from lower-paying countries.

International school tuition is an area of education benefits policy where it’s extremely difficult for companies to take a one-size-fits-all approach, and at Bennett we have the privilege of working with clients who are seeking the right balance of fiduciary responsibility with duty of care for the dependents of the employees they’re relocating.

The reality is that there are times and places and ages when a student really, really needs to be enrolled in an international school, not a local state/public one, and there’s no way around it.  And there are other times when an employee might have the option of international school tuition support for their child and not realize that a local state/public school would actually be a better fit or provide a completely different and very valuable set of opportunities.

If you have a situation or a family or a location where you’re puzzling over the question of international school tuition, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.  We’re always here to think through it with you!

Warmly,

Elizabeth

CEO

Over the years, Bennett International Education Consultancy has worked with hundreds of corporations across the globe, many of them Fortune 500 companies, providing domestic and international school advisement & placement services - preschool through university - to the dependents of relocating employees. In addition to education placement, our team provides customized consulting for corporations with a range of education issues: education policy writing & benchmarking, tuition studies, group move advisement & planning, and remote education solutions.