Note: This is referring to public schools in Taipei only. The process for private schools will be different.
Every parent knows that the location of your home is important because that usually determines the school your kids can attend.
Last time, I shared that our strategy was to first decide the schools we wanted and then try to find an apartment close by. There were two issues:
- The PDF I had of school openings was only for 1st grade. We (stupidly) assumed that if a school had openings for 1st grade, they’d also have it for 3rd grade. Usually, there are more open spaces in the upper grades because families move or switch schools.
But that’s not the case in Taipei. So I had to wake up at the crack of dawn while in Rome, brush off my rusty Mandarin Chinese, and call the schools to confirm whether they have space for my 1st and 3rd grader. Thankfully, 2 out of 3 schools we were interested in had space for both.
An interesting tidbit about the public school system in Taipei is that there isn’t a centralized organization that governs the schools (like SFUSD in San Francisco for example). There is a Ministry of Education in Taiwan, but any school inquiries and enrollment is done with the individual school. This made things a bit more challenging for us because we had to communicate with multiple schools at once rather than work with one entity. - Once we had a couple of schools to choose from, we started to look for apartments. Again, we (stupidly) assumed that as long as we could find an apartment within 15-20 minute walking distance to the school, we would be set.
But soon, we learned that it doesn’t matter even if your apartment is 1 minute away from the school. If the address isn’t within the school’s service area, you cannot get in. I don’t know why we didn’t think of this because SF works similarly. Ugh, we wasted so much time looking at apartments that wouldn’t work for us in the first place. 😣
This is the website where you can check which school is assigned to your address: https://schooldistrict.tp.edu.tw/html/search.jsp
If the school your address is assigned to is full, you can request a transfer to the next closest school. From what I gather, you still have to officially register with your designated school but then you’d fill out a one page form requesting a transfer.
So lesson learned: never assume anything when you’re living in a foreign country. 😅
Now that we’ve figured out the schools (sort of?), we have to face our next challenge: landlords. Stay tuned for the next post!
Hongs Abroad 