Two of our Wibblets goto the ISB.

In a 1 line summary: Expensive, mostly OK.

Coming from an Australian "free" school system, I still have trouble with the "for profit" of it all. School lunches are 9 francs a day, payable in advance, 3 months at a time. If photos are taken at an excursion, you have to buy prints (no free digitals, except tiny website thumbnails) .

The photos thing sh*ts me a bit to be honest, particularly the excursion photos. The school enrollment fees are already expensive, and they're denying the kids digital copies of the photos to look-at/play/print/edit/make-into-things, for the sake of the (probably) minimal amount of profit they make from prints. I think they should add an extra 50 franks to the enrollment, and stop charging for every little thing.

I don't like their homework policy. Our 7yo gets 5 photocopied pages of stuff to do a week. He's supposed to spend "just 15 minutes" each night writing out spelling words, or counting, or colouring sh*t in. But it doesn't take 15 minutes, it usually takes more than an hour (3 is the record), including complaint-and-argue time. So the school is making me the ogre at least once a week because I have to force him to do boring fu*king homework sheets. They already spend 7 hours a day at school, WTF is an extra "15 minutes" at home going to teach. If it was a monthly assignment or something I could understand, but this isn't. I guess this is more of a home problem, than a school problem, but the homework definately is a catalyst. IMHO this sort of homework is the teacher unnecessarily reaching into home-life. Kind of a "you can never get away" control thing. See the work-a-holics today who can never leave their job at the office - they're the ones who always did their homework!

In terms of classes, and what they learn I have no problems. The facilities, music and sports equipment is as good as what you'd expect, considering the price. Some of the teachers seem enthusiastic, all the non-teaching staff is very friendly.

Kids who don't already speak english pickup the school accent, which is sort of a cross between English-English and American-English, plus a few other intinations.

I would give them a telephone call, and see if you can arrange a tour in the next couple of weeks (while there's still kids around).

I must admit to having 2nd thoughts about enrolling the 4yo., and if my Swiss-German was better, would certainly consider the Swiss system. But moreso that she actually does learn another language.

cheers,
(Mr)Wibble

PS> Apologies for the rant, lucky there's no scripture classes