# Children and Spanish schools



## kaipa (Aug 3, 2013)

Have been in Spain for 4 months now. Both me and my wife speak Spanish. My wife is fluent and I am about B1. Our 10 year boy has been in the state school since we arrived. He has settled in well and enjoys the school more than he did in Scotland. However he struggles with the homework and to be honest it is turning into a really negative thing. We can spend up to 2 hours a night trying to get him just do a small amount. We know that the problem is the language. He simply cannot understand enough Spanish to make sense of the books. Subjects like Social Sciences and Natural Sciences are a real problem. We can of course just tell him to copy from the book but it means nothing to him. Consequently he does not do well in the tests prompting remarks from the teacher suggesting he needs to work harder. Maths is also a problem when it is about practical applications. 
As I said, he doesn;t seem to mind going to school and he does extra activities and now meets some friends outside of school hours. It is just that we don't want to tell him he doesn;t have to do homework but at the same time it seems counter productive basically doing it for him. Any suggestions


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## rspltd (Jul 5, 2016)

You don't say what level of Spanish your son has but I suspect struggling with the language plus what is probably a new syllabus at the age of ten was always going to be a problem.


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## Overandout (Nov 10, 2012)

Can I ask if you and your wife speak Spanish at home?

For me this is crucial. If the home environment is in English you are (in my opinion) asking too much from the school to provide your son with his only Spanish language exposure and teaching.

This is even more the case if the school is a publicly funded school. They just don´t have the resources to give extra teaching to "foreign" kids.

We have a comparable issue as our youngest has just joined a Spanish state school at the age of 5. His teacher tells us that all of his class-mates who were in the school (or at least the Spanish system) last year can already read full sentences and paragraphs, but our son is still at "learning the letters" stage, just because he was in a different school system until July last year.
The teacher is very clear in that she (and the school) will not be able to help him catch up. This is something that we as parents have to manage, either ourselves or through private classes.


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## kaipa (Aug 3, 2013)

rspltd said:


> You don't say what level of Spanish your son has but I suspect struggling with the language plus what is probably a new syllabus at the age of ten was always going to be a problem.


He had zero Spanish. Of course he understands a lot of spoken Spanish now. Technically he has been exposed to nearly 500 hours plus of the language He watches TV in Spanish as well. The thing is he doesn't produce a lot and although his reading is slow his pronunciation is good. I just wondered how other people who put children in the state schools found it? Some UK families have said their children were speaking Spanish after 3 months but do they honestly mean their children could write 70 words describing the difference between the 3 "vertientes" of Spain or describing the difference between the terms " tiempo y clima"? This is what my son has to do in his Social Sciences tests. Surely the language their children have acquired is related to more common simple social interactions than the language required for abstract concepts such as above?


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## kaipa (Aug 3, 2013)

Overandout said:


> Can I ask if you and your wife speak Spanish at home?
> 
> For me this is crucial. If the home environment is in English you are (in my opinion) asking too much from the school to provide your son with his only Spanish language exposure and teaching.
> 
> ...


We have tried and when we go out with friends or to restaurants we make him order his own food etc. We even make him go to the sweets shop on his own. The thing is that while we can speak to him in Spanish we can't use Spanish all the time to try and explain his homework which is what my wife has been doing. It is far too advanced for him and just leads to lots of shouting and fits!
I know he will most likely be repeating the year so hopefully next time round it won't be so unfamiliar it is just I don't want to him not to try and do the homework.


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## xabiaxica (Jun 23, 2009)

kaipa said:


> He had zero Spanish. Of course he understands a lot of spoken Spanish now. Technically he has been exposed to nearly 500 hours plus of the language He watches TV in Spanish as well. The thing is he doesn't produce a lot and although his reading is slow his pronunciation is good. I just wondered how other people who put children in the state schools found it? Some UK families have said their children were speaking Spanish after 3 months but do they honestly mean their children could write 70 words describing the difference between the 3 "vertientes" of Spain or describing the difference between the terms " tiempo y clima"? This is what my son has to do in his Social Sciences tests. Surely the language their children have acquired is related to more common simple social interactions than the language required for abstract concepts such as above?



I bet the parents who claim that their children were speaking Spanish after 3 months don't speak Spanish  

I've heard this so many times - & yes, young children exposed to Spanish at school will absorb it & will often - usually - become fluent (for their age) quickly.

However, studies show that at the age of 9 to 10, there is a change in the brain, which means that a child will have to actually study a language in order to learn it - simply absorbing it doesn't really happen past that age. I think that is what is happening with your son.

My daughters were 5 & 8 (nearly 9) when they started in the Spanish system. I didn't speak much Spanish at the time, so we didn't speak Spanish at home, but I ensured that they were exposed to Spanish at all times - Spanish TV, magazines, after school clubs & so on. 

There was a lot of 'just copying' for homework at first, & learning by rote, but as our Spanish improved (including mine, since I learned a lot from helping with homework & studied very very hard to learn the language), it became easier.

You already speak Spansih so you could help with homework a lot more than I could, by explaining things to your son, speaking Spanish all the time etc.

We often speak Spanish to each other at home now (13 years later) - or Espanglish - where we start a conversation inoine language & fall into the other at some stage. No-one would know that they aren't Spanish, just by listening to them. 

I offer homework support for English primary children who are struggling with the language in the Spanish system. What I usually do is explain in English & in Spanish & get the child to understand that way & respond to me in Spanish - eventually as their Spanish improves dropping the English - by which time they usually don't need the support any more  

Why not could try that?


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## kaipa (Aug 3, 2013)

xabiachica said:


> I bet the parents who claim that their children were speaking Spanish after 3 months don't speak Spanish
> 
> I've heard this so many times - & yes, young children exposed to Spanish at school will absorb it & will often - usually - become fluent (for their age) quickly.
> 
> ...


Yes, I feel I agree with you. My wife met a family who claimed their children spoke Spanish and had learned it within months. She met them as she teaches English as an afternoon support class in the school. She said she they just spoke very basic Spanish and not at any level compatible with their classmates. It might sound good to the parents but it doesn't amount to sufficient to partake fully in classes. How could non-Spanish speaking parents know their children are fluent? 
Anyway it is interesting to see how quickly and to what degree the children learn the language. I think there a lot of myths floating around out there about language learning many of them promulgated by Brits who have little or no experience of how difficult it is to learn languages.

Having said that I am the only Brit in my Spanish class the rest are all Russians and boy they are good. Some have only been here a couple of months and they can already cope at a A2 level. Big difference. I think the fact that the Russians seem to integrate more makes a big difference


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

At this stage I don't think it is necessaily counter productive doing most of his homework for him, provided you explain it to him. Spanish schools are notoriously homework intensive and I think it is more than justifiable for you as parents to make adjustments to reflect your situation. If he is happy at school then that is the priority and that needs to be maintained at all costs. Spending 2 hours a night doing homework on his own will not only put that at risk, but it is probably not the most efficient way of getting him up to speed in Spanish either.

It might also be worth looking into getting an au pair: a native Spanish speaker who wants to learn English. They could help with the homework and generally help improve everyone's Spanish.

4 months is really not very long to expect a child to be up to speed. I'd expect it to take a year at least. Those who say their kids were up to speed in 3 months are clueless. They probably heard their kids saying something in Spanish that they couldn't understand and assumed the rest.


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## Overandout (Nov 10, 2012)

It seems that you are inviting comparisons so I hope this won't sound bad.. in fact, to me it seems that you as parents are doing all the right things, leading by example, increasing exposure to the language, measured support etc.

My older son has just re-entered the Spanish school system in yr 3 (he was 8 when the course started in September). Although he spoke Spanish fluently (he was born in Spain during our first stage of living here, and we continued to speak Spanish at home while we lived abroad), he had not really had any formal education in Spanish and had never read or written in Spanish apart from his last year at pre-school when he was 4.
He has adapted extremely quickly to reading and writing Spanish, and he is getting excellent results in language and science. Honestly, I thought he would struggle more.
The point I am making is that each person is a different case, so really, if you have identified the need to reinforce your son's Spanish, then it could just be that he isn't a "natural" when it comes to learning languages, and then you are probably the only person that can help him, either by suggestions such as those by xabiachica, or by simply enrolling him in extra classes. A classmate of my own son who recently moved from Moldavia goes to Spanish classes on a Saturday morning.
Again, I think that you cannot expect that the school will sort this out.


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

kaipa said:


> We have tried and when we go out with friends or to restaurants we make him order his own food etc. We even make him go to the sweets shop on his own. The thing is that while we can speak to him in Spanish we can't use Spanish all the time to try and explain his homework which is what my wife has been doing. It is far too advanced for him and just leads to lots of shouting and fits!
> I know he will most likely be repeating the year so hopefully next time round it won't be so unfamiliar it is just I don't want to him not to try and do the homework.


Regarding the homework you need to bear in mind that his classmates might well have been getting home work each night since they were 5. Just 5 minutes a night to begin with, and then slowly building up once they were into the habit. They probably had shouiting fits to begin with as well (mine did) but they are now used to it. If your kid isn't that used to homework then going from very little to 2 hours a night is just too big a jump. Maybe you should just try letting him do 5 minutes himself each night to begin with, while you do the rest, and then slowly build up as well?


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## kaipa (Aug 3, 2013)

Overandout said:


> It seems that you are inviting comparisons so I hope this won't sound bad.. in fact, to me it seems that you as parents are doing all the right things, leading by example, increasing exposure to the language, measured support etc.
> 
> My older son has just re-entered the Spanish school system in yr 3 (he was 8 when the course started in September). Although he spoke Spanish fluently (he was born in Spain during our first stage of living here, and we continued to speak Spanish at home while we lived abroad), he had not really had any formal education in Spanish and had never read or written in Spanish apart from his last year at pre-school when he was 4.
> He has adapted extremely quickly to reading and writing Spanish, and he is getting excellent results in language and science. Honestly, I thought he would struggle more.
> ...


No, don't get me wrong, I don't think is something that should be rectified by the school just that the teacher's expectations might be okay for the Spanish kids but need to be lowered a bit for those kids who are still having to learn the language. In fact I have to say the school is brilliant. So much better than in the UK. My son learnt nothing there. They just kept doing projects most of which were completed by the parents. One week it was Mandarin then the Ukulele, then French then the French revolution. When he arrived in Spain his maths was really weak and we had to do so much work on things like long division and fractions. Secondly he get proper food not the constant diet of pizza and chips he did in the UK. Thirdly the constant competitiveness of parents in Uk made school meaningless for the less academic pupils and the teachers split the class into different levels spending more time with the higher groups than the lower ones. None of that here in Spain. All the class use the same books and do the same work with no segregation going on


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

Overandout said:


> The teacher is very clear in that she (and the school) will not be able to help him catch up. This is something that we as parents have to manage, either ourselves or through private classes.


That's a shame, although maybe I can understand it as she probably has enough on her plate with the others in the class, but my advice was going to be to talk to the school about it!
I think if I was the OP I'd go to the school clearly stating that I was not expecting them to do any extra teaching, but just asking if they could give any pointers. The more school and parents work together the better IMHO. I would be expecting monthly meetings and with the child involved.
In the end though if the language doesn't come the homework won't come either and for that I'd encourage more and more play and social activities rather than sit down Spanish classes which could also be seen as a kind of "punishment" by the child


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## Overandout (Nov 10, 2012)

Pesky Wesky said:


> That's a shame, although maybe I can understand it as she probably has enough on her plate with the others in the class, but my advice was going to be to talk to the school about it!
> I think if I was the OP I'd go to the school clearly stating that I was not expecting them to do any extra teaching, but just asking if they could give any pointers. The more school and parents work together the better IMHO. I would be expecting monthly meetings and with the child involved.
> In the end though if the language doesn't come the homework won't come either and for that I'd encourage more and more play and social activities rather than sit down Spanish classes which could also be seen as a kind of "punishment" by the child


Yes, we were quite upset at the beginning thinking that the school had effectively abandoned our son because he was 6 mths behind the others!!
In fact, given that he is still in "infantil", it makes you wonder what the school would do with a child that joins "primaria" without having learned to read and write, which must happen ... but it is what it is and as parents we cannot expect the school to do everything, after all, we are the ones that dragged our kids half way around the world for 3 years.

Anyhow, our son is so determined to not be the last one to finish his work that he wants us to teach him at home, every day!!

Some nights we are just too tired (we both work) and we ask him if we can skip the "letter learning" session, but he says NO! we have to do it!!! (what we are actually doing is showing him a particular letter in lower and upper case, getting him to think of words with the letter, writing them down, letting him copy and then playing a bit of simple hangman). 

Anyway, this is not about my sons! Sorry for the thread hijack!!


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## kdsb (May 3, 2015)

We are also in our first year in the Spanish school system with kids ages 4, 7, 10, and 12. Our situation was different since they all were in bilingual schools back in the US so were coming in with a decent level of Spanish, though still behind kids raised in Spain.

Three of my kids adjusted well but my 10-year-old really struggled at first with the combination of language demands and homework load (the fact that he essentially skipped 4th grade due to different age cutoffs didn't help, I'm sure). By around November he was finally at the point where he could get much of the work done on his own, and was therefore often able to start it when there was a bit of downtime at school. But up until then it was pretty rough. And that is a kid who had 50% of his K-3 education conducted in Spanish, and has always received excellent grades in school.

If the situation had continued, I would have hired a local college student to come by daily and do his homework with him. It was tough as a parent since he had a very low frustration threshold at the end of the day and we both dreaded homework time. I have a pretty good level of Spanish but some of the language problems were challenging to me as well, and he'd get even more frustrated when I didn't know how to help him through something. I met with his teacher early on and the teacher said that it was up to me whether he completed the homework or not, but I thought it was important that he be held to the same standards as the rest of the class.

He is now at the point where he is getting good grades in school, and even outperforming most of Spanish kids on Language tests, but the adjustment took much longer than we were expecting and he is still very shy about speaking Spanish with other kids. My other kids did not seem to have this major gap between them and the rest of the class, or if it was there, they caught up very quickly and are considered among the best students in their class.


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## bob_bob (Jan 5, 2011)

A lot of immigrants come to the UK with mixed/poor language skills and the children often struggle for years playing catchup in education.

To be honest I don't see the attraction or logic of uprooting a child/children to a country that uses a foreign language unless the parents can truly immerse their children in the 'new' language or be able to afford to send the nippers to an international school that will at least give the qualifications needed for a UK education when the kiddies say 'bye' a few years down the line.

Lot of selfish brits 'living the dream' at the detriment of their children.

Want to leave the UK? Go to Canada/New Zealand/Australia...think of your children's future.


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## kaipa (Aug 3, 2013)

bob_bob said:


> A lot of immigrants come to the UK with mixed/poor language skills and the children often struggle for years playing catchup in education.
> 
> To be honest I don't see the attraction or logic of uprooting a child/children to a country that uses a foreign language unless the parents can truly immerse their children in the 'new' language or be able to afford to send the nippers to an international school that will at least give the qualifications needed for a UK education when the kiddies say 'bye' a few years down the line.
> 
> ...


What do you mean by truly immerse the children in the new language?


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

bob_bob said:


> A lot of immigrants come to the UK with mixed/poor language skills and the children often struggle for years playing catchup in education.
> 
> To be honest I don't see the attraction or logic of uprooting a child/children to a country that uses a foreign language unless the parents can truly immerse their children in the 'new' language or be able to afford to send the nippers to an international school that will at least give the qualifications needed for a UK education when the kiddies say 'bye' a few years down the line.
> 
> ...


Going on the premise that most parents love their children and that most parents want to do their best for them I suppose that parents that take children to an alien environment don't see it in that light. They may see it as an opportunity to live a better life, to open doors, to introduce them to a brighter future, even if this is not true. They may even be making a great sacrifice themselves in order to to do this.
Not all children need to be "immersed in the new language" as you put it. There are many immigrants who speak their native tongue at home exclusively for example and who use their children/ grandchildren as interpreters, but maybe that's not usually British children...
I do agree that there are parents who come to Spain without having thought things through, who expect their children to soak up the language because they have in mind that famous phrase "children are like sponges" without really knowing what they are talking about re language skills and possible language traumas. They haven't thought much further about their children's future other than the next couple of years. There are people who come here without knowing the first thing about Spain; the job opportunities, salaries, geography, taxes, language, cost of living...
However, you can't put everyone in the same box and as I said at the beginning, let's start with the belief that parents try to give their children "the best" that they can and many (most?) do.


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

bob_bob said:


> A lot of immigrants come to the UK with mixed/poor language skills and the children often struggle for years playing catchup in education.
> 
> To be honest I don't see the attraction or logic of uprooting a child/children to a country that uses a foreign language unless the parents can truly immerse their children in the 'new' language or be able to afford to send the nippers to an international school that will at least give the qualifications needed for a UK education when the kiddies say 'bye' a few years down the line.
> 
> ...


I can see where you're coming from and I agree that many British immigrants come here to follow their 'dream' and think little if at all of the consequences for their children. We've all read posts of that kind.

But in the world of today, travelling for work isn't a choice it's a necessity. If you are on a lucrative package deal or have a good professional salary then you may be able to afford to send your children to a good independent school but that's not always possible so it's a case of doing your best in difficult circumstances, which it's clear the posters on this thread are doing and doing well.

I've taught classes with immigrant pupils, young teenagers mainly, who arrive not knowing a word of English. It's amazing how quickly most young people adapt and become fluent and confident if not grammatically accurate in their new language. Very often within a couple of months the pupils are interpreting for their parents.
When I was teaching very little support was given to assist these pupils to cope with a new environment and new language. Fortunately most pupils,especially those from Central and Eastern Europe come with respect for education and a good discipline and work ethic, a major factor in rapid adjustment.

I occasionally give lessons on British politics 1945 -1979 to Sixth Formers in a local school, in English to students f many nationalities from every continent in the world. 
It's fascinating to hear how easily they switch from English, the common language of teaching, to their own languages.

Parental support and communication with the school is important of course. But assimilation does happen in 99% of cases and very quickly too. Children are very social, gregarious animals.

I do disagree with the comments about no differentiation for different ability levels, though. When there is no differentiation according to ability, the temptation is to teach to the 'middle' so the high fliers get bored and aren't stretched and the less able struggle, give up and get distracted. Any competent teacher should be able to group- flexibly -within a class and have differentiated outcomes and expectations for pupils of differing abilities. It's part of the job, in the UK at least, to show on your lesson plan how you aim to deliver the objectives of your lesson to each pupil. It's not rocket science and I expected every teacher in my school to plan their lessons accordingly.


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## yesican (Jan 18, 2016)

I can't speak for every parent but prior to us emigrating to Spain, my husband and I agreed to put our 12 year old into an international school just so that she can have options whenever she finished high school. 

Sent from my SM-G930F using Tapatalk


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