Guadalajara - School Report Question and Answers

Are the admissions and placement procedures clearly stated to prospective families, either on the school website or through other means of communication?

The website (in English) finally is working this year. When we were applying, I basically could only talk to people within our community and email the school when I need information. Admission process was very simple and easy. - May 2017


C (You have to seriously consider that this school has a pre-first grade which throws off the age/curriculum level relative to U.S. schools. So, if you're child is, for example, ready for 4th grade in the U.S., depending on when the child's birthday falls, they might end up in 3rd or 4th grade at ASFG. If they go into 4th grade, then they are younger than all the other Mexican children. This may or may not be a problem. Most parents find that if your child is ready for kindergarten, you might want to insist that your child goes straight into the pre-1st grade rather than their kindergarten grade. An informal survey I conducted of parents moving on from ASFG to other schools told me that, generally, their child was on target with the exception of the English Language Arts/writing skills when they left AFSG.) - Feb 2016


B (Children are tested and then placed. I had no trouble with my kids placed in the equivalent grades to an American school system). - Feb 2016


F - May 2014


Children who are 5 by December 31st should be placed in kindergarten but they were flexible with this. We chose to put our son in kindergarten even though he turned 6 in December since he hadn't been in kindergarten before. We appreciated the flexibility. - May 2014


C-/D the admissions director has been known to give contradictory information. The policy is that kids take a skills test (which is not a big deal and very appropriate) and their performance on that determines their grade placement. This is tricky because like many bilingual schools in GDL, ASFG has a prefirst grade when their Mexican students learn English so their kids are about a year older than their counterparts in the U.S. in each grade (i.e., ASFG kids graduate 12th grade when they are 18-19, rather than U.S. kids who usually graduate when they are 17-18.) According to Dr. Bill Scotti of the Office of Overseas Schools, regardless of grade placement, he has never had a problem having kids placed in the correct grade once they leave ASFG. However, the evaluation of the kids is entirely up to the Admissions Director. Often she tells families BEFORE THEY TAKE THE TEST that their child will LIKELY go into the lower grade (with agemates). My beef with this is that the policy is to place based on test scores, so creating this expectation seems to create a barrier at the outset. We were told several times that we needed documents for the SEP (Mexican government program) even though we were not placing our children into that program, and had been clear about that from the outset. There is a lot of unnecessary angst in the communications (such as concerns about having spots for the kids, when applying during the spring or summer) and not a lot of clarity. - May 2014


F- one person does all the admission/placement without consulting the principal, teachers or listening to parents When parents push back, she suggests that the school may not be the right fit. - Apr 2014


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