Best schools in Rio de Janeiro
Education in Rio
Rio’s main international schools are, in fact, Brazilian schools. The majority – in some cases, the vast majority - of pupils and staff are Brazilian and Brazilian educational law means Brazilian school leaving certificates must be issued, whether they are needed or not by individual children.
Regulations are stricter for children born in Brazil (regardless of the nationality of their parents) than they are for foreign children. International qualifications, such as the International Baccalaureate (IB) or IGCSEs, are not even recognised in Brazil.
The international schools must therefore adapt their timetables to include the legal requirements of the Brazilian curriculum. Certainly at primary level, this is an advantage. Children learn about the history and geography of the country, all children have Portuguese language lessons and the local culture comes alive with Brazilian festivals and folklore.
At secondary level, the Brazilian requirements can become more problematic, even if interesting. From an expat perspective, they can create a diversion from the main goal of most pupils at this age: to achieve internationally recognised and easily portable qualifications.
Prospective parents also need to take a number of cultural considerations into account. The fees at both EARJ and TBS are exceedingly high in comparison with other very good Brazilian private schools, so they have tended to become the preserve of the super-rich.
There is an assumption, both by the schools and other parents, that all families have 24-hour childcare on tap (almost always the case for the Brazilian families). On parent-teacher consultation days, parents are usually supposed to go to school to discuss the progress of their children, who, in the meantime, have the day off and are expected to stay at home.
Many children are ferried to and from school by a nanny (babá) and a driver (motorista). At pick-up time, an army of white-clad nannies descends on the school gates to fetch their charges, while the driver sits outside keeping the air-conditioning running. As a result it can be quite hard at times to meet other parents. Often expensive, privately contracted school buses serve the schools but many expatriate parents do the school run themselves or use the services of a driver.
Quite a few English-speaking expatriates who have been in Rio several years feel that their children, in these schools, are trapped in an environment which is neither international nor genuinely Brazilian. Some parents of primary-aged children wish that, in retrospect, they had put their children into an ordinary Brazilian private school instead.
Choosing a school in Rio
The assimilation of new students and their parents into the life of Rio’s ‘international’ schools can be hard. While English is the language of the classroom, Portuguese is the first language of most pupils and the language of choice for the playground and the car park. After-school activities are frequently conducted in Portuguese; some PTA meetings are conducted in Portuguese. Sometimes a child will discover that he or she is the only non-Portuguese speaker in the class, causing problems for a newly arrived family.
In addition, few of their classmates will have a good command of English and teachers will sometimes need to use Portuguese in the classroom. The advantage is that in the lower age group, newcomers will pick up Portuguese very quickly, particularly as Portuguese teaching is usually of a very high standard. Higher up the school, the general standard of students’ English improves, and so assimilation into classroom life becomes easier.
To add to the language confusion, most non-English-speaking expat pupils at these schools are native Spanish speakers from other Latin American countries. Sometimes these children stick together and speak Spanish outside the classroom. This can leave English-speakers feeling doubly excluded, especially as Spanish speakers also tend to make faster progress in Portuguese than English-speaking children.
Brazilian law requires that the children of teachers be educated free of charge at the establishment where their parent works. This means that the teacher has a vested interest in holding on to his or her job for the duration of their children's schooldays, leading to low staff turnover. It also means that teachers with children in the same school are unlikely to rock the boat, question accepted practice or jeopardise their position for any reason, should any contentious issues arise.
When the schools speak of being bilingual, this is a little disingenuous as the overwhelming emphasis is on achieving an acceptable standard of English amongst Brazilian students. EARJ offers English Academic Language Support (EAL) for pupils who need it, as does TBS. It is however generally assumed that Brazilian students will pick up English as they go along.
Rather than taking a lead from the best schools in the independent sector, much store is set by public education policy and continually evolving ‘best practice’ in the countries where the schools are accredited. As a result, some families feel that these schools are charging premium private school prices while offering a standard British or American state education. Not being well acquainted with systems elsewhere, the majority of parents accept this without question. Children moving back to British state schools usually have few problems; those moving to back to the private sector generally have some catching up to do.
