International school or Italian school for an Indian family in Italy? Costs, language, the paritaria middle option and the return-to-India question

International school vs Italian school is the first real decision an Indian family makes in Italy, and it is a different decision from the one Indian families make in the Netherlands or Dubai, because Italy has a large middle. Between the free state school in Italian and the international school at €10,000 to €27,000 a year sit the paritaria and the bilingual schools, and for many families in Milan and Rome that middle is the answer. This post compares all three on the things that decide it, cost, language, waiting lists, what happens to the maths and the English, and the return-to-India question, and then says which way we would lean for each kind of family.

The three options

The Italian state school. Free, in Italian, in the neighbourhood, with the tempo pieno day until 16:30 available in most northern cities. Your child will speak Italian like an Italian within a year and read and write it like one within three. The maths is sound and slow by Indian standards, the science is thin, the English is an hour or two a week, and the homework is heavy. At 13 the child sits the esame di terza media in Italian and receives the school's recommendation for the superiore. The system is described class by class in the Italian school system explained.

The paritaria and the bilingual school. A paritaria is a private school that the state recognises as equivalent, following the same Italian curriculum, sitting the same exams, usually smaller, often Catholic, at €3,000 to €8,000 a year. Some are ordinary Italian schools with better facilities; some run a bilingual programme with a native English teacher for a third to a half of the day and Cambridge English exams as markers; a few call themselves "scuola bilingue" or "scuola internazionale" while remaining Italian schools under the law. For an Indian family the bilingual paritaria gives Italian for the future and English for the present at a third of an international school's fee, with a longer day and, usually, more attention to maths than the state school. Look carefully at what "bilingual" means in hours per week; it ranges from two hours of English a day to two hours a week.

The international school. In Milan: the International School of Milan and ICS Milan on the IB continuum, the American School of Milan, the British School of Milan on the English National Curriculum with IGCSE, St Louis School on the IB continuum across three campuses, and the Bilingual European School. In Rome: St George's British International School, Ambrit on the IB PYP and MYP, Marymount, the American Overseas School of Rome, Rome International School with the PYP and the Diploma, Southlands and Castelli. Beyond the two big cities, one school each in Turin, Bologna, Bergamo, Monza, Como and Modena, several of them in the same group. Fees run from about €10,000 in the early years to €27,000 at Diploma level, plus admission, registration, bus and lunch. Places exist in most years outside the most popular grades, and waiting lists are shorter than in Amsterdam. The teaching is in English, the maths follows the IB or British sequence, and the child leaves at 18 with a Diploma, A-Levels or an American high-school diploma that Indian universities accept.

Cost, honestly

A family with two children at an international school in Milan is paying €35,000 to €50,000 a year after tax. The same family at a bilingual paritaria pays €12,000 to €20,000 and at the state school almost nothing. That gap is why the middle exists, and why the state school plus a standard kept up at home is a serious option rather than a compromise.

Language: the real cost and the real gain

At the state school the child's Italian becomes native, and for a family staying five years or more that is the largest single gift the country will give. The price is paid in the first two years, when the Italian is not yet good enough to carry history, science and the written problemi in maths, and the report says sufficiente or discreto about a child who was top of the class in Chennai. Italian schools have no separate newcomer class; the support is a few hours a week of Italian as a second language inside the school, and the rest is immersion. It works, and it works faster for a 6-year-old than for a 12-year-old.

At the international school the child's English stays at the level an Indian family expects and the Italian stays at conversational. That is fine for a family leaving in three years and a real limitation for a family that stays, because the door to the Italian liceo, and to Italian universities on Italian terms, needs academic Italian by 14.

The bilingual paritaria is the compromise on exactly this point, and it is a good one for a child under 10 whose family does not yet know how long it will stay.

What happens to the maths and the English

Whichever school, the maths and the English are the two subjects an Indian family will want to hold at an Indian standard, and each school fails them differently.

The Italian school teaches maths carefully and slowly: tables by classe 3, fractions and decimals in classe 4 and 5, algebra and equations only in terza media, two years after a CBSE child meets them. It is strong on geometry with formulas and on long arithmetic expressions. English is the weakest subject in the building. The class-by-class comparison is in Italian school maths against CBSE.

The international school teaches maths in the IB or British order, which is different again, with less drill and more investigation, and Indian children who are excellent at getting answers often sit on a middling MYP grade because criteria B, C and D are unfamiliar. The English is fine. The science is real from 11. What the MYP grade is made of is in IB MYP maths criteria explained.

In both cases the fix is the same and it is cheap compared with the fees: a weekly class, in English or Hindi, on the school's own sequence a term ahead, with the Indian standard as the target.

Which way we lean, by family

• Staying five years or more, child under 10: the Italian state school, or a bilingual paritaria if the budget allows and one is nearby. Keep maths and English up at home from the first month. The Italian will be a lifelong asset.
• Staying five years or more, child 11 to 13: harder. Three years or less to the terza media in Italian is tight. A bilingual paritaria if one will take the child; otherwise an international school for the media years, with the Italian pushed hard as a subject, or the state school with an Italian tutor as well as us. Be honest about the child's appetite for language.
• A posting of two to four years: an international school if the employer pays or the budget allows; if not, a bilingual paritaria over the state school, because the English will be needed on the next posting.
• Likely return to India: any of the three, with the CBSE sequence kept alive in maths and, above all, in science and English, which drift furthest from an Italian classroom. The plan we use for that in the Netherlands, in how to keep your child CBSE-ready, works the same from Italy.
• The settled community, children born in Italy: the state school is the right and usual choice, and the two things to add are English at grade level and maths a term ahead, so that the consiglio orientativo at 13 says liceo scientifico.

We have watched this decision play out for Indian families in the Netherlands for years, and the Dutch version of it, with its own numbers, is in international school or Dutch school. The pattern is the same: the local school wins for the long stay and the young child, the international school wins for the short posting and the older child, and in every case the family that keeps the maths and the English at an Indian standard at home has the most doors open at 14.

Bring the schools you are considering and the child's last Indian report to the free demo and we will tell you what the maths and English will need from you under each one.

Questions parents ask

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