I am a teacher and at the end of August I shall be starting at my new teaching job in Qatar. My view is that moving from one school to another can be quite difficult and even traumatic for some children, so parents should not do this unless they have no other choice. Of course, work pressures and company relocations mean that sometimes parents have to move from a school where their children are happy and doing well to another school, where things may not be so rosy. This is unfortunate, but in many ways it is part and parcel of the expat lifestyle.

To answer novita77's point about whether a school is "bad" or not, I would add that the logistics of the "school run" are very important to many parents. Even if the school is supposed to be "good", you won't be quite so keen to send your child there if it is on the wrong side of town and so going there will mean a twice-daily battle with the traffic.