Dear Agietra,

When I was teaching at a school near Cairo, almost all of my students spoke Arabic as their first language. Since the language in the classroom was different to what the children naturally spoke in the playground, this did lead to some problems and difficulties.

At my present school, The British School of Bucharest, we have children from many different nationalities (Romanian, French, German, Chinese, Turkish, British - and that is just in my Year 5 class!) Therefore it is quite natural for the children to speak English to each other, as it is the only language they all have in common. The standard of both the written and spoken English at my present school is very high, perhaps even better than what one would expect to find in many schools in the U.K.

I would recommend you to send your children to an international school, not to a school where all of the children come from the same country and speak the same language. I think that it would be a wonderful thing for your children to have friends from different countries.