Foreign Perspectives

Whilst it’s peculiar to think of the difficulties faced when immigrating to the UK, that’s a situation that we will be finding ourselves in within the not too distant future so we’re considering some of the logistics.

Even for “native” English speaking children it’s not as easy to do as you might expect.

Why? Well, in our experience most people returning to the UK are doing so after they’ve been abroad at least two years and normally it’s more than five years. For simplicity, let’s take the case of a five year stay abroad of a British child who then returns to the UK schooling system.

If they were just born when the family emmigrated, then the child would be about five and therefore be starting primary school. You might think that would be fine but if they’ve been playing with non-English speaking children for those five years it’s not quite so simple. For one thing they won’t know the english words for all the toys nor the name of the TV shows. That’s even if they speak english at all of course because some emmigrants try to immerse their family in the local culture and language. However, this is by far the simplest point.

What about, say a six year old, moving back at age 11. They will find it fairly difficult as they’ll have picked up a lot of the foreign language in school and will need to learn the english words for all those terms. In fact, it’s generally the case that kids of that background can only speak english to their parents and other english speakers find them virtually impossible to communicate with in english so you can imagine the problems they’ll have in their initial period in an english speaking school.

The worst ages come later though. Someone trying to start A-levels who’d been abroad since they were 11 would have severe problems. They’d not know any of the specialised vocabulary in english for the various subjects that they’d studied. In fact, they’d almost certainly have to go to english classes before trying to get into a school. These problems are magnified a little more if they’re trying to get into a British university but haven’t gone through British A-levels.

So if you are planning on returning to the UK after a stay abroad of more than a few years, don’t just assume that your kids are english speaking because, in most cases, they are far from fluent in english and certainly very far from fluent in academic english.

I’ve been plugging away at a modern languages degree part-time for what seems like a lifetime sometimes but now that I’m getting to the end of it, I’m looking beyond it to what I might do next.

Since the final course of the degree is an English language one, I’ll be left with effectively half of a Diploma in English so I’ve been toying with the idea of doing the other half to tidy up that loose end but I’m going to wait ’til I see what next years course is like before I commit myself to that.

I’d also quite like to do a creative writing course at some point. However, to do that there’s a sort-of prerequisite consisting of a humanities course therefore I’ve bought the recommended texts for that one and have been working through them over the last few weeks. English literature isn’t really my thing if those particular books are anything to go by! That of itself has put me off considering seriously the full blown degree in English that I’d be almost half-way to achieving if I do the creative writing course.

On a separate tack I quite fancy doing the chemistry degree that I was toying with many years ago and bought one of the recommended books for that. Although it’s been getting on for 30 years since I did that subject, I’m finding the book a relatively easy read, especially considering that it’s a second year university text.

Anyway, if you’re thinking of doing a particular course, why not buy one or two of the recommended texts before you get to the point of commiting yourself to the course. You might find, as I did, that the “harder” course is more appealing and that of itself will almost certainly make it feel easier to you.

It’s taken over a year but, at last, James has finally come out with a spontaneous word in French!

‘Twas a really ordinary event in that we asked him where we’d parked the car and he said “la”. Still, it’s a start.

So, if you’re moving to France, don’t rely on the TV families moving and assume that yours will be completely fluent in three months. Some might be, but it can take a lot longer than that as we’re finging out.

One thing that really amazes me is how few people even think about what using their credit card abroad is costing them. For that matter, there is still quite a significant number of people who buy all their foreign currency in the Post Office assuming that “commission free” is exactly the same as “free” when, of course, it isn’t.

Taking a nice round amount of £100 for simplicity, that “commission free” purchase actually costs around £6.50. In fact, in some cases it can be cheaper to get the money from a place that charges commission as the exchange rate they use may be better. The cost to spend that amount abroad on most cards? Well, that’s just £2.75 (£7 if you lift cash out of an ATM with a credit card).

What about that nice prepaid card that the travel agent sold you? The £100 will cost around £30!!

But surely you have to pay no matter what you do? Well, no, you don’t. Get a Nationwide Building Society flexaccount and both cash withdrawals and purchases don’t have any foreign exchange charge.

More on this at our article on getting money abroad.

We are just rubbish at choosing accountants. It’s not that we don’t ask for recommendations because we do.

It’s that the first accountant recommended as “brilliant” to us turned out to be fine when they did the work but they just never got around to it with us.

The second came with an even more glowing recommendation and indeed she was that good. What she didn’t tell us was that she was going to be leaving the firm just a matter of months later and that the firm (apart from her) left quite a bit to be desired.

In fact they were so bad that when she left they never even bothered to open the files on her clients that she, of course, left behind. Net effect of that was that we (ie all such clients I imagine) only found out about her departure when we started getting threatening letters from the tax people saying that they were going to apply all kinds of penalties.

That was in September of last year. They finally completed the 2005 accounts just a few weeks ago (ie two years late) and still haven’t completed the 2006 accounts which is, of course, bringing in more penalty notices and quite laughable demands for money.