Best place for my childrens' education

Had I known about the http://www.sudval.org/ as a kid, I would have begged to go there.

I was looking into a similar idea for a friend. Many of the places that have low costs of living do have private schools (since public education is usually below Canadian standards in developing countries). The private schools we looked at were all over the map in terms of quality though. Many I immediately ruled out paid dismal wages to their staff, ensuring under-qualified, constantly rotating staff. The fees for the private schools were comparable to the Toronto area - 15,000-20,000 CDN/year because the students were the children of executives and diplomats that weren't paying out of pocket for the education so there was natural price inflation. Personally, I always thought http://www.saltspringcentreschool.ca/ seemed cool but it may not be sciencey enough for your children.

School is what you make of it. My husband and I both went to public school and are perfectly functioning and educated adults both pursuing masters degrees. Private school is most likely as boring as public school and your child's education is what they make of it. However, it's up to you if you want to sacrifice your finances with no guarantee that your children will excel at a top-tier public school. I would question your kids if they're getting what they want from their current school, or if you think they're not getting a proper education at their current school.

I meant to say "top-tier private school".

Homschooling in Canada is legal and relatively hassle free. Live where you want. I have a friend in Canada that has 2 kids in college and two still at home - none ever attended school. Spend six hours a week on the "college prep" or traditional academic type stuff, and the rest of the week is yours to do what you want. Could work out very well given the flexibility inherent in a 2 freelancer family.

Minus my desire to eventually get out of the northeast, when I finish grad school, teaching at Sudbury has been a career dream of mine since shortly after I decided I'd like to be a teacher. So yeah, I think it would be an awesome place to send my kids. I dunno about Canada, but coming from a family of teachers and myself being very involved in the local schools, there is pretty much no way our future kids are going to US public school unless there is a drastic change in how they do things.

Years ago I took my-then 4 year old to see the Sudbury Valley School. I was really excited about the whole philosophy until I saw the lake on campus. I asked what would happen if my daughter wanted to go in the lake; would anyone try to watch her or see if she could swim? I was told that they would allow her to make her own decisions and learn from them; the 4 year olds were not supervised. She didn't go there. But a friend of a friend's kid did, and she had to be rescued from said lake after trying to walk on it during winter and falling through the ice. She was 6.

Have you heard of the http://ibo.org/? I am a teacher in a PYP school and am constantly blown away by this thing. It's worldwide, available in lots of international schools all over the world. International schools are great because they understand that your kids may have gone to lots of other schools before and may go to lots of other schools in the future. You can check out the schools running IBO curricula in Canada on the site.

Just to clarify - the thing I find most appealing about IBO programmes is the pedagogical approach, which is learning through inquiry. If your kids like doing experiments in science, they're going to love doing them in math and language.