school creditschool credit
Each of our High School Abroad host countries has a Ministry of Education that controls the curricula throughout the country. Teachers are part of this national system and receive the same training and pay at any type of school, public, private or parochial. Private schools have parent committees that raise money for extra-curricular activities and elective courses, but their basic curricula are the same.
To receive school credit for the courses taken abroad, the following is advised:
- Once a student is settled into the proper courses and levels, s/he should email the course descriptions back to the home school in the U.S. for final approval.
- Before leaving the host school abroad, each student should obtain a letter on official school letterhead and signed by a school official, documenting their courses and grades. Students should be sure to obtain this and bring it personally back to their home schools.
School credit is easiest for the home school if the grades are recorded as pass/fail and the transcript shows some indication that the courses were taken abroad. Foreign grading systems are quite different, so evaluating them on the American grading scale is often difficult. The student's GPA should not be affected by the courses taken abroad.