It’s been an exciting up and down half year for me and my family. We had a good time visiting relatives, getting adjusted to our new lives, job and school. We moved back to morocco with our 2 dogs and cat and they’re doing fine. Hamza, our 10 yrs old boy, joined Khalil Gibrane school in Rabat (Route Zair). They accept kids from kindergarten level to high school. Many things motivated our choice:
1. The school offers two curriculum: Arabic and English, both with French classes. We felt it is important for Hamza to learn Arabic to get to know his religion and culture better (he should also learn some berber…) Hamza already studied French in a magnet school in North Carolina so the transmission was easy for him. Arabic was a new adventure for him but the school is very flexible with expats: he was able to join, after testing, his normal English class as a fourth grader. He started Arabic as a second language with kids in the same situation as him: kids who moved back from abroad or kids from consulate and embassy families. He studies science, math and history in English (British books). After only a few months, and thanks to his patient teacher, he was able to read simple sentences in Arabic, which by the way he loves and finds very exotic.
2. It’s situated in Rabat, at the edge of my favorite neighborhood: beautiful Hay Riad (Rabat is considered to be the first green city of morocco). We chose to live in Rabat vs Casablanca for the quality of life and lifestyle. We are still able to live in the suburbs, close to the ocean and keep the commute to the school under 20min via highway! Now the hardest thing about Rabat is to find a job (but that’s another post)
3. The school Khalil Gibrane KSG is half as expensive as the American School (over $16, 000). They have school buses from in-town families.
4. Given the various background of the kids attending the school (European, Asian, African...), Hamza made friends real quickly and we even found a family in our neighborhood to carpool with. His friends: 1 lived in morocco all his life, 2 from Nigeria, 1 expat from Washington and 1 from Virginia. His class is gender mixed, few little girls where the hijab. We didn’t want our son to attend the kind of school only rich people go to. There is unfortunately a trend in Morocco of families that don’t teach their kids to speak Moroccan!
5. The administration staff is very sweet, helpful and very sweet.
Negative points:
- School activities included in the tuition (ours was $4,500 this year) are almost non-existent. We paid for the cafeteria but due to overcrowded lunch breaks we end up giving Hamza lunch money to purchase food from the snack bar. They had so far one school trip, sport and “drama” classes are kept to a minimum in school activities.
- No parent association & not enough homework (Hamza doesn’t complain). The teachers in their majority are nice and competent but seem a bit overwhelmed by the kids. It seems in morocco, privileged class kids, the ones spoiled and unruly, don’t get punished as much or as severely as they should.
The most frustrating thing in looking for a school was the absence of effective information online. Until now, it is very hard to have the Khalil Gibrane school come up on Google search for English school in Rabat (even the French search doesn’t help). As a matter of fact, the website is so under worked (been under construction for a while) that looking up the name itself won’t bring the school link. We were fortunate that my husband moved a few months before us and physically searched fro schools in Rabat.
As the site seems down again, I am posting their info below, of course you can contact me with any questions.
Nadia Denfour
www.Twitter.com/NadiaDenfour
Khalil Gibrane school Phone & Fax : 00212 (0) 5 37 75 29 48 / 00212 (0) 5 37 75 96 59.
Adress : Khalil Gibran School, Avenue Bir Kacem Souissi, 10 000 Rabat
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