Warsaw - School Report Question and Answers
Do expatriate students socialize with local students at the school? Are both groups successfully integrated into the school culture?
At the elementary level yes although there is not a lot of socializing outside of school, partly because of the geography of housing. Local students tend to live further out in non-expat communities. - Oct 2019
No, they do not. No, they are not. We've done several international schools and ASW is the worst we've ever seen in this regard. With the exception, at the lower grades, of the invite-the-whole-class party don't expect to intermingle with the locals. Prior to the financial crash, the school did a large capital expenditure project and over-extended itself. To recover they significantly increased the percentage of local admits. And now they don't know how to unwind it. The administration will do nothing to risk local parents' patronage or a lawsuit. They're on their third director in two years. They are reporting a much smaller local population than is actually enrolled. Many of the students they report as "American" may in fact hold an American passport, but they have never lived outside of Poland and speak Polish at home. I would estimate that, particularly in the upper grades, the population is 60% Polish, 20% American and 20% other-expat. The American/other-expat population socializes some, but not with the Polish population or vice-versa. There have been instances at the elementary levels of one American child in the whole class. Do not expect there to be more than 2 - 3 Americans in any one class. If you are from the States, you can look forward to your kids being trotted out and displayed as the token Americans. In fairness, there seems to be an similar issues at the British, French and German schools also. - Mar 2017
