The ABCs of Expat Living

Expat families often discover that a home abroad isn’t complete without someone who is mobile, smart and good with kids. A tutor. Boarding schools in Swiss or British locales have long been one solution for families with a peripatetic lifestyle. But there’s a burgeoning industry offering residential tutors for the world’s frequent travelers. “At the extreme end of the spectrum, wealthy parents hire a tutor because it’s something you do,” said Adam Caller, founder of Tutors International. “They have people to cater to every aspect of their lives, from driving their cars to arranging their roses, so they simply add a tutor to their household staff. On the other hand, we have many clients who are not super-rich but who make financial sacrifices to have our tutors help them through a patch.” More: The Rise of Luxury Elevators The majority of Tutors International clients—who have ranged from executives to royalty—are parents who travel often and don’t want to be tied to one country because of their children’s schools. In other cases, children may have special needs that small, foreign schools are not equipped to handle. It is a rigorous and lengthy process to match a residential tutor with a family. Requirements can range from needing to know multiple educational systems (American and European, for example) to subject-area expertise. Residential tutors must be able put their employers’ needs first and have a small footprint. “Wealthy people are often disorganized. If they fly privately they might suddenly decide to travel on a whim so the people who work for them have to be prepared to drop everything,” explained Caller. “If you are on a yacht for four years, you have to be the kind of person who is happy to go to his cabin and not sit around in the family rooms on the boat.” A tutor must also be able to handle complicated family situations. In one case, Caller said, a shared-custody divorce agreement meant the children attended school in one country for two weeks and had a tutor help them with homework in the evenings. The children then spent two weeks in different country being taught full-time by the same tutor. London-based Carfax Educational Consultants has had eight heads of state or government among its clients; one of their former pupils is now a reigning monarch. As well as providing residential tutors, the company has British and American tutors permanently available in London, Monaco, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Moscow, St. Petersburg and Baku. A Milan outpost will open soon and Geneva, Hong Kong, Singapore and New York are planned for the near future. More: The Privileges of a Private Port “Some children study with our tutors in one of these locations and then continue at another because all of our tuition centers use the same system and we can coordinate very closely,” said founder Alexander Nikitich, speaking from Dubai. The global private tutoring market is projected to be worth around $102.8 billion by 2018, according to Caller. “Residential tutoring represents around 1% of the total tutoring market. One percent may seem a small figure, but in terms of fiscal value, the full-time home tutoring market is huge,” he said. Tutors International’s prices start at around the $150,000 USD rate a year, with 75% of the fee going to the tutor and the rest in arrangement fees and ongoing support. “This is roughly the same as sending 2.5 children to a good UK private boarding school,” Caller remarked. Families also bear the cost of teaching resources. Caller says one family built mini science laboratories in their different homes so that their children could have high-quality lessons. Other families simply set aside rooms to act as classrooms, complete with desks and chalkboards and computers so children and teacher can do some work through virtual schools such as Pamoja Education, which teaches the International Baccalaureate programme online. The Tutored Life

In a typical school week, siblings Olivia and Joseph Staples learn everything from physics and chemistry to English literature and Latin. The children do not go to an ordinary school, however. Their classroom is in the medieval town of Sansepolcro in Tuscany, Italy, where the brother and sister are taught by a private tutor. “It’s actually quite intense schooling with just the two of them and their tutor but we’ve seen huge improvements in the children’s academic performance and they seem to enjoy learning so much more,” said their mother Kate Middleton. The British family has lived in Italy for nearly 12 years. The father, Brad Staples, is CEO of the international public relations company APCO and travels extensively. Middleton runs the family’s 22-acre organic farm, which has olive trees and raspberry crops. The farm also has a converted barn, which she has rented for holidays to international clients for the past five years. More: Tips for Buying Real Estate in Tuscany Until getting a private residential tutor, Olivia, 15, and her 12-year-old brother Joseph had been in the Italian education system. They went to a local school in Tuscany, and then to an international school in Rome, but their parents did not feel they were thriving. “There was a life-changing moment when we wondered if our decision to live in Italy was having an adverse effect on our children’s education,” said Middleton. “We had made this lifestyle choice but our kids had no choice in the matter.” She began investigating alternatives and found Tutors International. After meeting with Adam Caller, the company’s founder, the family chose Melissa Lehan, a 33-year-old teacher and graduate in French and Spanish from Oxford University. She arrived in September and signed a two-year contract to ensure that she instructs the children until Olivia is ready to take her GCSEs under the British education system. The family rents an apartment for the tutor in Sansepolcro, which also doubles as a schoolhouse. The children work with their teacher from 8.30 a.m. till 2 p.m. five days a week. ”They don’t feel shy about asking questions or saying they don’t understand anything,” said Middleton. Socially, the children do not miss out because they see their friends after school. They play various sports and Olivia also takes part in a drama and theater group. It has been a financial sacrifice to employ a residential tutor, but the Staples family feels that it is money well spent. “Education is the most important thing in the world,” said Middleton.