FOR PARENTS

HOW DOES IT WORK?

You can check the process in the EXCHANGES main section.
As a parent, you need to support your children application form and sign it.
If your child is selected (a decision made by HOG, RS Rep and teachers), then Mr Dura will look for a school to match the student preferences and profile.
Once a school offers a placement via the Round Square coordinator, UWCSEA suggests potential dates and we start the process. This can be quite fast.
Once the exchange is accepted, you must make the payment of the Exchange fee:
- 300 SGD (most countries)
- 600 SGD South America/ Africa
After that, your family and the hosting family are put in touch via email. Then, you can know each other and start to plan the exchange, book flights, etc.

Sending your children on an exchange with a family that you don't know much can be challenging. For that reason, we do our due diligence to make sure that all is in order and safe with the school and hosting family. Our main priority is our students' welfare.
Exchanges take place between Round Square schools from all around the world who share the same Kurt Hanh philosophy based on the IDEALS as UWCSEA.
As each country has different regulations on child safeguarding policies, UWCSEA only do exchanges with schools with similar standards to ours.
Aligned with that, we do criminal background checks (CBR) on the families hosting our students, unless our students stay in boarding, where staff has been screened to work with young adults previously.
When UWCSEA students go on an exchange in places where hosting minors is regulated by law, the hosting families already go through the CBR before hosting. In that case, to reciprocate we must screen UWCSEA families. This is a common practice in countries such as Australia or New Zealand.
The Exchange fee is used for the above, as the CBR checks are done by a third provider (AVVANZ) via UWCSEA Human Resources.

We have done around 200 exchanges in the past 10 years
We know all the Round Square Reps of the different schools, in the majority of cases personally, even we have visited some of the schools we do exchanges with.

There is only a fee for the CBR which depends on the country that your child visits (300 to 600 SGD)
You pay for your own flights, travel insurance and pocket money. School, accommodation, transportation and food is provided by the hosting school and family.

Yes, even if you children stays in boarding you will still have to host a student at some point. Our exchanges are mostly reciprocal.
You must provide accommodation, transportation and food.
Exchange students receive a student card that you must top up for snacks and lunch (alternatively you can prepare packed lunch if you do the same to your children)
Transportation can be the school bus or your own arrangements. If you use the school bus, you need to contact them directly and pay the rides for the time of the exchange.

Some families like to do socials or even travel outside Singapore, but this is not an expectation. Feel free to decide about it once you know your student/family.
We strongly recommend you to show the exchange students the Singaporean cultural diversity and your own! (food, places of interest, languages, costumes, etc...)

No, this is an opportunity for the students to experience something new and step outside their comfort zone.
Once a family is assigned, there is no chance to change (unless some issues arise or sudden cancelation). If you are not happy with that, we can cancel the exchange at any time, but we don't guarantee that another exchange may happen.

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