Parent's Review of Westhill Institute in Mexico City, Mexico

What is the name of your child's school? (Please report on one school per survey.)

Westhill Institute

In what town or city is this school located?

Mexico City

How would you describe this school? (i.e. American, British, International, Local, etc.)

Bilingual English-Spanish

What grade levels are represented at this school?

PreK-12th

How do most children get to school everyday? (bus, train, walk, etc.)

Car and some bus services.

How would you describe the facilities at this school? What extra-curricular activities are available?

Limited extra curricular activities. Sports mostly. Note that there isn't a late bus service.

What has this school done to help your child transition from the curriculum in your home country into the curriculum in your new country? Are there programs to prepare your child for repatriation?

The transition was without issues mostly because of the very low level curriculum that is imparted at Westhill Institute. There is no challenge for a child coming from a serious school in the united states. One of the bigger issues is the confusion in the curriculum. You can choose between a mexican/american mixture where the children take half a day in a us program in english and half in a mexican program in spanish or you can choose the "US Program" which is a spcial class with one teacher doing everything and 3 age groups at the same time. An extra language course must be chosen, for non english speakers it will be English as a second language and for english speaking children it will be either spanish or french.

How would you describe the social activities available for parents through this school? Are there parent-teacher organizations?

There is a PTA but it isn't very active. Most parents are busy professionals who can't really take time out of their schedules for this.

What advice would you give to someone considering enrolling their child in this school?

There are far better options. WestHill Institute is quite frankly a mess. There is little to no interaction between teachers and administrative personnel which makes it that most teachers do not have the necessary supplies to work. Most classes in the middle and high school programs are taught with either no books or very old books. The teachers have complained to me personally about having no paper to print, copy or do crafts (in the case of elementary). I found it highly unprofessional of them to complain to a parent but at the same time I was shocked to find out that with the extremely high tuition fees (for the mexican standard) the school as unable or unwilling to provide appropriate materials to their teachers.

Speaking with parents whose children have been in the school for a longer period of time, I found out that many of the teachers are not licensed and were hired simply because they were fluent English speakers. When I asked one of the teachers if this was true, she reluctantly admitted that most of the staff in elementary school were in fact teaching without a degree and most of the new teachers hired every year had in fact no experience teaching at all.

A closer involvement with my children's curricula revealed that indeed, the teachers in elementary school had a very poor notion of what they were doing. There was no course program, no planning and in some cases the topics covered were quite inappropriate for the children's age. Furthermore, after speaking with some of the parents who were "close" to some of the teachers I was also informed that some of the teachers were misplaced. Meaning they were hired for a specific position but due to poor planning, they were forced to teach a different subject than the one they were interviewed for. I strongly recommend that you take your children elsewhere since westhill is not only quite expensive but also very poorly managed. It is clear to me that the only goal for this school is to make money and they have no concern whatsoever for the education standard they claim to uphold.

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