Relocation and transitions
Schools decide placements from paperwork. This guide covers exactly what to request before you leave, in what form, and how to keep a records file that travels well.
Request everything before you leave, in writing, and keep both paper and digital copies. The file a new school actually places your child from is simpler than parents fear: recent reports, a handful of work samples, any standardised results, and, where relevant, SEN and EAL documentation. What is hard is obtaining any of it afterwards, from another country, in another time zone.
This guide is for parents preparing documentation for a move to Bali or between international schools here. The printable version of the request list is the school transition checklist; this article carries the reasoning.
Ask the current school six to eight weeks before departure, because offices move slowly and some documents need signatures. The core request list:
Ask for digital copies of everything, even where paper is provided. Email yourself the complete set before moving day; a folder in the cloud is the one piece of luggage that cannot be lost.
The three record types answer three different questions a new school will ask. Reports answer "what has this child studied and how did they respond". Work samples answer "what does their work actually look like". Standardised results answer "where do they sit against a wider reference point". A file with all three lets a school place accurately; a file of reports alone invites guesswork.
Choose samples that show ordinary good work, not a trophy gallery: a recent essay, a page of mathematics, a project the child is proud of. Date them. Two or three per subject is plenty; admissions staff read portfolios the way you read menus, quickly. Include one piece from early in the year and one recent piece per subject where you can, because improvement over time is the single most persuasive thing a work sample can show.
Where standardised results do not exist, do not worry; many schools test at admission instead. Where they do exist, include them, because they anchor placement in something independent of either school’s grading habits.
Check early whether the receiving school needs documents translated or certified. International schools working in English usually accept English-language records as they are, but documents in other languages, and anything destined for Indonesian authorities rather than the school itself, may need certified translation, which takes weeks. Ask before you pack, not after you land.
If your child has, or has had, any learning support, this section matters most. Request and carry: current and previous support plans or individual education plans, reports from specialists such as educational psychologists, speech and language therapists or occupational therapists, and a note of any classroom adjustments or exam access arrangements in place.
Assessment reports deserve particular protection. A psycho-educational evaluation, the kind an educational psychologist produces after history-taking, questionnaires and individual testing, is expensive and slow to repeat, and its recommendations drive both school support and exam access arrangements. Carry the original digitally and on paper, and share it with the new school early rather than waiting to be asked.
For children learning in English as an additional language (EAL), include any EAL programme records or language assessments, so the new school’s support can continue rather than restart. If questions arise about what a report means for placement, our guide to educational support or clinical assessment explains who produced it and why.
Organise the file the way a school will read it: a one-page contents list, then reports newest first, then samples, then standardised results, then SEN and EAL documentation in its own section. Homeschooling families will recognise the shape; the same portfolio norms apply, and our guide to keeping a homeschool learning portfolio covers them in detail for families coming from home education. Back it up twice: once in the cloud, once on a drive that travels separately from the paper folder.
Keep the file alive after the move. Add each new report and result as it arrives, and it is ready, permanently, for the next school, the next country or the university application that arrives sooner than you think.
One administrative habit completes the system: keep a running list, one page, of every school attended with dates, curricula and key contacts. International families accumulate schools faster than they expect, and the page that takes two minutes to update each move saves an afternoon of reconstruction at every application.
We keep this section deliberately general, because each international school in Bali sets its own admissions list and they do change. The pattern across international schools is consistent: application form and fee, reports from recent years, a reference or teacher recommendation, placement testing in English and mathematics for older children, and, where relevant, SEN documentation and evidence of exam entries.
Ask the admissions office for their list in writing before you compile anything, and check whether documents need translation or certification. Then work the list against your portable file; with the file built, the request is an afternoon, not a month.
Two closing cautions. Never guess or soften a record to improve a placement: schools test what they are unsure of, and a mismatch between the file and the child costs the child a term in the wrong class. And never send originals away in the post; certified copies travel, originals stay with you, because replacing a report from a school on another continent is the slowest errand in international family life.
For the timing side of the move, see changing school mid-year without losing continuity, and for structured support with the transition itself, our education support for relocating families page explains how we work. The relocation and transitions guides hold the rest of the series.
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