Relocation and transitions
British families arrive with key stages and GCSE expectations; Bali’s schools mostly run IB or Cambridge. This guide maps one onto the other and shows where children typically need a bridge.
The move is easier than it looks. The UK system and the curricula used in Bali’s international schools, chiefly the International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge, share enough DNA that children usually transfer smoothly before about age fourteen, and the main friction sits in mathematics sequencing, subject choice, and the exam years, where moving mid-course is genuinely difficult.
This guide is for British families relocating to Bali with school-age children. It maps the systems onto each other, names where gaps commonly appear, and covers timing and records. Where a point rests on practitioner experience rather than published research, the wording says so.
In England, the national curriculum divides schooling into key stages: key stage 1 covers ages 5 to 7 (Years 1 and 2), key stage 2 ages 7 to 11 (Years 3 to 6), key stage 3 ages 11 to 14 (Years 7 to 9), and key stage 4 ages 14 to 16 (Years 10 and 11), ending in GCSE examinations. The post-16 years, often called key stage 5 or sixth form, cover A-Levels: deep study of typically three or four subjects over two years. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland run variants, but the GCSE and A-Level spine is what Bali schools will recognise.
The IB runs three school programmes: the Primary Years Programme (PYP) for ages 3 to 12, the Middle Years Programme (MYP) for ages 11 to 16, and the Diploma Programme (DP) for ages 16 to 19. Cambridge runs Primary and Lower Secondary stages from about ages 5 to 14, then IGCSE, the International General Certificate of Secondary Education, at 14 to 16, and AS and A-Level at 16 to 18.
| Age | England | IB | Cambridge |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 to 7 | Key stage 1 (Years 1 to 2) | PYP | Cambridge Primary, early stages |
| 7 to 11 | Key stage 2 (Years 3 to 6) | PYP | Cambridge Primary, to Stage 6 |
| 11 to 14 | Key stage 3 (Years 7 to 9) | MYP | Cambridge Lower Secondary (Stages 7 to 9) |
| 14 to 16 | Key stage 4: GCSEs (Years 10 to 11) | MYP continues | IGCSE |
| 16 to 18 | Sixth form: A-Levels (Years 12 to 13) | Diploma Programme | AS and A-Level |
A note on IGCSE versus GCSE: the two are treated as rough equivalents, and UK schools commonly read IGCSE grades against the GCSE 9 to 1 scale by convention, with an IGCSE A sitting around a GCSE 7. This is a school-adopted convention rather than an official conversion, but it is how transcripts are typically read in both directions.
One structural difference catches British parents out: in England, reformed A-Levels are linear, with exams at the end of two years and AS results no longer counting towards them, while Cambridge International AS and A-Levels keep a staged structure in which the AS year can count towards the full A-Level. A child midway through English A-Levels is therefore not in the same position as one midway through Cambridge ones; check which model the Bali school runs before assuming the course transfers whole.
British children usually arrive with two real advantages. The first is English: school in Bali will feel linguistically familiar from day one. The second is structural: Cambridge is a British-rooted system, so a child moving from key stage 3 into Cambridge Lower Secondary or IGCSE finds familiar subjects, familiar assessment styles and familiar terminology.
Younger children adapt fastest. Families commonly report that children under about ten settle into a new curriculum within a term or two, because the content differences are small and the social adjustment dominates. Treat that as practitioner consensus rather than a guarantee; individual children vary.
The move from IGCSE into the IB Diploma at sixteen is also one of the most common and best-trodden transitions in international education, so a British child in a Cambridge school in Bali has a well-marked road into either A-Levels or the DP.
Families most often report friction in three places. Mathematics is first: topic sequencing differs between systems, so a child can be solid overall while missing specific topics the new class has already covered, or repeating others. Second, science: British-pattern schools separate biology, chemistry and physics earlier than many other systems, which matters if your child arrives from, or into, a combined-science environment. Third, the humanities and English: different texts, different history, and a different essay style, all fixable but worth expecting.
The IB adds its own flavour of adjustment: the MYP and DP reward inquiry, reflection and coursework habits more heavily than GCSE-style content coverage, so able British children sometimes take a term to recalibrate how they write and revise.
None of these gaps is alarming. All of them respond to precise, short-run work: map the topics, close the specific holes, move on.
Bali international schools generally run an August to June year, so a British family arriving for an August start gives children the cleanest run. Mid-year arrivals are workable, and our guide to changing school mid-year without losing continuity covers them in detail.
The two windows to protect are the exam courses. Once a GCSE, IGCSE, A-Level or DP course is underway, its internal components accumulate: coursework, internal assessments, the CAS programme in the DP. Practitioner consensus is firm that moving mid-programme in Years 12 and 13 is very difficult, and families who can time a relocation around those years usually should.
If you must move during an exam course, talk to both schools early, transfer every marked component and grade you can, and expect the receiving school to build a catch-up plan.
Request documents before you leave; obtaining them from Bali is slower. The core set: the last two or three years of school reports, any standardised results such as SATs or CAT scores, recent exercise books or scanned work samples in English and mathematics, predicted grades or mock results for exam-year students, and any SEN or EAL documentation, including support plans and specialist reports.
Our guide to school records for an international move goes document by document, and the school transition checklist gives you the printable version. For timing and settling, see changing school mid-year without losing continuity, and for families who would like structured support through the move, our relocation support page explains how we work with new arrivals. The relocation and transitions guides hold the rest of the series.
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