Flight to Learn

Remuera Primary School has classrooms full of South Korean children – “wild geese” – who live separately from their families in order to study in an English-speaking, and less stressful, educational system. South Koreans are the second largest group of foreign students in New Zealand after Chinese and are an important source of revenue, lending an Asian character to the business district and raising home prices in the wealthier suburbs of Auckland. At Remuera Primary, one Korean mother, Ms Kim said she believed that English fluency would increase her sons’ chances of gaining admission to selective secondary schools in South Korea and ultimately to a leading university in Seoul.