The Foreign Service Journal, June 2013

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2013 89 From the FSJ Education Supplement December 2009 The ABCs of Education Allowances BY PAME LA WARD E mployees of government agencies assigned overseas are granted allowances to help defray the cost of education for their children in kindergarten through 12th grade, one equivalent to that provided by public school systems in the United States. In most cases, posts abroad are served by one or more English-language schools with an American curriculum. The majority of these are nongovernmental, nonprofit, nondenominational, independent schools, usually with a board of directors establishing policy and a superintendent, headmaster or principal as the senior administrator. Even though these schools may be called American, they are not entities of the U.S. government. Some receive government grants for specific purposes, but these grants represent a small percentage of the overall budget. Children of many nationalities attend these schools—including, in most schools, a significant percentage of host-country students. The allowances for a specific post are determined by the fees charged by a school identified as providing a basic U.S.- type education. Parents may use this allowance to send their children to a different school of their choice, say a parochial or foreign-language institution, as long as the cost does not exceed that of the “base” school. If the alternative school is more expensive than the “base” model, the difference would be an out-of-pocket expense for the parents. An allowance covers only expenses for those services usually available without cost in American public schools, including tuition, transportation and textbooks. There are several offices in the Department of State prepared to help you understand how the educational allowances work. These include the Office of Overseas Schools (www.state.gov/m/a/os), the Office of Allowances (http://aoprals. state.gov) and the Family Liaison Office (www.state.gov/m/dghr/flo/c1958.htm). Excerpted from the article by Pamela Ward, a regional education officer in the State Department’s Office of Overseas Schools, in the December 2009 FSJ . The complete article is available online at www.afsa.org/fsj.