Learning Bridge is an education guide written by a parent of two children, which keeps what I have lived through and what I have verified against official sources in separate columns. It covers the whole stretch of education one person passes through — early childhood development, primary and secondary school, international schools, university admissions and the CSAT, and civil service exams.
I am the father of two children. They attended an English-language kindergarten from the age of five, and they now go to St. Joseph International School in Malaysia. Along the way I kept running into the same problem.
The information that actually mattered rarely came up in search.
When I was looking at English-language kindergartens, nothing told me that, in Korean law, such a place is not a kindergarten at all but a private academy for young children. When I was looking at international schools, fee tables were easy to find — but when and in what order to apply for a guardian visa, what costs sit on top of tuition, and what to do about the child's enrolment record back in Korea, I only learned by going through it. A large share of the search results was marketing from academies and study-abroad agencies, and the facts you actually need to make a decision were buried in between.
So I decided to write down the things it cost me time to find out, so that whoever comes next does not have to spend that time again.
Watching a child grow up day by day changed one thing in how I think about this. Education does not begin when a child starts school. It has already begun, much earlier.
When speech arrives, how a child plays alongside other children, how long they can sit with one thing. None of this appears on a report card, but it becomes the floor that all later learning stands on. And yet parents at exactly this stage find it hard to tell what is a normal part of the process and what is a signal worth checking. I certainly did.
Then that child goes to primary school, starts collecting grades, chooses a direction, and picks a university or another road. None of this is a separate story; it is one continuous path. That is why this site covers the whole range — from child development through to careers and exams — in one place, so you are not hunting for a different site at every stage.
I have looked at education from two seats.
First, as a parent. I went to consultations at English-language kindergartens without knowing what to ask, and I worked out one by one which costs sit on top of international school tuition. That experience is still ongoing.
Second, as someone who worked in the education industry. I spent more than ten years in marketing at an online education company, and during that time I moved between online and offline academies and met students and parents directly. I saw at close range where students get stuck and where parents make the wrong call. I also had the chance to watch students who went on to Seoul National University through the early admission route. I did not teach them. I was simply in a position to observe which kinds of preparation actually turn into results.
Those two experiences set the standard for this site. I know which information gets inflated inside the industry, and as a parent I know which information is genuinely missing.
Personal experience is a sample of one. What worked for my child is no guarantee for anyone else's. So this site keeps two things apart.
The detailed standards are set out in our editorial standards.
Learning Bridge is an independent publication run by one person. Running costs are covered by advertising displayed on the pages, and advertisers have no involvement in the content. Content in each field is written by the editors listed on the editor and contributors page.
If you find an error, please tell us through the contact page. We check it, correct it, and leave a record of the correction.
