Advice on ski school for children

A snowHead

For the first time I am planning a ski trip with a child (7 years old, complete beginner, English only speaker). I am an avid skier and I've been to plenty resorts but I never paid any attention to the ski schools situation. Can anyone please advise on a good ski school for children?
The main points that I am after are:
- English speaking
- Good instruction for beginners
- Has a long-ish daily schedule (4 hours or so).

I prefer the self-catering trips to package holidays and I assume this is doable and can deliver good value, but if anyone knows otherwise I am open to good package suggestions.
I don't mind where it is, but a shorter transfer would be preferred.

PS. Apologies if this is covered in another post, I swear I thoroughly searched the forum and couldn't find any relevant entries.

A snowHead

You could choose private or group lessons for the child. Private lessons may allow them to progress quicker but they may feel more comfortable within a group environment.

Many ski schools in Austria employ native English speakers, less so in France, Italy and Switzerland.

Here are some prices/times/info for Ischgl to give you an idea of how is works here.

http://www.skischule-ischgl.at/en/children/private-lessons.html

http://www.skischule-ischgl.at/en/children/group-ski-course.html

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Excellent! Thank you, that looks very good. I have actually never been to Ischgl, so that would be a nice bonus.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

Unless you go private to get 4 hours+ hours/day you'll need to use a ski school with lunchtime supervision, without this you'll have to meet your daughter for lunch which will mean getting back to the meeting point for a certain time and probably limiting what you can do.
Based in our holiday research lunchtime supervision in France is less common than Austria, though I happy to be corrected on this!
We've only been on 1 diy trip with the kids, that was to Alpbach where the ski school took them from 10am until 3pm and told us where they were having lunch so we could drop by if we wanted.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

I think Austria would probably be the best bet as the standard French ski school arrangement IME is just mornings. I don't think native English speakers are essential by any means - provided the instructor speaks enough English.

You'll need to Register first of course.

Ski2 in Champoluc run the British Ski School. English speaking instructors (most native) and the ski school, with lunch etc, runs from 10.00 am to 3.00 pm every day. It costs £179/week and you must have booked your package with Ski2.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

@iskander,

After all it is free

I work for a Bristish ski school in Grindelwald and Wengen, Switzerland, and we offer 3 hour morning group lessons for kids with the option to also take lunch, which would add an extra hour to the lesson. We also offer full day 6 hour group lessons which include lunch.

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

@Hyst,

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

My experience of ski schools for kids in Austria (St. Anton) and Italy (Selva) is that they are far, far better than the ones in France (Val D., Tignes & La Plagne)

ESF in particular are not good - you do as they say, or else. No element of fun and no badge at the end of the week if you don't do exactly as you're told - But also Oxygene weren't great either.

The local School in St. Anton was very nice - but the kids were very small then so it was more of a snow club/creche. By far the best have been the "Scuola Ski" in Selva - really lovely, fun-loving and caring instructors that will get the best out of your kid(s) and, most importantly, ensure that they have fun and enjoy their week.

snow reports

We used SkiNewGeneration for our daughter last year (she was 5 then). They are an English ski school based in a few French resorts (mainly in the Tarentaise valley). There were lots of positives about this school. English language instruction, very engagin enthusiastic teaching. A quick de-brief to all parent at the end of each morning. Slightly longer lesson times - 9:15 - 1:30 which gave the adults a good amount of skiing in the morning. A lovely little medal ceremony at the end of the week.

I'm torn about "medals" for kids. The little ones love it. But in ESF the badges are about attainment, not "trying hard" or "turning up every day and not crying much". You don't get the medal unless you've reached the relevant standard which can be tough - in the more advanced level classes the demands are considerable. Much more competitive - some win, some lose.

We have a local ESI in France, which I prefer to ESF. They too only give proper medals if kids have reached the relevant standards (I organised private lessons for a week for a group of 4 kids a couple of years ago. At the end, 2 got a higher level medal than the others. Quite rightly. But it can cause some upset! Everybody gets something but the older kids know perfectly well that some medals are better than others!

The kids had great fun. Two of them had had the same instructor the year before and clamoured to have her again.

You know it makes sense.

@pam w, I remember getting my first ESF badge as a child (I think I still have somewhere) and i genuinely knew that I had earnt it.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

@pam w, This was the same for Ski New Gen. They use the Snowlife progression. So some kids get higher achievements than others, depending on their actual level.

A snowHead

The medals aren't a bad thing per se, and obviously kids love collecting them. The problem is the assessment. My son is on the autistic spectrum and despite us telling the ESF this at the start of the week, he failed the end of week assessment because he didn't particularly do what he was told on the day - despite him being palpably the best skier in the group (simply by virtue of being a year or 2 older than the other kids and having several weeks more under his belt) Cue one very upset child and when we spoke to the instructor afterwards, who agreed he'd been the best over the week, his response was simply, "Oh, no one told me, I thought there was something wrong with him"

The Italian ski schools by contrast have a completely different attitude and are much more caring toward all kids. Autism or not, the individual child is the focus of their attention, they have smaller classes (4-5 max) and they strive to ensure everyone is having a good time. Perhaps it's a cultural thing, perhaps it's because the TO booked the classes with a large number of kids and too great-a-range of experience, perhaps it's simply a by-product of the French skiing "machine", who knows? Either way, French ski schools (at least those I have experienced) do not meet my minimum requirement for a family ski holiday: Fun.

Now, obviously everyone here is simply thinking, "well this is just middle class angst, this guys' precious little angel wasn't given what he thought he'd paid for" but what do my children want out of their ski holiday? They want to have fun and I want them to, hopefully, fall in love with skiing and being in the mountains and to get a little bit better every year so that eventually we can all ski together. I don't care about the badges but if they're on offer, then the kids do care about them. To be so prescriptive with children under 10 is really quite Victorian.

It's ironic really that although the ESF made all the right noises about inclusion and seemed to tolerate his idiosyncrasies and him being a bit, well, autistic during the week, they themselves apply their rules in an entirely black-and-white (dare I say autistic?) manner when it comes to the test. The upshot of that is that this year, he says he doesn't want to go skiing at 1/2 term and isn't interested in it anymore. Fortunately, we're going independently back to Selva again next Feb so we've managed to persuade him to give it another go.

A snowHead

I work in the EU mechanisms and so chat with various nationalities about schooling types (normal school, not ski school). It seems the French is very competitive with rather disdainful teachers, humiliation being a tool of motivation. Sounds like that ski school is similar.

I've been to Andorra the last three times, specifically so we can easily find native English speaking instructors. Last year my gripe with the 8 yr old's teacher was the opposite, started the week snow-ploughing, finished the week snow-ploughing. She was building up in confidence and speed but didn't have the brakes to match. I started to teach her parallel stop in the afternoons.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Help!!

Advice on ski school for children

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