Grade schools! AAH!! How many do I need?!

[lordcrekit]

So in my city of like 400 people, I have one high school (no students) one college (no students) and like, EIGHT grade schools, all packed, and I'm building more. I think I have a total of 4 graduates from all of them combined. Can someone shed some insight on these?

[slovenian89]

"Children who are educated in a grade school will, upon becoming adults at age 13, gain a boost in intelligence. This extra intelligence will allow them to learn their jobs more efficiently and potentially let them move on to further education."

They graduate at age 13, which is why the graduation rate is lower in Grade Schools.

http://tropico.wikia.com/wiki/Grade_School

[lordcrekit]

So should I be using these buildings at all? Is it worth it?

[Nightarix]

from the description it supposedly increases the chances of students going through highschool and college, thus giving more educated workers for the later economic tiers

[dl*WolfLordAndy]

People will only go to further study if there are jobs that require them, if you have no high school or college jobs (or have other people who already have the training working un-eductated jobs), then no one will become a student.

[Skulker_S]

i don`t use grade schools unless i have a huge island with lots of space.
just like WolfLordAndy wrote, build some factories and there will be many highschool students
(took me awhile to figure it out that i works that way, maybe because in society as we know it its guranteed to get a better job with a better education^^)

[Skulker_S]

you can also try using the edict social securtiy, students will get money for being students--> more people without rich parents want to study

[Cato]

Grade schools are very useful for freeing up slots in your religious centres. If the children have nowhere to go they pack out the churches, meaning your adults (who need religious satisfaction more) end up being deprived, decreasing religious satisfaction.

The bonuses given by the grade school do only apply if they graduate, so you could be looking up to ten years in game before you statistics begin to show. Also consider that some children might be studying when their teacher suddenly drops out, removing them from study. When the replacement teacher is drafted in the child selection is random, your half educated child might lose out their slot to a younger one.... it's always worth bumping up all teacher wages to ensure they dont move out to become a farmer or something :-P

[Cato]

Also as WolfLordAndy pointed out students will only study at secondary school if there are well paid jobs available for them once they graduate. If there are no jobs or if your factories have a low job satisfaction then your people will not bother studying for them, prefering to live a simple life instead. The same goes for colleges.

[Katsuni]

As has been stated, everyone can use a grade school up until age 13. Therefore, yeu need an awful lot of them! For high schools and colleges, generally 1 is good enough unless yeu're doing a massive expansion on the number of factories and such yeur island has, in which case yeu may need more than one high school. Generally a single college is good enough in most situations though, since there aren't too many college required jobs, and most of them are relatively low in number, with about 4 per building being the maximum with some rare exceptions such as banks.

Give it a decade or so to work and a single college will generally provide all the workers yeu need. A minor suppliment with loading in the professors from off-shore helps to speed up the process and prevents the first few graduates from just going back to the school.

In any case, if there's no work for a college graduate, they won't bother going to college. Why bother if there's no job market for such? If yeu're going to blow all that time learning, only to work at the local mcdonald's, it's a waste of time and effort, which just goes to show that the tropicans actually have some degree of common sense. Potentially more than some of the player base, oddly enough O.o;

[Twelvefield]

Why go to college when there's no propect for a job? BABES! (Ask any Arts major.)