English or International primary Schools reviews, thoughts and other stuff - Help please!

Having a year out - well not really out as I work remotely from home so will still be doing that - but just a change of scene and something a bit different - me and my 9 year old son.

We may decide to make it permanent or may move on again after a year or so, but for around 12 months we're going to try Villamartin as it has really everything we need and enough English speakers to make it not too difficult for us to ask for help if we need to or make friends.

My little boy doesn't speak Spanish and since we're just dipping our toes in the water I'm going to put him into an English speaking school for the year and see how he gets on.  He'll hopefully learn some Spanish while he's there and if we decide to stay he has another year (he's about to go into year 5) before moving up to secondary school, at which time I may consider moving him to a Spanish school.

Does anyone have children in ELIS at Villamartin, either the junior or senior section, and if so have your children found it easy to make friends?  To be honest, the friend making is more important to me at the moment than the education.  My older daughter is in Uni in Paris and consequently there's just the two of us at home and I'd like to be somewhere where he can mix with other kids as easily as possible right from the start.  That's partly why we've chosen Villamartin, as there seems to be a decent mix of English and Spanish and other expats.

Not sure of the area yet.  I'm coming over to sort out a rental in early September and am open to suggestions as to the best place to start looking.  I don't like the more concretey areas, and prefer some trees, grass and natural shade.  I've stayed before on Los Dolses but I'm open to suggestions for more family orientated areas.

I'm pretty flexible as to where we stay - we can always move if we don't like it -  and I'm also going to have a look at Playa Flamenca cos in the past I've stayed there and really liked it, although I wonder if there won't be such a ready made supply of prospective mates for my boy as there would in Villamartin.

Anyway, back to schools... the other option I'm considering is the Phoenix International School and again I would really like to hear from anyone who has any experience of this one too.  

Good or bad, I'm not bothered and ready to listen.

Thanks for your help!