Diana1

Hi all,

Moving to GTA from Cambridge in a couple of months. Need secondary schools recommendations in the Vaughan/ Richmond Hill area. Many thanks!

Oakvillian

The one in whose catchment area you end up living.



I'm sure there will be others along in a while who have a more helpful answer to give, but the oft-repeated mantra here is that unless you have some very specific educational needs, there is not the same pressure to attend a particular school that there is in the UK (I assume you mean you're moving from the real Cambridge and not from Cambridge Ontario...). High schools are typically quite large, cover a catchment that takes in up to a dozen different elementary schools' output, and in most cases offer a variety of teaching streams with different levels of academic emphasis.

I can't speak for the north-east corner of Toronto, but in my area of Oakville, for example, the local high school covers everything from "life skills" courses for the most severely learning-disabled, through regular English and French-Immersion programming at both "applied" and "academic" streams, to AP programs and the International Baccalaureate. My eldest has only just started his high school years, but neighbours' adult kids have gone on to just about every form of further and higher education imaginable - one's a postdoctoral research student in economics, one's part of an Oscar-winning SFX studio, one's an accountant, one's an electrician (that's the one with all the money and the flash car...).

Don't sweat it.

Partially discharged

Excellent advice. The catchment areas usually determine which school your child goes to. For most, in a built up area they can walk/bike to school and for those further afield in the land of the curly roads, school buses or public transport do the trick.

If you have specialized needs or feel your kids do then there are different options. For most public school (not the fee paying public school needs) parents, there isn't the fight over getting your child into a certain school etc.

Diana1

Many thanks for your replies. Less pressure sounds good. My daughter is in Year 10, top sets in everything. Pretty stressful...
Would it be fair to say that all schools in Oakville are ok?
My husband is flying for a preliminary visit tomorrow and I am trying to arrange a visit for him at the T. A. Blakelock. Can you comment on that school and perhaps on the White Oaks one? I was advised to use the Fraser ranking tables, but they don't tell the whole story...

Dorothy

My ex husband went to Blakelock and 3 of my nieces and 2 nephews went to White Oaks. They all graduated and are fine upstanding adults.

Siouxie

https://www.remax.ca/find-real-estat...ingtab.index=2 This might be of use if you are looking for school boundaries and / or travel time to schools (and houses for sale.rent near to each school). Click on the green cap to set preferences, on the clock for travel times. Clicking on a cap on the map (a school) will show you the boundaries. and some have links to the school website too.

Results for White Oaks - https://ca.ratemyteachers.com/search...kville+Ontario and https://ca.ratemyteachers.com/white-...school-reviews anf http://ontario.compareschoolrankings...port_Card.aspx

Results for T A Blakelock - https://ca.ratemyteachers.com/search...kville+Ontario and https://ca.ratemyteachers.com/thomas...school-reviews and http://ontario.compareschoolrankings...port_Card.aspx

HGerchikov

Oakville is a long way from Vaughan/Richmond Hill (your original enquiry). It would not be an easy commute if you are thinking of living in one and working in the other.

scilly

Who advised you to use the Fraser Institute ranking tables??

I wouldn't touch those with a barge pole!

Fraser Institute is a right-wing think tank, and those rankings do not tell anywhere near the whole story!

Diana1

Thanks for pointing that out. My husband actually might have a job offer in Hamilton area and I want to try a few companies in Toronto, so Oakville might be a good solution. Vaughan/Richmond Hill is not first priority.

Diana1

Thanks.

Diana1

Very helpful, Thanks!

Siouxie

Housing is cheaper in Hamilton. There are "GO" coaches to Toronto. You might want to look at Burlington too - easy commute to Hamilton and there are GO trains to Toronto from there.

Oakvillian

Another vote against the FI rankings - they're a very blunt instrument with a very fixed agenda. There is no nationally-mandated equivalent of OFSTED in Canada; the nearest provincial equivalent in Ontario is probably EQAO, who run a series of standardized tests at Grade 3, 6 and 9, and publish those results by school and board at eqao.com - but even that is not a sophisticated tool.

White Oaks is my local high school. I've been impressed with it so far, both in terms of facilities and staff - as I mentioned up-thread, most of my neighbours' kids seem reasonably well adjusted having attended there. I know a few TA Blakelock kids too; again, no strongly held opinion either way; it's a Canadian high school, it does what Canadian high schools do, and the graduates seem to find their way in the world according to their ambition and ability.

FWIW I spent three years commuting daily from Oakville to the boundary of Richmond Hill and Markham. It was brutal. Either a long and slow drive (75 mins on a good day; not too unusually well over 2 hours) or a hefty toll fee on the 407 (and even that could get snarled up and take more than an hour). I would strongly advise that decisions on where to live become secondary to the location of the workplace: while a commute to downtown Toronto is achievable (if tedious) from just about any suburb, the GTA is not at all well served for options to get across town - and Oakville to RH is more or less across a diameter.

Diana1

Very helpful advice. Much appreciated!

Diana1

I understand. The problem is that I do not have a job offer yet...But thanks for the tip.