Agreed - we're doing our utmost to work with the school to ensure that ours are challenged. Interestingly, whilst our eldest three have regularly complained about not being stretched out here, our fourth has pitched in at just the right level.
With regards to the Aussie system, the majority of Aussie teenagers I've bumped into have been more polite and communicative than their UK counterparts so the schools here must be doing something right.

Mate, your daughter is 9 and was halfway through year 3, 9 years of age is year 4 in the UK, confused.

Cheers

Rich

Sorry Rich - yes she's half way through year 4 and will have to drop to year 3.

The other one is in year 2 and will be in year 2 when we get to the school. It's just they have no room in year 4 for the older one.

hi, can anyone advise me this....my son will be 14 next week and we are due to go to queensland between june and sep all down to the house sale :scared: ....what year will he go into ...will he be a year behind ...he is hopes not...
soz to ask the questionbut i find it confusing

cheers

Get her assessed by one of the teachers mate. Alex our 8 year old was assessed using year 4 & 5 material and placed in year 4, he was in year 3 in the UK.

We had this scenario when we visited a private school, they had a place for one child but not the other, we decided on a State school.

Rich

Well it might be that she will have to go to a different school if they can't come up with the goods. They worked out she'll be the eldest in yr 3 instead of one of younger in yr4, but I'm not so sure. I think she'll be too mature for them.
Still, the style of teaching and setup is so radically different to how her entire schooling life has been, it may mean that she's thrown for a good while.
It may also be that someone in yr 4 will leave and she can move up ... We'll see.

I guess it's just the uncertainty of knowing what's going to happen really - but then we all have that in our lives all the time!

My son turned 6 at the end on Nov last year and was in primary 2 back in the u.k, When we came over here i took his work that he was doing back in the u.k to his new school and got the teacher to look over his work, She said that the level he was on was for grade 2, But because we landed here with 6 weeks to the end of term he went to finish grade 1. He has settled in real good.
I do notice that his reading here is more advanced than the u.k but not overally sure on Maths.
My daughter is 11 and finished grade 6 here and is now in grade 7, when we were at home she was always asking me about her maths and here she has not asked once, When i ask her if she is doing the same all i get is it is easy.

But its maybe worht taking the kids work in to the headmaster and letting her asses it.

Hope this helps
Suzanne

When we arrived my daughter was 10 (11 that year) and she went straight into year 6 - same as UK. She found the subjects easy - she was ahead on english but pretty bad at maths in the UK. She has gone to private schools over here - they are much cheaper here than the UK and we have been really pleased with her progress.

A child psychologist once told me that when a child goes through the upheaval of relocating the most important thing is to ensure they are in school with the correct age group. This helps to ensure they mix with children who are at more or less the same level of physical and emotional maturity which helps them make friends and settle, moving them in with another age group could result in the child being alienated and even ridiculed. I've found that my kids school here will push them to their own individual level, for example, my 8 year old perform at a level 2 years above his expected level in maths, but at the expected level or just over in everything else, but he is still pushed to achieve his best in all subjects, the teacher just tailors his work accordingly. Unfortunately he isnt the sort of kid who gives a toss about school and we have had major homework issues which were making home life hell, so his teacher and him have done a deal where he does alternative homework, he can research things on the internet, then write a report. This week he built a battery powered car from a kit, he had to do the whole thing himself and hen wrote a booklet about it and took it in to talk to the class about. The teacher assures me he gets as much out of this as doing the set homework and he enjoys it too.

Lynn

Thanks Lynn - that's interesting. The classes at the school they're going to are mixed with two years to a class, so there will be very mixed ages in there anyway. They also have the older children caring and helping the younger ones. Given that there is such an emphasis on care in the school, I don't think that my eldest could be ridiculed, but I will keep my eye out for possible trouble.

I suppose the only thing we can do is see what happens. If the work is too easy and there's no way she can be challenged, then we have to look elsewhere.

Good luck with this. We just moved here and my son was so bored in his year 6 class. He had done the work one or two years ago. And this was a school with a good reputation. We were lucky the school worked with him and got him into a different class - accelerated but with his same age group. He is much happier now, but he doesn't feel remotely challenged academically compared to the UK. It's such a different system. They want to encourage independent thought and motivation and cooperative learning as opposed to grinding out work like in the UK. He's happier, but he's totally coasting!

Hm - so what's better? A happier child, coasting, or an unhappy child being pushed all the time? It seems it's difficult to find that happy medium, although I think I'd much prefer a happy child, because it's much more confidance building.


I have had a chat with an Australian teacher friend who tells me that due to the way the terms start in Aus compared to the uk, my eldest will either be 6 months behind where she is now, or 6 months ahead of them... if that makes sense?

I was thinking it would be a year, but it actually isn't. 6 months I can live with. It also counts so much more what they're doing outside of school when it comes to education.

They all get there in the end, no matter which path they travel.

I'll let everyone here know how it goes when we're settled for a few months.

Thank you for all the replies.

I found that when we were staying with friends in perth last year, their son who is 18 months older than my son - 11 now, was doing the same maths work as my eldest - yet the english work that my son was doing (he had a lot of holiday homework because of the 11+) was something that their daugher (14) had done the year before!

so this probably doesn't help you at all really

When we moved to Australia I was 8 (turned 8 in Jan and we'd moved in April) Of course, I'd been in Year 3 in England since Sept. So wasn't far off of year 4.I was put into year 3 in Perth and I was way ahead in reading & english but behind in Maths. I remember crying on my first day.

In England, we'd had work books for Maths and they had dice with numbers on and other visual aides to help us add up or subtract. In Perth my teacher would call out questions and we'd have to write the answers down.

She called out 10 questions all in a row on day one! 2 x 6, 8 - 3, 9 x 2 etc. I couldn't work out maths in my head without visual stimulus. I ended up needing a math tutor as I was way behind. My reading was way ahead on the other hand. I was reading books like 'Oliver' 'Jane eyre' at 8 years old. (the proper adult versions... not the childs ones).

My brother found it totally different. He was born in April. He went into year 2 (where he'd been since Sept) and he excelled at Maths. He went on to do some afterschool special classes for gifted students and ended up representing the state in a Maths tournament.

It is different for each child really.

We both went to St Mathias & Dr Bells school in Bristol and then Wanneroo JNR and Primary school in Perth. Followed by Woodvale Primary and Woodvale high for me and Woodvale Primary and Craigie high for him