almor

So, we arrive in Perth on December 10th. That is me, the wife and our four lovely/evil children aged 5,6,8 and six months.

Now then, we have no idea how to enroll the kids for school. In fact, we were kind of hoping to tour around for six weeks before deciding where to live. And, we know that the schools start in late January but how do we get the kids enrolled, is it feasible to arrive in mid January and get the nippers in school by late January... and does anybody know where a good bar is as this is getting a bit stressful.

Any advice gratefully recieved!

Mrs Almor (and Mr Almor too - I care about my kid's education so long as it doesn't interfere with my diving!)

melbournebound

Hi Almor,
Dont know if your case is similar to ours, but will let you know what we did. We moved to Melbourne in May 2004, went to our local council to register for kindergarten place ( you pay a fee, they tell you were the nearest kinder is that has a place available and then you wait a week or two to be contacted and then you get a call and take the child for their first day of kinder). It is slightly different for schools, we contacted our prefered school which was local to us and they sent an enrollment pack (you can go and collect these from the school) One pc of advice - the red child health book that you have with all the developmental info and immunisation record etc has to be taken to the local council offices for an immunisation certificate to be issued before you can enrol at school and any immunisations missed will have to be done before this is issued. You then take all the forms having filled them in along with the immunisation certificate to the school office and hand them over - they check them and in our case they handed our 5 year old a school tshirt for him to wear and thats the child enrolled and all thats needed is to wait for the start of the school year on the 28th January 2005 in our case. Please note that some schools will charge some sort of fee when the child starts school, I think ours is $150.

I think most states are on similar lines but will stand to be corrected.

Hope this helps.

Melbournebound

Siren & Brian

Yes it is possible, but just depends if the school you choose has vacancy's.

Jacqui

We too kept our kids off for 6 weeks during holidays while we decided where to live. Once we bought our house (in Mandurah, WA) we just rang up the local primary school, told them we had 3 kids to enrol, and they asked us to go in the next day to fill in the necessary forms. You have to enrol at the school in your catchment area, they are quite strict about this over here, and you will need to take with you either a rates bill or something confirming that you are the owner of the house or your 6-month rental contract. They also asked to see the children's passports (proof of age) and their immunisation records - their red health books, although those weren't around when my eldest was born, just a piece of card with stamps on! Anyway, they are so used to Poms moving here that the school receptionist was familiar with the documents we showed her, and it was all very quick and straightforward. They had already allocated the children into a class and they were shown around and introduced to their new teachers before starting on the Monday.

You know the most difficult part for us then? The stationery lists. Here you have to buy all your school supplies yourself. Towards the end of the school year we are given a form for the new school year which lists all the stationery required. You can send it to the nominated stationer (usually A&M Woolridge, a large stationers in Perth and Mandurah) or go to the local shops and buy each item. It's best just to take it to the stationer's, they will pack it all up for you, and you collect it in time for the new term. If we'd known that at the time, life would have been much easier. Because our children started half-way through the school year, they didn't need everything from the list. These items were crossed out, and the receptionist suggested we buy all the other bits from one of the large discount stores in town. Which is fine if you know what a "Texta" is. And all the other odd names. Texta is the brand name for felt-tip pens! We were scanning the shelves up and down trying to find textas, not knowing what we were actually looking for! It took us ages and we still got some things wrong, or missed others. So when you get given your list, take it to A&M Woolridge, they will know exactly what you want and will do it all for you!

I can relate to your last comment about diving! I think hubby misses his diving pals and preferred the UK diving trips he went on, even if the weather was lousy. He's been on a couple of trips here, but they only seemed to be interested in spearing crayfish. His job keeps him busy and now he doesn't have time to dive which is a shame because he's got all the gear. Also the divers here seemed to be too relaxed re safety issues, but then he's always been biased, being a BSAC diver and not PADI.

almor

Mr Almor here,

Thanks for the advice on the schools but now to the diving...

Yeh, I'm biased too! I'm an SSI man (love the wrecks) myself - trained in the US. Not American though - thank God! We hold similar views on the PADI "divers" - although I think at the end of the day it comes down to the individual's experience, training and their instructor.

Where is Mandurah? Is it nice? Is it close to the sea? I'll go diving with anybody!

All the best

Almor