DavidT

Anyone have any info on start & finish times please.

WBB

i think it is beetween 9 and 3 but im sure somebody might be more accurate.

Brisgal

Yes WBB,

you are quite right 9am - 3pm Monday to Friday

Sera

tinaj

I was quite surprised to hear that they don't follow a warmer climates school times. In S Africa or even on the Med they start early 7.30 and end around lunch time because of the heat.

I suppose it goes back to the old British Heritage bit and all that!!

debsy

Tina
I live on the Med and my girls have a full day 08.30-16.15!!

Debs

Brisgal

Most schools are air-conditioned in Brisbane so the heat is not really an issue !

DavidT

Thanks all, so we get to spend another half hour with the little darlings then, em wheres that tutor list post then.

dotty

That is NOT the case at all. The only schools the gov airconditions are in far north Qld. You are more likely to find an airconditioned Jail than a airconditioned school.

School hours vary, most are 8.40 to 2.45, with a lovely long hours break at the hottest part of the day where they are locked out of the classrooms.

Some schools mainly the ones that have got very big, divide the school into 2 shifts. For example Mountain Creek High 2000 odd kids has 7.20 to 1.00 for grades 10 11 and 12. This allows most of them to finish school and still manage part time jobs and study.
Very good school by the way, the 8 9 grades do 10.20 to 4.15. School would be simply too overcroweded otherwise.

Big school hols are from mid dec to end jan.

tinaj

I remember you saying that they don't have air con in the schools- goodness knows how they manage to keep the kids awake all day!

Has Mountain Creek got a good reputation- what about the other Senior schools near you?

Do you know anything about Sunshine Coast Grammar and Luther Imanuel College?

We are going to be looking for schools in this area, any info would be appreciated. (Also Primary schools).

PeteY

Reminds me of winter here in the UK. Locked outside for an hour every day come sleet snow or whatever. Only time we were allowed in was if it was REALLY p*ssing it down.

Anyway....the schools in aus have large shaded areas, so being outside at lunch is'nt really an issue. Probably cooler outside in the shade than inside if the building has no air con.

dotty

Mountain creek high is brilliant. Head walks around with megaphone keeping law and order!, with 2000 kids I totally agree, kids can do very well there if they are prepared to put in the study. Also offers a very wide choice of subjects for the kids who want arts, manual subjects. Highly recommned it.

Luther Imanuael is supposed to be very caring, have friends with personal opinions that its not very highly orientated academic tho.

The other one, try a few searches with the words Principal and 14 year old girl. Umm.

One thing I will say here, For every person we see pulling kids out of State schools, we see the same with Private schools. Snobbery is a lot of the reason for the Private thing, you will find a lot of people with real money are into the State schools. Doctors, Sports, self made money, plenty of those kids in State.

Main difference I can see is one with a private you get a very silly very hot uniform and lots of pushing when it comes to study.

State, can do well anyway if kid is prepared to be self motivated.

Primary, very easy going here, I wonder what they learn. 7/8 year olds just learning subtraction up to 20!! homework consists of 5 minutes reading and spelling words such as post/ most monday/ friday. However this is what they are all learning, so that is only relative if you compare it to another country.

dmf

My twins started school in Samford at the beginning of Sept. Times are 8.50am to 2.55pm. There are a lot of shaded areas as the school is situated amongst a lot of wooded area. The eating areas are all covered. There is no air conditioning. The temperature here is getting hot, apparently around 5 degrees more than normal for this time of year. The children come out from school very warm. My two are in grade 2 and it is all very relaxed - more play than work from what I can see. They are actually on school holidays now for 2 weeks. They have settled in very well though and made friends no problem.

Dawn

MrsDagboy

Egads, another set of twins, well it cant have been the water!

Mine are in pre-school, 9am-2.45pm, 3pm finish for the rest of the school. And Dotty is right, no air con & there are alot of very good public schools here. Many many kids do extremely well in public schools, alot of the kerfuffle about private schools is about what sort of car you drive etc. They have their place but dont feel that you have to pay an arm & a leg for a private school.

Don't remind me, 2 weeks of school holidays

Brisgal

hi again,

Dotty, I have lived in Brisbane all my life (that's 32 years!!) and never heard of a school that wasn't air conditioned although I'm certain that newer schools may not have it which is a shame.

Every school I and my friends went to in Brisbane was air conditioned. Mind you this was on the Southside of Brisbane and not the outer edges of Brisbane in the burbs like Samford.

We had very confortable school days when it was hot outside we were cool in school, which is a godsend as it gets very very hot. It was also compulsory that when we were outdoors in the heat we had to wear a hat.

So yes the schools I went to were air conditioned [public schools] ... of course I don't know about every school in Brisbane really just the inner southside.

best of luck finding one !!

cheers
Sera

dotty

So all of us people with kids here agreeing that schools dont have airconditioning are wrong then?

Queenland's budget for airconditioned schools only extends to far north QLD and extreme rural Queensland. (For those not familiar with QLD think about a day or twos drive from Brisbane.)

The huge amount of funding for this project resulted in cutbacks in other areas of education because of the giant expenditure. No plans are in place to even consider airconditioning in SE Qld. How do I know all this, because I wrote to many state government depts, MP's, local councillors etc trying to find out why my kids were forced to sit in 38 degree heat.

During this phase one of the mums involved rang over 300 schools in the SE region, she came up with about 4 schools that were aircondioned mostly from parent funding.

When we moved to The Sunshine coast I must have rang every school in the phone book looking for airconditioning, result a couple of schools with "limited airconditioned areas", meaning perhaps the library or one block for special purposes.

My husband went to school in OZ too, hes early 40,s but too cannot remember airconditioning.

I dont know if you have kids, but a few phone calls will quickly establish that airconditoning here is rare indeed.