FloridaLee

Can anyone tell me what schooling is available for 4 year olds in Queensland please?

My 4 year old will miss the cut off date which means she will not be able to start Kindergarten when we get there.

What other alternatives is there....e.g nursery etc

Many thanks

Lee and laura

h1tvd

Hi
I'm interested in this one too!
I'll bump it up for you and hope some nice kind souls who live in Queensland will reply!!
Come on guys!

caleb2003

What cut off date? are you talking about her age not falling in the right range? My kids 5 in Jan I hope we're not going to miss a year of school if we get there for Feb

bethandneil

I too will watch this post with interest, my son will be 4.5 when we hit ozzie soil, i think he will be able to start preschool then, i could be wrong!

Beth

madsad

My daughter is 6 in Jan 2007,misses prep cause of the month her birthday falls under (july 31st)but starts year 1 begining of Feburary 07.no problems here as i think she is more than ready to start school.
Regardless, she would already be at school if we were still in the UK,Does'nt seem to be any prompting here,pecific rules?

End of the day,my kids are doing well,their happy,im happy

Donna.

Hutch

It depends on the individual child of course, but the bottom line is - they start them later here. My son was born on the 29th of August and just scraped into his school year in the UK. He did almost a full year at primary school - we moved here three weeks before the end of the summer term. We got him into the local pubic school here despite advice from the head (very well respected) and the teachers that we wait and start him with the following year's intake. He was a month shy of his fifth birthday and joined his class in the middle of the year.

He was okay at first - certainly didn't have any problems with the school work - far from it in fact. However, he was in a class with children a lot more mature than him - over half of whom were six years old. Any parent knows how much difference a year makes when kids are little. So to cut a long story short - he became very unhappy and we pulled him out of school. He now attends a private pre-school and is thriving - has made good solid friendships with children his age - some of whom will start at the same 'big' school at the same time as him. We had our doubts about his coping with pre-school having done a full year of schooling in the UK - but our fears were unfounded. He isn't bored and we certainly don't think he's missing out on anything by not being in fulltime school education by his age. If anything it has made us realise just how important it is for children to enjoy their childhood without being thrust into a competitive school system before they're barely socialised.

So to answer your question - in this country, four year olds school attend pre-school (nursery, long day-care - whatever you want to call it). Don't be tempted to put 'em into school early, even if you think they're 'ready' for it and 'bright' - because the age difference will come back and bite him/her and you in the arse further down the line.

mazza

Good post, thanks for the advice.
Our little one will be 2.5 when we move in August next year & I wasn't sure when they move to school. It has an impact on planning his sibling as getting him into school will mean we can afford to have another. At the moment we pay £10k a year in nursery fees & assuming that the cost of full time nursery in sSydneyis about the same, I don't think we could afford 2 at nursery at the same time.
If anyone can rrecommendgood nnurseriesin Sydney I'd love to hear from you. perhaps a silly question at this stage as we don't know where we're going to live but I would be interested all the same.