Phoenix

I'm with Hutch too - much better put than I could

NKSK version 2

Not so sure about some of this.

Your child's education is a concern relative to others in any country where the labour force is comprised of others educated elsewhere. You don't have to be intent on leaving Australia.

Although I agree with the benefits of the wider skills you mention (independence, responsibility etc) and that there are real problems with hot-housing kids (a la Japan, Korea) for me, the whole picture has to be taken. I'm concerned with a number of issues at school here - one of the key issues is the watching of a Disney video every Friday - not sure how that benefits wider skills at all - just sounds slack.

If the Australian system was hot housing kids then I'd be looking for a way to broaden my child's experience in the wider skills you mention - independence, responisbility etc etc and indeed if we ever find ourselves in Singapore, I'll be posting links of helpful websites to help parents make good this gap.
But my feeling is that academic rigour is lacking here - together with the acquiring of hard skills - so the web address helps to address this perceived gap.

Hutch

Which comes back to that UNICEF report. At 15, Australian kids are better equipped than their counterparts in the UK in the key areas of reading, maths and science. The same report said that a higher percentage of Australian kids also entered further education than their UK counterparts. I take your point, though surely this is only going to be of real concern in higher-end white collar jobs, in which graduate and post-graduate qualifications and relevant experience are of more value?

I agree. Does sound slack. Does that happen at every school in Perth or just your children's? Certainly doesn't happen at my son's school. On Friday afternoon they tend to do public speaking here.

Sounds like you're a responsible and sensible parent to me.

Again, we're probably talking at cross-purposes since your children are in the Perth education system and mine is in the NSW system, but I don't think it's so much that the rigour is lacking, as the time-frame is different. One thing is certain - the quality of schools, both here and in the UK, varies enormously and you have to be very careful where you place your children. We didn't do much research into this, and yet we struck lucky - our son is at a superb school. I have to say that if it turned out not to be any good - we'd move closer to one that was.

northernbird

My daughters old school had the DVD on a Friday afternoon and her new one doesn't.

NKSK version 2

To be honest I've actually heard some positive things about the NSW system at secondary level. During the recent debate on the new WA curriculum, a lot of critics were suggesting that the NSW curriculum could be used as a model.

Maybe the WA system is especially slack.

NickyC

Apparantly the reason there's never been a national curriculum before (they've tried to do it twice before the current attempt) is because two states in particular have always resisted it.

One of the renegade states is NSW who've always been concerned that they'd have to lower their standards to conform to a national curriculum..

Interesting piece in today's SMH on this very topic: http://http://www.smh.com.au/news/na...548023009.html

NKSK version 2

Good article - thanks for the link.

lollyno1

[QUOTE=phoenix_uk;4508343 [I]my daughter started at 4 and 2 weeks august baby - she was involved and spent a year working towards sats at the age of 7 - ridiculous in my mind.[/I]
Sorry as Year two teacher for 6 years this was not how I approached SATs, then im probably not what is called the 'norm'

they spend doing their own paperwork

i agree on this point (but finding it just the same if not more here


rahter than teaching

not me, taught all day every day paper work was done in my own time after school at home sitting at the dining room table, every weekend as well.,

Paul and Chloe

I would not worry about it as far as the kids are concerned as at that age they will enjoy the social side of school anyway. My experience is that there is much less pressure put on kids in Australia at an early age than there is in the UK. In the UK the pressure put on the kids is, in many cases, driving out the natural interest and fun of learning...where in Ausralia we have found that kids get to progress at a better pace and maintain the natural love of learning and investigating.

Cheers

Paul

northernbird

That is exactly how I feel, my eldest daughter is 9 and struggled with the formality, structure and strictness of her school in UK and has flourished in all aspects since being here.

NKSK version 2

Absolutely.

Exile

This is what set alarm bells ringing for me too.

It suggests to me that the UK system/social structure leads to more polarization. As a result, the bright sparks in the UK are really very bright, and the not so bright, while undeniably extremely thick, will recognize this fact and therefore not get involved in formal writing. That would explain the averages for the two countries being similar (or the Aus figures slightly better, as is often argued on here; I haven't seen them myself), despite the anecdotal evidence that would suggest otherwise.

Perhaps it also shows that schools in Perth are too good at developing confidence rather than competence.

Amazulu

Good point. I drive past a large factory every morning. There is a sign on the main gate that states, 'Goods Recieving'.

NKSK version 2

Interesting idea.

I have a theory that Australians just aren't bothered that there's a few spelling mistakes creeping in to formal writing - it's just not a concern. I wonder if they think the British are anal about getting it right - same school of thought as "as long as we can keep mining iron ore and selling it to the Chinese everything else is irrelevant".

Hutch

I think there's some merit in that. I don't think the average aussie cares too much about typos on signage. There's the whole 'Queens English' mindset that dictates how we (the British) write, how sentences are constructed, how long paragraphs should be. I was having this discussion with my father (an English teacher for over 40 years) because my wife (who used to be a sub-editor) was complaining that I'd started a sentence with the word 'and' in a piece I was writing. He said that language is always evolving, particularly the grammar and that if I wanted to start a sentence with an 'and' then I had a perfect right to. He has a point... if we'd decided that the language was set in stone at some point in the last 500 years would we really all be speaking like Shakespeare? Read some Danny Boyle for instance, he writes in his native Scottish dialect - is that wrong? How about the creeping Americanisation of the language? What about 'txt'-speak? It's a thorny subject.