Moonfish

I am trying to fill out a form, and its asking me what is the highest year of secondary school i completed, year 9, yr 10, yr 11 or yr 12. I left school in the middle of sixth form, what yr would that be in Oz
Thank you !!

spuddyo

primary school is Kindy, 1,2,3,4,5,6
High school is 7,8,9,10,11,12

So UK 6th form is Aus Year 12.

goldchoccycoin

Middle of sixth form (after one year of A Levels) would be Year 11. If you finished your A-Levels it would be Year 12.

Moonfish

Thank you

sportsendurance

Aus year 10 is like UK year 11 but they have no exams like our GCSE's.
Aus year 11 and 12 are like UK 12 and 13. Obviously they don't sit A'Levels but conduct a range of courses (6 or 7) which added together provide an OP score which dictates the type of courses they can do at Uni.
Students in 11 and 12 do not need to go for an OP score but just attempt to gain a certain amount of points to enable them to complete schooling.

NJ16

Can you help me with this please?

We are hoping to move to Australia at Easter

My daughter will be 14 in January and would start GCSE in September 2012

Is there a GCSE equivalent - I guess not from the comment above

If not what would she do as an alternative and when would it start? Would it be January 2013??

hevs

No, no GCSE. The real stuff doesnt start till year 11 (in Vic, the year they turn 17 during) and year 12 is the biggie. Untill then theres not much going on other than general learning obviously. Here in Vic its compulsory to finish year 11, which you need to pass to go on to year 12. About a third of the way through year 12 you will be asked to leave if you look like failing.....

NJ16

That's a really helpful reply - thanks!

Just so that I'm clear therefore if we were to move say Summer next year when my daughter would be aged 14.5 years we would not have to worry about her having to choose exam subject for quite a few years.

Unlike the situation in reverse (ie Aus - UK) where an Australian child would have to choose GCSE subjects on arrival in UK to start in September.

Is my thinking correct???

sportsendurance

Year 9 have Naplan testing similar to the old SATS in the UK.
Year 10's prepare for year 11, year 11 prepare for year 12!! Results in year 11 are not very important. If your kids are good at assignments and copying from the Net they will pass their exams
BoL

flip

My experience is based on two Catholic girls' schools based in Melbourne. I don't know how accurate it is for other schools.

My girl's 14 1/2. She's in Year 8 (about to start Year 9). She's chosen some electives - they had to continue with maths, english, one language, RE (she's at a Catholic school), one humanities, one science and PE. She also got to choose 4 others so had the opportunity to choose or drop: art, music, drama, other languages, other core subjects, home ec., etc.

Next year they'll have a similar chance to choose subjects and drop others and can pick up subjects you've dropped.

Kids might have an opportunity to take a minimal amount of VCE subjects in Year 10.

Also sometime through year 10 a decision is made as to whether they'll do General Maths (similar to what we did to GCSE but done all the way through to Year 12) or Maths Methods (differentiation, factorisation, surds) and again done from part-way through Year 10 to Year 12. There's an even more difficult Maths course and some kids drop it altogether in Year 11 I believe but someone else would need to clarify on that.

We came while the kids were in primary and wished we'd taken a little more time to check the schools out properly as we weren't too happy with their first school

northernbird

Is she older than her classmates or is Vic dramatically different to WA. My daughter turns 14 in a month and she starts year 9 in Feb. All her friends who are almost 15 or turn 15 before the end of the year are either year 10 or 11 next year.

CEM

The Eastern states are different from WA. If we were still in WA ours would be in year 12, 10 and 7/8 (late June birthday). In Sydney/Melb they'd be in 11, 9 and 7. I think the cut off date is Jul 31st in state schools in Sydney which would have meant two of ours would have been in a different year group (I think!), but they were in an independent one which meant the date was different, end of April if I remember correctly.
As I'm sure you know WA changed their intake dates for children born in 1997 from Jan to June to bring it more in line with the eastern states, but there still seems to be a lot of difference, not just between states, but schools too. Very confusing for anyone making the move and trying to find the right information!

northernbird

How confusing. Yes I do know they changed the dates some years ago. My daughters friend is only a year and 3 days older than her but she is 2 years above her in school. The sooner they bring the whole country on the same page the better.

CEM

You'd think they would, wouldn't you? Interstate moves must be becoming increasingly common and I would think that those are harder to adapt to in some ways than international ones.

flip

Hi Northernbird

Her birthday is July, we didn't know when we arrived but we could have fought hard to get her in the year above. I only know this because her friend who's a day younger is in the year above at his school.

Normally to start Year 7 they should be 12 by the April of that year. Normally Aussies keep their kids back so that even if they're 12 by the January they'll still be in year 6. They try to give the kids an advantage if they start this in prep and other kids later repeat a year because they're falling behind in their work.

Just to clarify, of three kids who's birthdays fall within a few days of each other in July, one is in Year 9 (younger socially and struggled with some subjects but generally happy), one in Year 8 (going fine academically and socially), one in Year 7 (had a lot of difficulties in primary school socially and academically but now popular, getting great reports and doing really well at sports - puberty can be a wonderful thing).

It doesn't quite compare to the UK as we finish in Year 12 while the UK finishes in Year 13 in Year 14 so Victoria kids actually only graduate from high school a few months after British kids.

Hope my rambling helps and I don't know how WA organises their ages/school years - sorry