looking for a school in the ottawa area for ages from 10 - 15 years old.
all being well should move over from UK sometime in january 2013 but we're trying to find information on good schools that aren't within the city , we prefer the rural life although i will be working in the center of ottawa for the first 2 years or so then moving to another office in kanata.

does rugby have much of a following ? have found a couple of schools that play it.

does anyone know if any of the schools allow a child to attend for a day to see what its like ? will be coming over in october for a look around and to make up our minds if this really is the right thing to do !

Hi
There are some great High schools in Ottawa - you can look at academic ratings of a school on the Fraser Institute website at http://ontario.compareschoolrankings...ationName.aspx
You can certainly visit schools for a look around, but I would be very surprised if any would let your child attend for a day to see if they like it! It doesn't quite work like that
Entry to school here, much the same as the UK are based on your location - its all boundaries and catchment. Depending on the school you are specifically looking for, you can check a boundary map at http://www.ocdsb.ca/sch/os/sbm/Pages/default.aspx - alternatively, do you know an area you want to live in? If you have a first line of a random address in an area you want to live in, you can put it into school locator and it will tell you which school your kids need to go to. http://www.ocdsb.ca/sch/sl/Pages/default.aspx This is not set in stone mind, there are some schools that will consider out of bounds kids (lemmi know if you want some advice on this, i can help!) Your youngest kid, is 10 years old they would be in approx grade 5 here (if they are 10yr before 31 dec in that grade yr) which means they would be in an elementary school (most go to grade 6 here, some up to grade 8).
There are certainly schools that are stronger for sports than others - but to be honest, most of them will have programs which would be ace for your kids - locally to us, is a school called Longfields-Davidson HS - its new, and blinking awesome! The facilities are just incredible. That's not the only one either.
Then there are also different programs to consider. There are French Immersion programs (meaning that the kids take all instruction except English lessons in French). They'd have to be super strong in French to do this though, its an academically challenging program. Perhaps consider a Regular English program, it's the nearest you'll get to the UK system (they'll still have French instruction, just alot less). There is also what they call an Alternative program, which to all intents is a program where they don't believe in giving grades on report cards, no competition (no one wins!) and they tend to have more programs for kids with learning challenges.

There is certainly alot to take into consideration, bear in mind if you find an area/school and it doesn't do rugby, just find a local club or organisation that does it as an extra curricular or is a community led program - I'd be happy to help with anything, if you want to message or PM me, I will help. I work in an Elementary school for the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board and remember only too well how hard these decisions are and how mind blowing it is!
Do you know where you want to live? have you done a reccy out here?
Colette

If longterm you are going to work in Kanata and you want to live rural then look at Carp, Stittsville area, Almonte, Fitzroy Harbour, Costance Bay, Dunrobin, Kinburn, Pakenham, Arnprior. Some are still Ottawa some are not and therefore the property tax will be considerably less than in Ottawa. Some you'll have quite a commute until you'd work in Kanata though. Usually catholic schools are better rated than public ones. Although we qualify for catholic our daughter is in a public school JK(because they do full days and early french immersion) and it's a nice school so far.
Good luck!

thank you for the replys , not sure yet which area to live in it will depend on the schools .
searching on the internet can only show so much , we're going to come over for a week and get around as much as possible , hopefully that will give us some idea of what life is like in Canada.

Colette i'll PM over the next week or so with more questions.

thanks jon.

No problemo, if i don't know the answer to a question for you, I'll go find it for you - let me know if I can help

We took a reccie to Kanata a while back and went into a school and asked for a tour around. This was the Earl of March school. The kids were polite and held open doors and the staff gave us a book full of courses they could take. When we come over for good this summer I am interested in putting our eldest boy into West Carlton High School, we know someone who's kids went there and it's suppose to be a good school, you do have to live further out of town to get in catchment though.

Woah, holy thread resurrection Batman!

LOL Well, just contributing my bit.... and it's not THAT old!

3.5 months, that's pretty old!

Yeah I know, but reading the post, didn't look like they'd come over yet and were still considering a reccie......

Actually, I'd be interested to hear about what schools they found if they are over now, as that's the direction we're heading

The OP hasn't been on the forum since 1st Oct, so it might be worth sending them an email in case they don't see this.

Ah ok, I didn't see that! Thanks.