We now have our visas and are trying to decide when is the best time to move. Our daughter (16) started her A level courses last September in the Uk. She does not want to move until she has taken her final exams (summer 2007) as she thinks she will be better placed to get accepted in Canadian universities with A'levels. She is worried that she would not be able to keep up with the final year at high school as I believe students in Canada study a broad range of subjects. (She is taking English, French, Spanish and Art A'levels)

I'm not sure which would be better for her - to complete her A'levels here and then try for university in Canada, or transfer at the end of this year into the final year of high school in Canada, where at least she will make some friends.

Does anyone have any suggestions, or been through a similar situation?

Rachel


Hmmm, just read the thread on similar lines started by Chris Parr - seems to be saying that she might be better off completing her A'levels in the Uk before moving. Does anyone know if this will make it harder for her to be accepted into a Canadian university?

take it from me i was in the same place 15 years ago but my parents brought me back here to the UK from canada, school here in the UK is very different to school in canada, i would let her finish her exams here then move out.

I would think it fairly simple to get credit for A levels in languages, depending on the university and subject of interest. Another concern though might be that, if she had just arrived in the country, she might not be considered to be resident in the province of study and so subject to international or rest-of-Canada tuition fees.

Thanks. I think that's what she wants to do, but I'm concerned because I think it will be easier to make friends if she is at school over there. Oh the decisions never end do they?!!

I think you need to speak with a University in Canada about admissions. I think one hard year will make they rest of her life easier, whereas one easy year may make the rest of her life more difficult.

I think that's fairly irrelevant because, even if she made friends during the last year year of high school, there's a good chance that she would lose touch with them and make a whole new set of friends when she went to university.

My sons lived their whole lives in Calgary till the older one was 14 and the younger one was 11. Then in December 1995 we went on an 18 month expat assignment to Houston, followed immediately by a 2.5 year expat assignment to Melbourne.

Our older son completed high school in Melbourne in December 1999 and returned with us to Calgary in January 2000. When he got back here (after a 4-year absence), none of my older son's former school friends was around any more. To a man (and woman), they all were studying at universities in other cities. He made a whole new set of friends when he enrolled at the University of Calgary.

When we returned to Calgary, our younger son had one more year of high school left to do. He wanted to stay on in Melbourne to complete that year. Aside from the fact that he didn't want to be torn away from the school friends he'd made in Melbourne, he also had done some research into the transferability of the school credits he'd earned in the state of Victoria, Australia. He found out that if he arrived in Canada with an Australian high school diploma in hand, he would be accepted by universities like the University of Toronto and the University of Calgary.

However, if he had even one year of high school left to do, he would not be able to earn a high school diploma in Alberta unless he got grades ten, eleven and twelve credits for Canadian history. There were a few other requirements like that that he considered to be a real nuisance, and they were enough to put him off returning to Calgary for grade twelve. He stayed on in Australia for that one year, boarded with the family of a classmate, earned his Australian high school diploma, and then re-joined us in Calgary. He immediately was accepted by the University of Calgary.

When our younger son returned to Calgary, several of his old school friends were still floating around, and he hooked up with them. However, in the five years that they'd been apart from each other, their priorities had taken a very different turn from his. He found that all the guys he'd known had become very vain, and regularly were working out at gymns, not because it was healthy to do so, but because it was fashionable to have a muscular, sculptured body. My son was thin, and the first thing his old friends said to him was, "We'll have to get you over to the gymn and bulk up those muscles of yours." My son has nothing against exercise per se. In fact he runs, commutes to work by bicycle, snowboards, and rock climbs. However, he does all that because he loves doing it, not to bulk up his muscles. (He's still thin, his active lifestyle notwithstanding.) He soon felt he had little in common with his old friends, and the friendships fizzled out one by one. He too made a whole new set of friends when he started at the University of Calgary.

Well maybe they do end. But then I don't know what it's like once one has emigrated from this world.

If I might make an observation, I think it's a good idea to let a kid have as much say as possible about the way in which his/her relocation is handled. My husband and I learned that the hard way. Just from our experience of their first move from Calgary to Houston, we already gave our kids more options when they faced their second move from Houston to Melbourne.

Then, while we were living in Melbourne and once we knew we would be returning to Calgary, I participated in a series of workshops about relocation. They were conducted by a social worker who was employed by the municipality in which we lived. It was a fabulous course. Meeting my fellow participants alone was worth it. Some of them came from other continents. Some of them were Australians who were facing their first experiences abroad. The social workers herself had been on an expat assignment to Norway.

One of the most important things I learned was the value of letting kids make as many decisions as possible. Of course the size of decision varies with the kid's age. For a little kid, allowing him/her to choose his/her bedroom in the new house may be as far as it's appropriate to take this. By the time kids are approaching the end of high school and getting ready to enter university, it helps to let them make as many decisions as possible. That encourages them to assume ownership of the process. Once you have their "buy in," you face far fewer recriminations for what you did or didn't do.

So, in the case of your daughter, I think it's appropriate for you to collect information on her behalf. Then, once you and she have collected as much information as you can, I think it would be good if she laid out the information on the table and decided for herself (within the bounds of what you can afford financially).

I've seen nickybum's posts before (see post #2). It's apparent that, even after 15 years, nickybum still has emotions around the unilateral decisions that Mr. and Mrs. Nickybum made. I sympathise with nickybum on that score.

If your daughter stays behind in the UK while you move to Canada, you may find the separation very sad. For a variety of reasons, our younger son was young for his school grade. He was 15 years old when we waved goodbye to him in Melbourne and 16 years old when he graduated from high school. On top of that, he broke his wrist in a skateboarding accident and had orthopedic surgery about half through the year that he was away from us. I'll never forget the phone call I received from his host mother. Because of the time difference between Canada and Australia and the nature of the injury, she'd taken the bull by the horns, exercised the written authority that my husband and I had given her and her husband to use their best judgement, and had ordered the surgery. By the time she managed to reach us on the phone, our son already had come around from the anaesthetic. It was a gut wrenching moment. I cried several times that year. But, if I had it to do over again, I would still let my son do it his way.

Hope that helps.

Probably, but when they move to Uni they will all go off in different directions anyway.

Thanks Judy,

That does help. Alex (daughter) is a very sensible girl, and I think you're right, she is at the age where she should have a say in decisions that will affect her. I suppose that I just can't wait to get out of this country! Our elder son (19, but still coming with us) was attacked on Saturday night. He was out with friends and somehow ended up on his own. Some drunk guy jumped on him and started beating him up. Luckily, he wasn't badly hurt, but I keep thinking how much worse it could have been. It's things like this that make me want to move as soon as possible. I know that every area has its problems, but with a 16 year old daughter and a nine year old son as well as the 19 year old, the culture in this country has become a worry. I know that you live in Calgary,which is where we are hoping to settle - what is the teenage culture over there? Do they find better things to do than roam the streets looking for trouble?


Philc - yes I think you are right, I will find out about the university admissions before I worry any more! Thanks.

[QUOTE=Rachelmark]Thanks Judy,

That does help. Alex (daughter) is a very sensible girl, and I think you're right, she is at the age where she should have a say in decisions that will affect her. I suppose that I just can't wait to get out of this country! Our elder son (19, but still coming with us) was attacked on Saturday night. He was out with friends and somehow ended up on his own. Some drunk guy jumped on him and started beating him up. Luckily, he wasn't badly hurt, but I keep thinking how much worse it could have been. It's things like this that make me want to move as soon as possible. I know that every area has its problems, but with a 16 year old daughter and a nine year old son as well as the 19 year old, the culture in this country has become a worry. I know that you live in Calgary,which is where we are hoping to settle - what is the teenage culture over there? Do they find better things to do than roam the streets looking for trouble?

You will always get the ones who roam the streets and get into trouble. The difference here is they get caught and they are punished. We live in Okotoks which is south west of Calgary. It is 15mins drive from city limits. Someone keyed a load of cars a couple of months ago and they were caught! British police would of just overlooked it. We love Okotoks, and i would recommend it to any families coming from England. It is a small town of about 12000 and it has everything you would want in the means of amenities. My daughter had just done her gcses and we brought her to canada. She has gone into grade 11. She could of gone into grade 12 but that would of meant a lot of work to catch up on. Grade 11 is the equivalent of year12 in the uk. Melanie's gcse grades were taken into account and she received points towards her graduation as she would of done if she had completed grade 10. My daughters are aged 17 and nearly 16. Let me know how you get on with the move. Other place to look at if you don't want to live in the city is Cochrane(great mountain views)

Yet another fantastic post from Judy.

Thanks for sharing that with us. You are such an asset to those of us considering such a monumental change in our and our children's lives.

Thank you.

I could be wrong here BUT I have a Feeling That Morwenna's eldest has to get more credits from A Canadian Institution B4 he can be admited to a degree course in Alberta.
My advice would be to check VERY carefully enrty requirements to both University and Course before commiting to an extra year that MAY be worthless.

Yes, I think the advice to check the prerequisites for a specific course is very relevant. If I correctly remember what Morwenna said about her son, he wanted to do engineering at the University of Calgary. They required him to have separate A levels for science and chemistry (if I remember the subjects correctly) instead of the A level that he had in combined science. But I suspect the requirements would have been less stringent if he'd wanted to get into general studies at U of C. In that case the A level in combined science might have sufficed.

Thanks Judy thats exactly what I remember hearing, once more you've jogged my atrophied memory!!