Thanks. Its handy to have an idea of the way things are heading.

It appears that there are a few mainlanders a little out of touch concerning the island. Long may it stay that way

I've carried out a reasonable amount of research on the island, and visited a number of places in a last few years, before we settled on the Sooke area. Island life is not quite how some mainland based posters sometimes paint it to be.. albeit in a jokey fashion. A bit of Hongcouver bashing might not go amiss from time to time

Nanaimo's looking quite scrubbed up these days, and you can get a decent house for half the price of Vancouver. It's work that's the problem.

I like Nanaimo bars.

I don't

I don't either - but the kids do....

I agree with Mark about the schooling here. The education system here is generally excellent in my opinion and the opportunities are there if you choose to take them. Our girls are both very settled in the local school - following in his kids' footsteps - and the teaching and facilities are everything we could wish for. I think it is true to say the pace of life, in business, schooling and general, is slower than in a big city - but that is one of the reasons many of us are here in the first place.

I suppose its all about your expectations and experience, but I’ve visited a lot of schools on VI and found the facilities and the lack of equipment to be woeful. They still have separate computer labs, only about one in ten schools will even have a smart board, and none of which are integrated and some schools are still using videos players. The books are mostly out of date and American and the teachers are using pedagogical methods that went out of date in the middle of the 1980s. There's no vibrancy and energy in the schools, they don't push the kids and while I find the teachers capable enough, the lack of consequential accountability in the system lets them be extremely lazy.

I'm very surprised at your experiences of Island schools. I can only speak for my own area and the few schools within it that I have any knowledge of, but your observations aren't applicable to the elementary school my two kids go to. They have smart boards in most - if not all by now - of the classrooms. Each classroom has laptops and ipad notebooks (not one per child but I think the Principal told me it is now about 4 or 5 per class - my youngest is in a class of 17). There is also a large computer room. It is certainly better equiped than the primary school the kids left in the UK 2 years ago. I would also take issue with the motivation of the staff. They have a show, play or concert every term, there are loads of different clubs and societies happening every lunchtime and after school. They even have a school run every Friday in which the whole school participates.

Whether my kids' good fortune is some other kids on the Island's misfortune I really couldn't say, but I have had no complaints so far with what I've seen. I don't have your breadth of knowledge of "lots" of schools onthe Island, but I think I can confidently say that aside from ourselves, the vast majority of our Canadian and British friends with kids in the same system would echo my sentiments about the education their kids are receiving.

You may well have a decent PAC or a forward thinking Administrator. I think the main issue is you've come from a school in the UK in a lower socio economic area or your child is simply middle of the road, then I'm sure a school in a small school district in Canada will be fine. I suppose it depends what you want for your child. But the lack of rigorous and competitive academic practice is simply lacking and all the fun funs, hot lunches and visits to the local biscuit factory won't make up for the ethos of laissez-faire drift most Canadian school system embrace. In the 1990s all the talk was a about 'excellence in education", the only nod to this policy initiative was with teacher contracts. And if you've ever been to a BCTF conference the passion about their contracts and the rather poisonous invective towards anything to do with the accountability to their "work" is quite disturbing.

I'm not sure I'd categorise Richmond upon Thames as a lower socio economic area, but your comment about the reluctance for the teaching profession to embrace "accountability" is interesting.

Actually this is a very good point. A lot of the technology that is available has come from PAC fundraising; and yes I would say the Principal is very forward thinking and pro-active. I would say she is a lot more focused on the development of the kids than our previous Head who was obsessed with the school's league table position and her shoe collection.

I've trained, I'm mean educated, hundreds if a not a few thousand teachers, both here and in the US and I know the dross we turned out. If they embraced serious accountability there wouldn't be many left in the profession.

Who was it said "those that can do - those that can't teach"

That woman seems quite stupid.