Thank you. It's sounds really good!
Fortunate, since you know Canadian system very well and now understand English school system could you , please, explain me one thing. In UK after year 10 children may stay in school or may go to Sixth Form College to do their A-levels. How about that in Canada? Do they have some alternative or they stay in school till they are 18? I'm asking because this time we think It would be better for son to pass his GCSE in UK and then go to Canadian school or college.

Taking French is mandatory (or it was when I was a kid) in school and in addition to French kids can learn other languages... what languages they have access to learning depends on the local school board. On the west coast, learning Japanese, Cantonese, Mandarin are the main additional languages to learn for both kids and adults with maybe Spanish and Aboriginal languages coming next. Not many people know or want to know French beyond what's forced upon you when in school -- that's an 'Eastern' thing and people on the west coast will go out of their way not to learn French.

Canadian and British spelling is pretty similar - eg favor/color/favorite is American, favour/colour/favourite is Canadian ... though it's not written in stone. Plus nobody really cares about spelling (or grammar) in Canada anyways.

Japanese? Wow! it's cool! Probably difficult, but interesting!

There are a lot of people with Japanese origins or actually from Japan and a lot of Japanese influences on the west coast. So much so, that when I hear Japanese here in the UK I assume they're from BC, not Japan.

I'm not fluent in Japanese but I know enough to stumble through a basic conversation and can understand more than I can speak but IME it is easier to learn than French... speaking it anyway, writing it, I suspect, is an entirely different story.

Hi again,

In Canada the kids go to high school for only 4 years (grades 9-12) and this completes their secondary education and they graduate with a diploma. In December of their grade 12 year, they make applications to either colleges or universities depending on what they want to do with their life and what type of degree they want. University being higher education, obviously than college. Some kids, obvioulsy opt for the World of Work and don't purse further education after grade 12. Those applying to higher education usually receive their university acceptances by March for September entrance. Depending on their birthday, some are 17 when entering university, but other may have turned 18 already. I also have one child who decided not to be schooled in the UK because he is in his last year of high school in Canada. The UK system would have required him to do two years of A levels and he was not willing to do this as he wanted to attend Canadian University anyway, and saw it as one more year of extra work.

I don't see any reason for your son to stay here to complete the GCSE, don't let that keep you in England. However, if you do decide he should finish his schooling in the UK, the Canadian University system will require him to have have min C on 2 years of A levels before accepting him. If he gets into the high school system over there soon though, he will be fine with his Grade 12 Diploma. I do also think the Canadian high school system puts a lot less pressure on the kids during exam time. There is not so much hype in the media about it as there seems to be in UK. Most Canadian high schools are on semester system, so they take 4 subjects from Sep-Jan and the other 4 from Feb-Apr with final exams at the end of each semester. Also, you will be fine entering your son into the local high school in your catchment area in Canada and they will have to take him, unlike England where they can tell you no room. There will be no need to pay for independent high school, unless of course you choose to. It is not necessary.

A GCSE is equivalent to only finishing Grade 11 in Canada ... so Grade 12 would still need to be completed.

I hope this is not too confusing. This time last year, I was very confused about all of this coming to UK.

Good luck. Hope this helps.

Yes, thank you. It's realy very helpful! I think the English system is more confusing

At the school my children attended speaking with a Quebec accent made one a pariah.

My kids took English and Spanish at their French language school. They bullied the kids who spoke joual.

Retiring as a captain means you have failed.

Are ranks the same in the UK/Canadian army and airforce (no idea what goes on in the navy in either country!) ?

Not quite. The Canadian army is very similar to the British army and uses the same sort of regimental and rank structures (the reserve units often have Brit royals as Honorary Colonels in Chief). The Canadian airforce has the same rank structure as the army. I think the two navies are pretty similar.

Both militaries have the Queen as CIC.

Well, when it's your turn in the barrel ...

As for the education system: Canada's seems to rank high when compared to other countries in the western world.

It's difficult for us to make a comparison as we paid through the nose for highly academic private schooling in the UK and they go to the local school here. As a result our kids are happier and do more extra-curricular activities.

Given the choice of the local school here or back in the UK, I would take this one based on the satisfaction levels of parents in both places. One good thing is that teachers are treated as professionals here, and paid accordingly.

I guess it comes down to where one chooses to live in Canada. If it's rural then the choice is going to be less and you'll get what your given.

Move to a city and the choice is wider. Calgary offers many choices (some seeming more like "play-away" than school ) geared to the student's interests.

Three high schools here offer the IB program, surely a much more widely accepted qualification than A levels, which appears get given away like Blue Peter badges these days.

The 3 schools I attended taught Parisian French only. This is the first I have heard of a school teaching Quebecois French.

The words my daughter uses are correct (although pronounced differently here) - the teacher (from Quebec) just tells her to alter the grammar, which confuses her as she has been learning French since she was 3 and now at 9 years old, she is being taught a completely different way to phrase sentences.

I have also heard that at the end of schooling, it really doesn't seem to matter too much which country the child was brought up in, as both countries seem to teach the same curriculum just at different paces. I think for anyone going to High School, the academic level will not be much different, but for children going to elementary school there is a huge difference.

Hello Tia, how have you been, is it really true what you were saying about the teachers giving your daughter a hard time for her french pronounciation ?Our daughter is in a French immersion and she was taking french in the UK too before we moved, she seem to be taking it in her stride now here