snowshoveller

School is more nurturing than target driven in the UK. my daughter was 7 when we moved, she spent a year doing what she had already done at least a year before. Its not the education system that will cause you an issue its the age of the child, personally I wouldnt want to move a teenager unless I really needed to

seanyg

Hmmm ok. I guess there are bad sides to that too though, right? I mean, if your child is behind then you would want him / her to be encouraged to keep up or improve their grades? Maybe the Canadian system is slightly behind ours, if your daughter had to repeat a year... (or maybe she's just more academic than her Canadian peers?).

Geordie Lass

We have a mortgage with Nationwide and they do not allow you to rent your house out without converting to a buy to let which they do not offer.

You need to think about with a buy to let you cannot get all of your equity out. They will only lend you 70% of the value of the house so you have to leave some equity in.

Hope this helps.

snowshoveller

it works both ways I suppose, the year split for schools runs december to december. The shool year starts september as the UK, but the oldest child would be born in january, If you think about your kids class in the UK all those with birthdays between sept and december would be in the year above. My daughter is born in the summer so she went into grade two to stay with her age group, had she been the before december cohort she would have gone into grade 3.

seanyg

Ah ok, I think I need to read a little more about the education systems in the countries in which we're interested! We only had one child last time we almost emigrated, and he was just a wee baby so we hadn't really crossed the education bridge! (it wasn't something we even thought about in the UK until he went to pre-school...).

el_richo

Don't forget Canada will be in a recession next year so...

DandNHill

I have kids in elementary, junior high and high school and they started this september. I can't say any of them seem particularly perturbed by the change and yet they were very settled and had some lovely friends in the UK.

Steve_

No IT occupation is currently on the skilled worker list for Canada, so US or Canada you'd be looking at a work permit and if the company goes bust (which is what happened to me when I lived in the US) then you're stuffed.

Getting a job in the US isn't just about who you know, IT security would be H-1B and there is a quota, it doesn't sound as though his job has any management element to it so he wouldn't qualify for intracompany transfer either, assuming that was even possible (his current employer would have to have a US office and he must have been with them at least a year).

He might get H-1B if he gets under the quota limit but no guarantee (plus usually you need to have a bachelor's degree or equivalent experience to get H-1B). My experience with US employers is they're really keen until they're faced with the paperwork.

Also the £ is extremely weak at the moment, so now may not be the best time to move.

Moving to the US has the problem of their high healthcare costs, so if any of your family has any health problems, not recommended. Also really high college/university tuition rates.

Housing costs in the US should be less than here. As for the state of the economy I would say in Canada it's flat but not as bad as the UK or the US. I get the impression the housing bubble in Vancouver is just about to burst though.

If I were in your situation I would leave it a few years to be honest, wait until the economy stabilizes.

delsol79

Wow what a post and so full of questions that could never be answered unless you have a crystal ball however I can help a little with the work thing.

I have been an ethical hacker/penetration tester for over 5 years now and was UK CHECK Team Leader, the CREST forerunner. The market here in Canada is way behind UK in terms of demand as I have found very quickly. CREST/CHECK is of course not recognized here and 7 months experience puts you very much in junior category so I think would be hard pushed to get a work permit based on that.

My advice would be to stick with the UK until he is more senior in his role and can command a job/decent salary based on that. I am well aware of the money that can be made in UK as CREST (as in the full CREST not registered tester)/CHECK consultant and believe you me you will not make that money here in Canada.

Aviator

Sounds like a great job!

delsol79

Yea but if I put pen tester then people think you test Bic biros

seanyg

Gosh I didn't know that. So even if we just got a secondment somewhere, we'd still have the same problem...

Would it be really dodgy to sublet our house to my mother-in-law (say if we went abroad for just a year or two) without telling the bank...? Sounds foolish just writing it - I don't like taking risks!

seanyg

I was waiting for someone's mind to fall into the gutter And yes, he hates saying pen tester for the very reason Delsol79 just mentioned ... Hacker insinuates he's a criminal and Security Consultant isn't very accurate as most of his time is spent breaking in to companies (physical pen testing too, e.g. trying to get past reception and connect to a pc without anyone questioning him), although he does write reports which I guess constitute the 'consulting' part...

Aviator

All I said was that it sounded like a great job - Who's mind is in the gutter!

delsol79

"Physical pen testing" = social engineering

Tell him he can PM me if he wants any further info/questions.