Hi everyone! I have two kids one will be 13 when we move later this year and one will be 9.my question is,will they have to take some sort of test to determine which grade they should be at or what? I don't quite get the grade system just yet.Thanks.

No testing. It will be based mainly on their ages in our system.

So will my 13 year old be in year 8?grade?

http://britishexpats.com/wiki/School...egories-Canada

It all depends on the birthday as well. If your child will turn 14 in that year then he/she might be a grade up. We go from January to December, so all kids turning 4 between January 1st and December 31st can start JK this year in September and so on.
My friends girls went a grade up compared to the UK grade she would have been in simply due to her birthday.
School will tell you don't worry!

Do prepare your 13 year old for going back to what my son called baby school....he was 13 when we came and went into Grade 8, so the last year of grade school. Also unlike UK, kids GRADUATE from grade school......posh frock for the girls and smart dress for the lads. my son thought this was just plain stupid and refused to partake in the celebrations, so did not go on stage to collect his diploma. They have grad photos in mortar board and gown....the full monty.

The Grade 8's also have to babysit the younger years when recess has to be taken inside.....my son hated that
But no testing....so that was at least something
stef

as nina says, grades in Ontario are arranged according to the calendar year of birth, not the academic year. So if your 13-year-old was born in 2000, he'll go into grade 8 in September 2013. If he was born in 1999 he'll go into grade 9 this September. [I think I have the arithmetic right...]

For kids coming to Ontario from the UK this can cause some anomalies for those born in Sept-Dec as they'll effectively be in the "wrong" year compared to where they were in the UK. School boards have some discretion in placing a child up or down a grade if their academic ability justifies it - this can be done after the beginning of the school year, as all grades and classes generally take a couple of weeks to settle into a configuration.

The usual warning on here, though, is to consider the longer-term implications for having a child in a school year where they are significantly older or younger than their peers. Social development is not the same as academic ability. Generally speaking, if you're here on a TWP and intend to return to the UK in the next few years, consider pushing for the appropriate academic workload. If you're here for the long haul, consider that by the time they graduate high school there's little to choose between the academic abilities of UK or Canadian education systems, so it may be more beneficial to go with the age-matched peer group.

My eldest son was the correct age to go into grade 10 when we came here, but I was astonished when they considered that he should go into Grade 11 a year earlier because he had already sat his GCSEs a year early to make sure he had them before we came here. I was concerned that he would be with an older mix of kids and might find difficulty fitting in with them as he would be considerably less mature, ie no girlfriends no exposure to the things they were exposed to like sex and drugs and smoking, so less able to cope with peer pressure. In other words, I felt that he needed to stay and make friends in his own age group. ability has nothing to do with maturity and he was not ready for that stepup.

I am glad we made that choice. he had difficulty settling here and after a year decided that he wanted to go back to the UK to sit his A levels. As we had not sold the house and his dad was still there, albeit temporarily, we let him go back to school in the Uk. Glad we let him get his GCSEs a year early as he would have had to be assessed to check he had the right education ....5 GCSEs at A-C.....well he had achieved 7, so that was not a problem. Unfortunatley after he had been back in the UK for three months, the house suddenly sold and his pre arranged alternative lodgings fell through, so he found himself back here in Canada and by the time we managed to get an unhappy lad back into school it was already second semester, so he would have been 4 credits short. At that point we asked them to have his prior learning assessed and he was given the four credits, then for that.

it can sometimes be a mistake, however proud you are of your kids achievements, to let them advance beyond their peer age group...Maturity and the ability to fit in with the older crowd, must play an important part in that decision. If you dont think it will be easy for your child, you can refuse to allow them to go into the older group, simply telling the school that you are not happy for that to happen and the reasons why.
stef