Would anyone be able to help me with the following questions about registering at a secondary school please?:

1. Which immunisations would we have to prove to register son at a secondary school?

2. We would have to provide 'course transcripts' from UK schooling. What format would that be?

3. Would 'summary of achievements' be school reports? If so, as far back as primary?

If anyone has been through this, can you give some guidance and any other tips?

Way to go yet, but want to make sure we collect necessary info as we go along.

Thank so much

Lara

We visited both elementary and middle schools when we went and all they asked for was birth certificates, last two school reports and study permit/proof of residency. This was in BC.

I think the course transcripts and summary of achievements are because son will arrive with (hopefully!) fresh GCSEs and these have to be translated by education board into credits towards High School Diploma course. He will start in grade 11. Sorry, should have mentioned that.

See my ideas about Lara.

Good Luck

Gaynor
x

Hi Lara

Our daughter started grade 12 when we got here, having completed her GCSE's before we left the UK.
After enrolling her at the school district office we went to visit the school, she was introduced to a couple of kids her age & went off with them whilst I completed the forms there......no-one has ever asked me for immunisation info ~ just the usual letter home if shots are being given at school asking if we want them.
I was just asked for birth certificates & PR cards.
The school collected all the info they needed (although I'd brought reports etc) from her old school.........it took a while (I'm in BC,....everything takes a while ) & we'd left before her GCSE results were in.

By the time she recieved her 'credits' from her UK school she was having a great time at her Canadian school & went from stressing about it when we got here to shrugging her shoulders & spouting her favourite sentence......"yeah, whatever man!! ....................

Thanks Gaynor and Bananahammock for this useful info and advice, very helpful. This is the part of emigration which worries me the most.

I said he would be going into grade 11, but of course, it would be grade 12. He too will be finishing GCSEs in June and starting there in the Sept if all goes to plan. He's so anxious about it!

It was my biggest worry too 2 teenagers with established friends coming halfway around the world on the back of their parents mid-life crisis!! but
they love it.........school is so much more relaxed, my younger one (15) can e-mail his teachers if he has problems, walk into school with a coffee in his hand, grow his hair without being laughed at........

I think we (the grown-ups ) found it much more difficult to settle than the kids........

Yesterday my son (15) was telling us how he'd been sitting in class and constructing a cream cheese and bacon bagel for his breakfast.

We were slightly aghast and asked if the teacher didn't object! "Oh no", he said, "I think he was jealous if anything: he did keep looking over in my direction and sniffing ..... I think he was hungry!"

On a more serious note, I would suggest that you ask for a print-out of your kid's vaccination record from your GP. Ours didn't charge for this. The school may not require it anyway, but at least you could produce it if required.

Don't stress. Everything is really relaxed over here (generally) compared to UK and he'll be fine!

Thanks for those encouraging words both of you. He is slightly cheered by the thought that the girlies might find his accent appealing!

Hi there,
It sounds like we have a lot in common. Our eldest son is taking his GSCS's shortly and our one way tickets to Vancouver are booked for 4th August.

We are also flying over on 4th May for a final recce and leaving the two sons at home with grandparents. The oldest one will be revising and the other one (13) will hopefully not annoy him too much. We have the immunisation record from the doctors and we were gooing to ask for a letter of achivement, copies of reports etc. Our biggest problem is we still havent decided on where to move to!! We will hopefully find this out in May, but we are looking at North Vancouver, sunshine coast, then up to Squamish, across to Nanaimo and area and then back to Maple Ridge. Too many options we know, but any help or guidance would be appreciated. We have even printed off the school ratings across BC.

We too will be leaving before the GCSE results are in. The replies are greatlly encouraging and we will show them to our sons.

philhh27
I would be very interested to hear how you get on. We have just changed our minds about initial location and are now looking at the same area as you. Going out next year for a look (we are in early stages).

If you can share any info on schools with us we would be grateful. We are looking at Maple Ridge and White Rock in particular, purely based on internet research and this forum. Also, what immunisations exactly are required? Apart from MMR and TB I can't think what else they would want (surely not rabies like the cat?!!).

Goodness gracious, Phil, that online name is going to unleash whole regiments of spammers onto you. My Hotmail account gets heaps of spam even without my splattering my e-mail address all over the Internet.

There are "spiders" on the Internet that harvest anything that has that squiggley "at" sign in it. Then spammers get hold of those lists by one means or another.

If you want to give your e-mail address to someone in a forum post, you should type it in a format that the spiders won't pick up, e.g.:
Even if you do change your online name, singingringingtree now has gone and quoted the "bad" format, and you have no control over what is in his/her posts.

Singingringingtree, if you see my message while you're still allowed to edit your post (which is a time-limited feature), you should go in and substitute something like "philhh27 at hotmail dot com" for what you have typed.

If you're too late to edit your post, you should ask a moderator to do it for you.

Hi, no problem with this. We will be there in August and we will let you know the outcome.

PM me or email us on our previous post as we have now changed our username due to a mistake we made when registering.

All done, Sue at expats was very helpful

Just to fill you in, in the UK you do GCSE in grade 11, and A levels two years later (grade 13 effectively).

In Canada we start school a year later so we only go up to grade 12. We do the equvalent of A levels at 18 in grade 12.

In grade 10 in canada we start our high school diploma and it takes 3 years, once you have passed the subjects in grade 10, you then take the higher level in grade 11 and then the final 3 or 4 higher levels (A levels) in grade 12

If your child is grade 11 in the UK ..... then he will be around 16, then when he comes here and enters grade 12 here, he will be with 18 year olds and actually missed a year on education.

Just make sure you have the facts, and some subjects are different here, don't worry about the number of the grade, rather is it best for him.