singingringingtree

Can anyone tell me generally if a visas in passports and proof of rental/owned property is good enough to get child registered for secondary school, or do you have to be landed and have PR cards?

When our time comes, I was hoping to get over in time for start of school year if we have visas, but OH needs to come back until November for work. We can't land before that as we understand he may be liable to world tax on lump sum at end of job if he lands before it gets in the bank (tax-free in UK).

Have searched this but can't find answer. Any help much appreciated.

loggie

Hi,

I guess it may depend upon the School Board or District where you want to register your child. We left Colchester 2 and a half years ago on a work permit and registered our kids here with the Foothills School Division (South of Calgary) over 4 months before we arrived, in the March preceding the next school year. They're weren't interested in our status and were extremely helpful.

Hope this helps.

Loggie

Judy in Calgary

Loggie already has answered your question but, just for clarification, there is a Wiki article called Schooling for Expat Children.
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Judy in Calgary

Okay, I have just re-read your question, and have realized that neither loggie's nor my response actually answered it.

It'll take me a while to type up a proper answer. I'll be back later.
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Judy in Calgary

Amongst the documents that are required for the registration of expat children in a public (state) school in Canada are:

• A document that proves that the family lives in the school’s catchment area. Usually this is an Offer to Purchase a residence or a Rental Agreement.
  
  
• A permit that allows the parent to live and work or study in Canada. This could be a parent's study permit, temporary work permit or proof of landing as a permanent resident. If the parent is a PR, he/she does not need to produce a PR card. However, he/she has to be able to provide the Confirmation of Permanent Residence (COPR) that he/she will have received when he/she "landed" and activated his/her PR status.

There are two problems with registering your kids in school in Canada before you "land" as PRs. Well, there may be more than two problems, but there are two that are immediately obvious to me:

• A public school will not give your children free tuition if you and your family members have not landed and activated your PR status. A public school would admit your children as foreign students if they had study permits and if you were willing to pay tuition to the tune of about $1,000 per child per month.
  
  
• Being a permanent resident of Canada (in the immigration sense of the term) is not necessarily the same thing as being a tax resident. One of the tests for tax residency is your behaviour. If you behave as if Canada is your country of residence, you may be deemed to be a tax resident of Canada.
  
  I'm not an accountant, but that is my understanding.
  
  So, if you were planning to immigrate to Canada in the near future and if you enrolled your kids in school in Canada ahead of your official "landing" as PRs, I believe there would be a good chance that Revenue Canada Agency would look back on your behaviour and say, "The family effectively took up residence in Canada on Such And Such date [the date on which the children registered for school, or whatever]. That is the date from which we will treat Mr. and Mrs. Singingringingtree as if they were tax residents of Canada."

The upshot is that this is only partially an immigration issue. In many ways it's a tax issue more than an immigration issue.
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singingringingtree

Judy, thank you so much for taking the time to give me such a very comprehensive reply. Huge help.

We will obviously have to land first. That means son missing couple of months of schooling. It's just so tight because he will be 16 when he lands and I know schools won't take kids who have less than xx(?) months left of full time schooling.

We are going to consult a tax specialist on the lump sum situation. This only came to light because of another post on this forum about police pensions and lump sums, otherwise may have landed earlier and got a nasty shock!

destinationnovascotia

[QUOTE=singingringingtree;6852158]just so tight because he will be 16 when he lands and I know schools won't take kids who have less than xx(?) months left of full time schooling.

QUOTE]

High school here goes on to 18 so he will have over 2 years of schooling left. He will just be at the beginning of the study ofr his high school diploma. Surely he won't have a problem getting placed. Is it different where you are going?

singingringingtree

I'm not sure .. we're looking at BC. I read somewhere on this forum that they must have at least a certain number of months left before they would leave at 18 to be taken on in secondary school. Makes sense I suppose, can't expect to walk away with a high school dip after a couple of months. We're looking to go to BC. I'm probably just worrying unecessarily. We've got our sights on a school we had a look at last month. Way to go yet though!

destinationnovascotia

I am sure you will be fine, no way will they refuse a child entry when he has nearly 3 years to complete. I expect that they will start him in the 10th grade so that he can do the full 3 years senior high but that is by no means automatic as there are some kids in my childrens school who are up a grade and some who are held down a grade. That means that you can have a 2 year age span in any one grade.

singingringingtree

That's very reassuring to hear, thanks DNS.

singingringingtree

Loggie

Have you been back to good old Colchester in last 2 1/2 years? Getting pretty big - so many new housing estates and dreadful traffic congestion. Shame, always been such a great place to live.

loggie

No haven't been back since. Just too busy here in Okotoks 'living' and not 'existing' anymore.

One interesting bit of info that may help is that your childs GCSE results will count towards their high school diploma. My eldest did his GCSEs at Alderman Blaxill school and when we got here we sent his results to Edmonton (courtesy of the guidance from an excellent school counsellor) and he was awarded 50 credits (results were pretty good) for Grade 10. He entered high school at Grade 11 and was therefore halfway to graduating after only a third of high school done.

Just to add to the excellent info provided by Judy et al it may well be that we were lucky in respect of the Foothills School Division which didn't require any documentation. After phoning ahead as I mentioned we just turned up for registration night for Junior High and High School respectively.

Here's hoping you guys have similar smooth sailing.

Final bit of info: I'm no tax consultant but I am ex-military and I was paid a lump sum in the UK which was a tax free gratuity. I didn't pay tax here on it and was advised by Revenue Canada that as it was classed as a 'superannuation' or 'settlement of future entitlement' it was not subject to tax here. However, I do pay tax every year on my military pension (even though it is already taxed in the UK) and it is only paid into a bank in Colchester, but I rightfully declared it as worldwide income. Article 17 para 3 of the convention reads:

"3. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "pension" includes any payment under a superannuation, pension or retirement plan, Armed Forces retirement pay, war veterans pensions and allowances, and any payment under a sickness, accident or disability plan, as well as any payment made under the social security legislation in a Contracting State, but does not include any payment under a superannuation, pension or retirement plan in settlement of all future entitlements under such a plan or any payment under an income-averaging annuity contract.

Again, hope this helps.

singingringingtree

Very useful advice Loggie, thanks, both on the school credits and pension situ. My son will be doing GCSEs at St Ben's so good to know roughly what we can expect when we get there credit wise. Thanks for your help.

ptomlin01

Our experience was similar, registered the kids via email with the high school principal.

He wasn't interested in our residency status either, even though I explained we were still waiting. He was just keen to get the kids attending school as soon as we got here.

I would email the school directly and wait to see how they respond.

There are procedures they have to follow as you would expect, but in our case they didn't follow them.

My 16 year old (17 in 2 weeks) was put into grade 12, he was the youngest there amongst 18 and 19 year olds. He kept insisting he was put into the wrong class but many of the other kids were re-taking their final year.

I think here they graduate in the year they become 18. The birth dates for classes goes Jan to Dec.. not Sept to August as in UK.

Also, having his GCSE results with him, he was given full high school credits to graduate with the High School Diploma next June.

Just another point, our vice principal said that as he'd finished UK high school, his qualifications might have got him straight into college rather than going to high school this year.

AmandaUK

Hi, I don't know if you've found out what you need to know by now, but I thought I'd tell you our situ: we moved to Canada in August, no visas yet granted and the school told us they would take the kids, pre-visa, so long as we could provide proof of application for emigration (just a letter, or copy form) and, so long as the visas were likely to be granted within a year, they were fine with that. The kids are settled in school (and we just received our passport requests last week, woohoo).
Good luck!