School Years
 

My daughter is 14 in January and currently in year 9. We should be making plans to choose her exam subjects for next year but plan in be in NZ by spring/summer 2008. Can anyone tell me what year she would be in in NZ? When would she be chosing her course subjects over there?

I have two other children younger than her and we are struggling to work out which year they will be when we arrive.

Help please;)

Re: School Years
 

My daughter was 12 when we arrived here in May this year. She was just coming to the end of Year 7 (1st year of high school) in UK. She joined Year 8 at her school here in NZ. Her birthday is in October. She has done 2 1/2 terms in Year 8 and after summer hols will go back Feb 08 into Year 9, which is first year of Senior/High/Secondary school.

My son is 11. He was just finishing Year 6 in UK and went into Year 7 here, has done 2 1/2 terms and will be going into Year 8 on return in Feb 08.

They tend to group children in ages. Children here start school on their 5th birthday; there are no annual intakes. And sometimes kids get moved up or down Year groups depending on ability (from UK generally up a year).

They don't have the same lessons here; and what they do have seems to be less than the UK, although the education is very good. I mean, they don't do history or geography. They do social studies. My daughter, I think, has 8 compulsory full year subjects (like English, Maths, etc) and a few 1/2 year courses and the only 'option' was French/Spanish or no extra language.

Hope this helps.

Re: School Years
 

Broadly speaking its:
Year 0 = age 5
Year 1 = age 6
Year 2 = age 7
Year 3 = age 8
Year 4 = age 9
Year 5 = age 10
Year 6 = age 11
Year 7 = age 12
Year 8 = age 13
Year 9 = age 14
Year 10 = age 15
Year 11 = age 16
Year 12 = age 17
Year 13 = age 18

But like I said, our son's not 12 till April and will start new school year in February in Year 8 at age 11! And he has mates in his class of similar age to him. Our daughter won't be 14 until October when Year 9 is coming to an end! Ability-wise, they found when they started school they were doing work they'd done 2 years previous in UK. When it came to French, our son had already done 2 years of it, whereas they were just starting here, so he joined Maori class with his sister's year group instead.

Re: School Years
 

Cheers for that. So it looks like she'll go up a year, as will our middle daughter whose 13 in September but by my calculations our youngest whose 10 in May will stay in year 5.

By our calculations we will need to be over by about July when they choose their exam courses. It just puts a little pressure on for timing.

Now we've sold our house (hope to complete by end of January) the practicalities now seem like a mountain to climb!

Re: School Years
 

That's going to be mid way through the NZ academic year, not the best time to be moving a high school student as she'll only have a few months to get up to speed before the end of year exams. Make it earlier if at all possible?

NZ year 9 is mostly catch-up, getting all the kids up to a common standard after primary/intermediate school. Some students will be singled out for extension classes in the following year

Year 10 is when it really starts to ratchet up, some of our friends' kids have already been told they can go for NCEA credits in year 10 next year.

Re: School Years
 

we'll get there as early as we can but it all depends on our house sale and moving timescale:)