Ali B

Migrant children have 6 months automatic free places in Intensive Language schools before joining mainstream govt schools. Government schools also have funding for EAL (english alternative language) staff to continue teaching them separately. We have an EAL department with 8 staff who support/teach migrant students. And they are very effective. English lessons are split so the EAL kids have a separate class and support teacher for mainstream curriculum plus language acquisition, while the rest of the group does normal mainstream curriculum. Any school private or govt that allows its unruly students to interfere with the learning of others and doesn't deal with it immediately is a failure. My ex-private student's previous private school was, because it sat on the problem for 8 yrs. There is always something that can be done. You should have had more support in your previous school with those students.

LR - yes and yes. So agree. Janlo too - yes we are truly stuck. I just worry hugely that our youngest wants to leave Oz and doesn't want to stay here. She was 18mths when we came over but knows Brighton (UK) like the back of her hand and has a deep connection to friends and family there. Our middle girl is 23 and finishing a teaching degree, she could travel anywhere and also wants to live at least three years in UK. i suspect then she'd stay. She has a real problem with the attitudes of just about every 20+ Aussie boy shes met. Our eldest is in a stable relationship with an Australian boy of Maltese/Kenyan parents. He hankers after Europe and has travelled there. Has family in Malta. She is the one we worry about as she'd not cope with us not being around. If we went back it'd destroy her to stay here. On top of that we moved our teachers pension over here two yrs ago (and we had to pay ATO $15000 each as it was classified as income !!) Its performing well but we reckon we'd have to pay massive tax on it to take it out of Oz again. All extra research we'd need to do. if it wasn't for our three girls Id go back today.

It would take longer than a post. You'd need to see first hand. I teach in a very poor school in a wealthy area with lots of available private schools. 15-20% refugees (who are amongst the hardest working most inspiring kids I have EVER taught and they regularly set the bar high for any kid or teacher around them). We have families who are poorer than most in the area but who are worth their weight in gold. I can think of five families in the entire school that fit your description of "waste of space" people and the kids are a pain so I kick them out of lessons if they don't work or affect other kids. They are dealt with. One of my worst kids is super rich and has just been kicked out of a local private school after 8yrs of bullying other kids with snide remarks. They asked him to leave. In the meantime families have paid good money to have him in their kids classes and its taken 8 yrs for them to deal with him. There is a lack of transparency in Private schools bc it would affect marketing. The boy is a foul mouthed and foul minded kid with arrogance. He makes everyone feel worthless and crap. I guess that's what I generally despise about private schools. A smugness that money makes you "nicer and better than others". It doesn't. It just means you are richer. And the kids and families judge people who aren't.

Me too.

If you are having to economise that much why on earth leave stability in UK? Is your life there really that bad? And WHY consider private schools for goodness sake???

Peaches, you are so misguided. Having taught over 6000 students for 32 years in 9 schools, I can only say you are utterly and absolutely wrong.

Yes Jac you are spot on. Just about every type of job experience in Oz needs hard certification as back up. In UK you can often get work on the basis of saying "yes Ive done that and here's a reference from my previous boss". Not here. Training and certification is big. True you could probably get some types of work in companies that aren't so fussy, but they will also be the ones that kick you out as soon as business gets tight. Ive heard some horrible stories from Brits on 457s with unscrupulous bosses asking the world of them, then when they say 'thats illegal' the Brits get threatened and fired. ask for a Permanent Visa or think twice about emigrating. finding work is very tight here compared to say ten years ago.

Live in Mitcham. Its fab and becoming quite upbeat now. Trains from Ringwood Mitcham Nunawading go express non-stop to CBD from Box Hill. our daughter rents a great house out here $400 per week 4-bedrm house share (ie $1600 pm total) Look for property on or near the train line. Vermont , Forest Hill and Warrandyte pretty but too hard for a commute.

Teachers pay varies from state to state. Goes up each year till you hit top of scale. Here's the table for Victoria. (i teach in Melbourne, Victoria) Class sizes are capped at 25 and you teach 75% of the week the rest is planning/marking. Nowhere near the stress of UK schools. Mechanics do well here tho cost of living has risen hugely and it is an expensive country so people cut back on non-essentials and the car repair industry has been hit like everywhere else. Buying a 3 bed house in Melbourne would cost anywhere from $400/500k upwards depending on suburb. You'd need 10% deposit plus fees, duty etc. renting is dead money and will at into savings. Please research your city very very carefully. Where do you live in UK? Brisbane Adelaide and Perth have very different vibes.

Emigrating with kids over 11 is HELL as they are adolescents and need their stability and friends. Australian secondary schools study very different topics in History Geography English Languages and Science to the UK. Teenagers find settling into schools very very very difficult even harder than their parents and spend their feee time trying to keep contact on FaceBook with friends in UK. If you REALLY want to move then come. But make sure you really want to. Its not a holiday. Australia is now much more expensive than say ten years ago. There are lots of hidden costs in education, medicine, and just 'living' that eat into savings. If the company is giving real solid financial support and the kids are happy to move, then do it.

Its comforting reading that other people have worries and doubts like us too. As i said above, we aren't unhappy here in Melbourne, but we aren't really happy either. Its a life in limbo, like we're waiting for our real life to begin again. Hard to nail down exactly why it feels like a half life. I grew up in east Surrey near Gatwick so London has always been a part of my life - love the hustle and bustle and we spent first 4yrs as young marrieds there going up the West End, cinema, knew all the trendy spots. Moved later to Brighton. Loved being by the sea and the pubs on the south downs in Sussex. Tiny villages and beautiful woodland just spitting distance from the sea. Sitting out on a sunny Sunday with a ploughmans and a cold lager just looking at people and families all having a great time in each others company. I loved the history of UK. Every single town and village has a story. Someone born there or invented something there or designed a chimney pot or hid in a tree escaping from a castle. It felt part of my blood. And I genuinely love Brits, the quirky eccentric way of looking at life, having a moan then smiling and saying tomorrows another day. There's always something to moan about too, the weather or the "bloody foreigners" or traffic and speed cameras. But then you'll see a couple stop and help someone or chat to the "foreigners" in the corner shop and you realise for all the moans, we are actually really nice and accommodating of so many different people. As long as people are kind to us, we'll take it all on board. Before you know it the West Indians on the London Underground are part of the fabric of UK life, not foreigners anymore. I think Brits are good like that. Dunno why we came here really. We always travelled a lot and liked the adventure. Genuinely planned for two years then couldn't afford to move back to UK so resigned ourselves to staying. Found Ozzies welcoming at first up to a point then after a year or two we were kind of left stranded. We both had jobs so meeting mums for coffee didn't happen so much. We also find Ozzies are really into their own friends and family and don't take in strangers all that readily despite seeming friendly at first. We've also picked up a nastily racist vibe here. Mocking and quite nasty of people-not-like-us. Its on the radio and telly and you hear people drop things in conversation that jar and you think, "oh you wouldn't hear that at home!" Its unkind and intended to underline what being in the Australian Team involves. Be one of us or piss off. So if you don't like AFL or being a bloke or laughing at people, you are the problem. Our girls rapidly un-learnt their Brighton accents to speed up fitting in. They have made friends and have their own life and boyfriends. We could retire in five years and go back... except by then they might have married and we'll be breaking away from family again just as we did when we came here. Its a tough call. Sorry I'm rambling folks, I'll shut up now. just that seeing that old thread has made me think. Dunno who the person was or if they went back. It's nothing other people can solve for you.

Peach, people need honesty about reasons for buying private education anywhere in the world. Couple of reasons. They think buying something automatically = better quality. They think their kids will mix with richer therefore better people (because if you don't have money you are failures OR don't care about paying for your children.) They think buying education = buying business contacts in a rich world with nicer richer and better behaved people. Money also buys arrogance and better drugs in teenage years. They think private schools have better teachers, will get better results for their kids and will look after their kids better. They think private schools will surround their kids with nice kids, better opportunities and will protect their kids better from the nasty outside world. All of these are by and large myths but contain an element of truth, lets be honest. Money does not and cannot buy you a life but it does give you a few extra choices. Private school kids do learn to look down on others, often sneer at teachers by the time they are in yr 11/12 senior school because if teachers had real ooomph they wouldn't be teachers. Teachers are only useful to ensure grades to get a foothold in a job with one of mother/father's contacts. Many not all learn that money buys grades (private schools often "require" staff to produce high grades because parents don't pay for Ds and Es so students are spoon-fed work. I have many friends who have worked in both systems and seen this 1st hand) Many not all private school kids who drop out of tertiary courses because they haven't properly learnt resilience and study skills. Many not all when faced with studying really hard, independently, can't hack it. Many not all families that fall on hard times see the hard face of private schools who kick them out unceremoniously if cheques bounce. I have interviewed MANY weeping parents begging to enrol in good government schools they should have considered in the first place. Sorry Peach. If you choose private, just be honest, you are buying privilege, nice uniform, not necessarily the best type of education.

Agreed B4T ! Tho I hope you don't take issue with the stats I posted from Melbourne! They are an official source! I taught for 20 yrs in UK (London Sussex Brighton) and 14 yrs here in Melbourne. I hear from old colleagues the UK is crazy for attainment targets and evidence. Attainment is of course monitored here in Oz too but it's more realistic and manageable. Plus classes of 22-25 mean that you can sit, talk and review work with students. I loved having my Yr 8 & 9 students sit with me this week at my desk and just talk to me about the projects they have just finished. That NEVER happened in UK. There was never time. I actually KNOW kids as people.

For those of you worrying about class sizes in UK schools, this is for Government schools in Victoria up to 2013 from this official website. http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/about/department/statsvicschbrochure.pdf No need to worry!

For those of you looking at class sizes check out this link for Victoria including Melbourne. http://www.education.vic.gov.au/Documents/about/department/statsvicschbrochure.pdf. Especially paragraph 12 on class size (see graphic below) Classes are generally a lot smaller in Oz generally than UK so kids get massively more attention. Aussies will moan about government schools because they have nothing to compare their experiences to! Ive taught 33 to a class in Sth London. Believe me many many GOVT schools in Victoria would be on a par with UK private schools. I really think you don't need to buy private education in Oz to get a good school for kids but like anywhere do your research and live in zone for a good govt school with good rep.

35 in any class in Oz is very unusual as numbers are capped by government/unions. Was it private?

Yep TPQ you are spot on. And thats the case in UK or Oz. Theres good and bad in every school and honestly just as many bad in private schools as in government ones. You just don't have to waste thousands for bad teachers if your kids are in govt schools! Also theres more transparency of qualifications and processes and accountability in govt schools. If we dont jump through hoops we lose registration.

My visa ran out in Germany as i hadn't checked dates before leaving Oz... Duh. I went to Oz embassy in Berlin and got new visa put in my passport on the spot. It took a morning but was sorted. Good luck.

Im a secondary school teacher. I can only speak for eastern suburbs Melbourne. The government schools in this area are great. I don't support private education from an educational or social perspective but over here theres a solid mix of private and government. Prep to Grade 6 (UK equiv of yr1-7) are almost always decent, well resourced, small classes of around 22-25. Teachers here are paid more and have more preparation time. Their morale is higher and it shows in the atmosphere. Secondaries go from Yr7-12 (uk yr8-13) and the government ones here are all decent in content and curriculum delivery, tho goverment schools have been run down in buildings. You see a lot of shabby carpet and broken windows, which looks crap alongside sparkly private schools with plants in hallways. Choose where/how to spend your money. We put our three kids through local govt schools and spent our surplus money on camps, music lessons, sport, dance and holidays in fun places. Your call. They have done well here and in smaller classes with happier staff.

Just been reading a very old thread started by a very unhappy Brit feeling trapped over here and missing UK and Loved ones. We've been here a LONG time now (since Nov 1999) and i have some observations. We have had times of utter misery and depression. I struggled badly for a good 4-5 yrs and still do on and off. But I cope a lot better now. As a family, being here has brought good and bad: We started in Adelaide and HATED it. We decided to locate to Melbourne which was a good decision. It is very like Europe. So: pick your city carefully and maybe consider re-locating before the expense of moving back. Some people settle well in Brisbane Canberra and Perth, but if like us you like big cities you need to be in Melbourne or Sydney as there is sooooo much to do. We had friends here who moved for jobs to Perth and Hate it. We left UK because we had the offer of two good jobs that would rid us of £18K debt. We were paid double what we got in UK and are now debt free and have a house and savings. Thats not the case necessarily now 14yrs on for newly arrived Brits. It is harder these days. So:if jobs aren't working out, why stay? Sometimes making GOOD decisions involves realising the decision you need to make, is to cut your losses and run either to a different city in Oz or back to UK. Our kids settled and were really happy. They were then 9 7 and 1.5 yrs. Fast forward 14 yrs our elder two are both finishing off uni (good courses at good Universities here in Melbourne) our youngest is now in her last two school years. They'll have better education behind them than secondary schools where we lived in Brighton. You cannot think back to the "great small village schools" your Infant/Junior school kids were at. The reality is that a lot of secondary schools in UK are not nice. So: think long term of the benefits of solid decent schools here. And probably the biggest thing to remember is that "nothing has to be forever" Honestly there are pros and cons to being in Oz. We have straightened ourselves out financially here. We bought a nasty dump of a house and have renovated it over 10 yrs. Get out of rental into anything that you can call your own. Our mood lifted immediately we had our own bit of turf. Get a job that can help you meet people AND keep you busy during the hours of depression in a rental. Psychologically you will feel less trapped if you tell yourself you can always go home one day. We are neither happy nor UNhappy here in Oz but are now considering what live will be like in retirement. Considering a bolt hole in UK. Our girls ironically are grown up and still miss UK but they have lives and friends here. We have been back several times and we have never stopped loving home. Our girls LOVE the UK but visiting and re-settling are very different aims. There's not work there in the quantity as here, the rain would drive me insane, but we are maybe considering retiring because we find Brits friendlier. Tho over the years a lot of friends have moved on from our home town themselves. Elderly relatives sadly have died. Its not the place we left. so: like anything weigh up realistically the pros and cons. Think with your head not your heart and manoeuvre yourself into a position of strength where you can make realistic decisions that wont mess your lives up, split families and ruin your finances. Nothing needs to be forever. UK won't disappear. You CAN go back, but go back at the right time forthe right reasons, not because you are swilling in negativity on a grey day or month. good luck everyone.