moving to Gold Cost June next year

[Michelle Hicks]

Hi everyone

I hope someone can help me.. We will be moving to the gold coast in June next year and would like to start looking into schools for our girls, we have one child that needs a learning support unit with integration into mainstream school. Would anyone know what school is best for her?? We think it's easier to find a school first then look at housing around the area. 

Any ideas? 

[Guest]

Support in schools will vary I'd imagine (if its anything like it is here in SA) and isn't on the same level as the UK is used to. However, class sizes are in my experience generally a fair bit smaller which off sets the extra staff member in the class constantly. My son in UK reception and Y1 had 30-31 kids per class. His reception here had 15 and Y1 20, Y2 was 23. His Y4 class here has 28. 

Check the GC/QLD gov info on an actual list of schools so you can work through them and read their websites etc https://schoolsdirectory.eq.edu.au/

Then try the myschool site. https://www.myschool.edu.au/ Put in the area and see what schools there are and what they offer and their finances etc. 

Hopefully people in the GC area will be able to chime in although given your specific needs/wants you may have to do a fair bit of legwork on school options and what will suit. 

[Quoll]

Do you have a visa? That’s usually the first question because if a child has a disability requiring additional support in school they’re often not eligible for a visa. On the flip side, if you get a visa, they’re often not eligible for disability support in school and the criteria for disability support is quite different from UK (reportedly quite a bit better in UK)

Most people go about choosing where to live based on where they will be working rather than the schooling. Schools generally seem to fall into place given the general rule of thumb that if you wouldn’t want to live in a suburb you wouldn’t want your kids in school in that suburb. If you want to go private then that’s a different matter but not too many private schools have dedicated units for kids with disabilities.

Information about disability programs in schools can be found here, including in the links there too eligibility criteria for disability support. 

http://www.education.qld.gov.au/studentservices/learning/disability/parentguide/

Eligibility criteria

Edited to say, bring copies of all current psycho educational assessments (if they’re over 2 years, try and get them re-done before you leave, it should speed things up a bit) - cognitive assessment, skill levels, adaptive behaviour checklists by current school and any other diagnostic assessments and reports plus a current IEP for baseline purposes. You can’t just enrol a child in a  disability support unit, there are other hoops to go through. You can only enrol in mainstream schools.

 

Edited October 27, 2017 by Quoll