ErmintrudeMcMoo Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 It`s understandable people being worried about how well the kids will settle & bullying but I guess what you all have to remember is that Oz is a very big place and experiences can differ from suburb to suburb, person to person, state to state. I`ve not had any real probs with my daughter settling ( was one incident but that was girls being hormonal & nasty & it got sorted very quickly - nothing to do with being a Pom) I`d wait until you arrive and then ask the people in the suburbs where you will be living what their personal experience`s are - as those are the ones that count. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mutikonka Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 Going to school with pommy accents was just not a problem for my two boys. They're now 9 and 11 and have settled in really well. Schools in Sydney are very multicultural, and having an English accent is if anything an advantage compared to kids who don't have much English at all. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest 0405delboy Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 Going to school with pommy accents was just not a problem for my two boys. They're now 9 and 11 and have settled in really well. Schools in Sydney are very multicultural, and having an English accent is if anything an advantage compared to kids who don't have much English at all. How would you know, since youre not there? Anyway, high school is the tricky part!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ErmintrudeMcMoo Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 How would you know, since youre not there? Anyway, high school is the tricky part!! Am I missing something here - multitonka`s location says Sydney????Plenty of positive experiences in High Schools too if you ask around, I guess it depends on the school. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest 0405delboy Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 Am I missing something here - multitonka`s location says Sydney????Plenty of positive experiences in High Schools too if you ask around, I guess it depends on the school. Whats the difference? Kids only get bullied in certain states? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ErmintrudeMcMoo Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 Whats the difference? Kids only get bullied in certain states? Eh?? No - you said how would he know he`s not there - I thought you meant he wasn`t in Australia or near his kids?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest 0405delboy Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 Eh?? No - you said how would he know he`s not there - I thought you meant he wasn`t in Australia or near his kids?? No, not looking for a squabble but I meant hes not at school with them so how would he know?! The very fact that he even pointed out their 'pommy accents' could be quite telling........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ErmintrudeMcMoo Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 No, not looking for a squabble but I meant hes not at school with them so how would he know?! The very fact that he even pointed out their 'pommy accents' could be quite telling........ LOl!! AAh I see what you mean now! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted March 20, 2009 Share Posted March 20, 2009 Just thought I'd add that school has been the saving grace for my son (5) - it's prettty much the only thing he likes about Australia. He was a bit of an observer at first & played on his own but that has changed now. There are children from all over the world & this week for Harmony Day he is going to interview me in morning meeting about british culture....as for accents, he is asked to say certain things & the other children do laugh but he's not at all worried and laughs with them at the way they say things. He's working very hard at learning 'wee sleekit timerous beastie....' to perform in his best Scots accent again for Harmony Day. I will balance this with saying a colleague wan her son's telling me about a bully in her son's class who had atttacked him but it sounds like the school dealt with it well. IMHO bullying is worldwide and bullies pick on the things that make a person different, so if it's wasn't accent it would be wearing glasses or in my case frizzy hair - nickname was the bush!! I'm not dismissing it but what I am saying is your children are at risk whether you move to Oz or not. Probably a bit different with 12+ children & if I had a sensitive child of high school age I might thinnk twice but then again it could be the best possible thing for them - who knows? Jules Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest spalding Posted April 14, 2010 Share Posted April 14, 2010 Hi Sheena any chance you could pm me pleeease my daughter has been in school here for 5 weeks abnd still not happy - trying to decide whether to move her to a smaller school. Thanks alot Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicandjay Posted April 14, 2010 Share Posted April 14, 2010 Hi reading this from the start and wondering is Sheena still around and sending them popular PMs ?? If so please could i be sent one also....Daughter of 11 and son aged 6 Thanx Nic x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
paulhug Posted June 10, 2010 Share Posted June 10, 2010 Could you PM me too Sheena, Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaz36 Posted June 10, 2010 Share Posted June 10, 2010 Hi, Is there anyone out there in Oz that CAN tell us on this thread how their kids settled into school? I would appreciate any advice and dont feel the need for a PM, Thanks Shaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Purple Princess Posted June 11, 2010 Share Posted June 11, 2010 Hi,Is there anyone out there in Oz that CAN tell us on this thread how their kids settled into school? I would appreciate any advice and dont feel the need for a PM, Thanks Shaz Hi, Our daughter is 7, we came to Gold Coast in December last year and enrolled Hannah in the 'local' state school. She has settled really well, the first week we had tears every morning, but after that she has been fine. She still pulls her face every morning, as she doesn't want to go (she never did in the UK either), but once she's there she really enjoys it. The system over here is a lot different than the UK and I think the fact that she is ahead of her school friends has really helped. She had completed just over 3 years formal schooling in the UK, whereas over here, her friends have only completed one year, so Hannah loves helping them with their reading/writing/maths/IT etc. Hope this helps If you need anything more specific, I'd be glad to help Steph xxxx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisandelaine Posted June 11, 2010 Share Posted June 11, 2010 well i will be happy for a copy of the PM from anyone lol so i dont have ask poor sheena for a pm, as i am sure she must be flat out sending them all lol thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest valleylass Posted June 11, 2010 Share Posted June 11, 2010 Hi all We are now back in the UK but were in Brisbane from October to February and our two children (11 and 9) went to the local state school. The facilities were pretty good as the school is a relatively new one, both of our children settled in fairly well as they are a pretty sociable pair. It is impossible to second guess how any child will/won't cope in a new country and school and by the number of responses to this thread clearly it is a source a great anxiety for many people so I will endeavour to give a full account of our short experience with the Queensland state system. Our children were tested on entry to the school to assess where they would be best placed. In Queensland, and I understand across other states, they are more flexible about which year groups children should be placed and this may well be beneficial to some children. The tests were basic literacy and numeracy but obviously they are tests on the Queensland curriculum and therefore not standard. Australian Education Minister Julia Gillard (?) is currently bringing in a raft of legislation to standardise testing across the states and also to track individual schools performance but as yet this information is in it's infancy in Oz. It is important to note that our experience is NOT standard as schools in Queensland are more free to set their own curriculum than the UK hence the governmental pressure to bring about some conformity. Our youngest child tested at age appropriate and despite our protestations was placed in a year below her chronological age (she is Winter born). She had done one school year of formal education (excluding nursery!) more than her peers and despite strong representation on our part it was felt that she should go in the year below. This is fairly common practice. We accepted this against our better judgement because we were exhausted by the emotion of leaving, emotion of arriving and jetlag and didn't want to further upset her at a difficult time - she was gutted about 'underperforming', as she saw it, in a test. We told her that she hadn't and that a new situation such as this would challenge her in different ways and we should give it a try with the proviso that we would revise it in a month's time. The education she received was pretty old fashioned, uninspiring and inconsistent in the first four weeks, reflecting the nature of the teacher she had (it goes without saying that this is a universal problem and not peculiar to Queensland). It was clear that she was bored by some of it and unable to do other elements of it because it wasn't pitched consistently for children of that age. We met with the principal who listened to our evidence for moving her up a year, we were able to provide evidence of her school results to date (SATS tests) which were essentially dismissed as tests from a different system despite the fact that we were able to contextualise her performance in relation to a national average. As the Queensland system is only just developing a notion of a national average the prinicipal could not talk accurately about where our daughter was in relation to others in the class. It was only when he realised the extent of her reading at home, that jetlag may have played a part in her test and her well above average NVR score (part of the UK testing system) that he said he would support our request. Whilst this was frustrating, it was abundantly clear that his concern was that our daughter had a positive experience at school and I got a sense in Queensland that they are much more relaxed about achievement (more on this later). Meanwhile our son who has a special need had entered the school without the SENCO knowing about his need, she found out only when I mentioned it to her. However once she was made aware, and recovered from her extreme embarrassment which I felt was undeserved as it really wasn't her fault, he was given excellent support by an external agency. This was rather undone by a poorly managed transition to the secondary campus when he was put into a group where he knew nobody after having only been at the school 7 weeks. Additionally we attended the end of primary celebration which was unsentimental (toughen up Princess!) and was almost ruined for our son as he was told he couldn't attend because he wasn't wearing the right shoes. This decision was overturned but not without extreme pressure from us, he had been told his shoes were fine by the deputy head only three weeks before. Again this silliness over odd bits of uniform is a universal problem and not confined to Queensland schools. During the Christmas/Summer holidays our daughter revealed the extent of the bullying she had been on the receiving end of at school, it wasn't too bad BUT the issue for us was more the ethos that had allowed the bullying to emerge. In comparison to our experience in the UK the primary staff at our children's school in Queensland were quite 'tough' and lacked a warmth that is a common trait amongst most primary teachers. There was a clear boy/girl divide that our children were not accoustomed to and there was a distinct sense of winners and losers (e.g. class captains/sports teams sorted early in the year and then immovable). Also the monitoring of the children during lunchtime was fairly light and this seemed to be when most of the problems happened. Our son loved handball and therefore played this every lunchtime - for him lunchtimes were great apart from the melting sandwiches (boy it was hot!). By early January our life in Australia was becoming untenable due to work opportunities, additionally we were increasingly concerned about the state schooling system. We decided to leave whilst we still had the finances to do so. I didn't see that there was any more bullying in the school our kids went to, but I did see that there were more opportunities and that these gaps were not going to be filled. BUT our children went to a large school in an affluent area of Brisbane which is quite different to their UK experience. My daughter was not bullied because she was a Brit, she was bullied because the bully was allowed to behave in an inappropriate way during an unmonitored time of the day. It is the leadership and management of schools that creates this problem, and as I acknowledged earlier this is a universal problem. The issue for me is that the monitoring of teaching and learning and student performance is not a strong as the English system and therefore the quality of schools is difficult to judge until your child is in there. Currently there is unrest amongst the teachers across Australia as the government try to make schools accountable. It is likely that state education will change over the coming years and if it improves the quality of teaching and learning then I whole heartedly support it. Our children have settled back into UK life quite nicely, they'd have coped with their Queensland school too. For us it was too big a compromise against many of the other compromises we were making. Hope this is valuable and it's helpful to remind ourselves that kids are hugely resilient, they roll with many life experiences quite nicely. valleylass Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chrisandelaine Posted June 11, 2010 Share Posted June 11, 2010 hi jules. i agree with most of what ur saying, as i am ginger and well you know how we got teased at school lol, just glad my 2 wee girls are not lol. but the thing is to educate your kids about bulling at home, how to deal with it, who to tell etc tec and how to maybe some times raise above it. in the long run if you can nip it in the bud staright away your self most kids become a stronger person for it, as mentally you become strong in your own mind for dealing with issues and problems. JUST my opinion Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest colsha7 Posted June 15, 2010 Share Posted June 15, 2010 Hi all, I can understand that people will worry about the kids going to school and being bullied. we moved back to England from Germany, 5 kids all schooled in german schools, first language was/is German. They can all speak English really well but with a, shall we say different accent. Origanlly we are from Scotland so when the spoke English it was with a scottish/german accent. we now live in Wakefield and they now have a Scottish/german/yorkshire accent. their friends occasionally do make fun of them sometimes but normally they just laugh along with them. My younger son had a bit of a bad experience with some English lads calling him a Nazi........He was really upset about it, his teacher told him not to be so touchy as he himself is not German (he was born in Germany and although he is proud to be Scottish, does feel like he is part German). I went to his teacher and explained this and also that Robbie felt like the other lads where being racist towards him and she hadn't supported him. In the end she appologised to Robbie and made a lesson of it in class. He has never been bothered with it since. Sometimes adults just dont understand how hurtfull some things are for kids. You should always listen to them and take it serious, might be nothing to you, just laugh it off, sometimes thats not possible. sharon.xxx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Bettyboop Posted June 16, 2010 Share Posted June 16, 2010 After reading through all of these posts!! I have decided to add my story!!! I have three children and we moved here 7 months ago, two of my children go to primary school and my eldest is in high school (all state schools). My youngest child and my eldest child settled in to school immediately, however my 10 year old son did not. Every day he didnt want to go to school, whereas in the UK he loved school, for 2/3 months I put this down to homesickness he was desperately missing nanny, grandad and his friends but after 3 months it began to get worse. His personality became very withdrawn and he started to mention names of people picking on him and I wont go into too many details but over the next two months I kept a log of what was going on, spoke to the school and didnt feel I was getting listened to. I know my son and I knew this was so out of character for him. It was a really hard decision to make but in the end I decided to change schools, having lived here for 5/6 months at that point I was able to speak to different people and ask opinions on the local schools and decided to change suburbs totally. I was struggling to settle too, a lot of which could have been made worse by my son's unhappiness, it was a difficult decision because my daughter was at the same school and was fine there but I decided to remove them both and enroll them in another state school in a diffferent suburb and it was the best thing I could ever have done. They have both been at their new school since Easter and couldnt be happier!!!! They both have settled in as if they have always been there, they have made some great friends and I have my happy little boy back!!!! As a result of this I am feeling happier too!!! In my opinion bullying is something that can and does happen at any school in any country and having three children I think I have been lucky to have only experienced it the once. What upset me at their old school was not only was he being bullied but the school did not handle it at all and could not offer me any solutions to what was happening, this is just one persons experience and I am in no way critisizing Australian schools because the experiences they are having at their new school now are far outshining their experiences in their UK school, they are finding school life to be so much more relaxed and fun and I can see how they are thriving. I hope this offers some kind of reassurances to people who are worrying, although I had a negative experience to begin with it couldnt be more positive now!! Angie x Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shaz36 Posted June 16, 2010 Share Posted June 16, 2010 Thanks for sharing that Angie. I think its good to know so that when looking at potential schools, its a question that we can ask the head teacher, and get a feel for how they deal with bullying, as more often than not, that may end up being the main issue people have with children not settling particularly well. I have been looking at 2 particular schools in the South West suburbs of Brisbane, and get a good feel for them both. One of them addresses bullying in their school booklet, and how they deal with it, which gives me some comfort that they would not let bullying go on. I will of course ask advice from anyone who has children in the school too, to get some personal experiences. So thanks, I appreciate we may not all get the schools right first time. There's not as many people to speak to with children at the school as there would be in the UK where you would be more likely to have heard of the school's reputation for things like this. Shaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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