Schooling age in Aus

[danone]

Hi all. We will be moving to Perth in January next month. Our daughter is 6 this week and she will complete her first year of school here in NZ.

Here they start school next day after 5th birthday so she's already been through a full year.

She already knows to read, write, spell and all the things children normally learn in their first school year.

Now we have contacted the school in Perth for her to be enrolled for next year Jan 2017 and we were told she will start from zero as they didn't take into account she's already been going to school for one year.

Is this normal in Australia, especially for children who already did one year in UK or NZ?

[Arwen]

Hi all. We will be moving to Perth in January next month. Our daughter is 6 this week and she will complete her first year of school here in NZ.

Here they start school next day after 5th birthday so she's already been through a full year.

She already knows to read, write, spell and all the things children normally learn in their first school year.

Now we have contacted the school in Perth for her to be enrolled for next year Jan 2017 and we were told she will start from zero as they didn't take into account she's already been going to school for one year.

Is this normal in Australia, especially for children who already did one year in UK or NZ?

 

Your daughter will go into year 1 in 2017. Children her age here in WA will already have completed a year of Kindy (15 hours per week and not compulsory) and Pre-Primary (full time and compulsory). I don't know what the school is talking about quite frankly so I would take with a pinch of salt. The other kids in her class will have done as much, if not more schooling so she won't be starting from scratch. Hopefully they just mean that it's a different country and curriculum and that the things she has already learned may not have been learned in the same style as the WA curriculum.

[Sammy1]

Hi all. We will be moving to Perth in January next month. Our daughter is 6 this week and she will complete her first year of school here in NZ.

Here they start school next day after 5th birthday so she's already been through a full year.

She already knows to read, write, spell and all the things children normally learn in their first school year.

Now we have contacted the school in Perth for her to be enrolled for next year Jan 2017 and we were told she will start from zero as they didn't take into account she's already been going to school for one year.

Is this normal in Australia, especially for children who already did one year in UK or NZ?

 

Hi,

 

Your daughter will start year 1 in Perth next year (students must turn 6 before June 30th). It makes no difference that she has completed year 1 in New Zealand-remember they are different countries.

 

The cut off date for entry is June 30th for all year levels. So unless your daughter turns 7 before June 30th, then she most definitely will be in year 1 and not year 2.

 

What you have described above is what children typically do in pre-primary here, which is compulsory in WA. Children start pre-primary at age five (or four, if they turn five by June 30th).

Edited December 14, 2016 by Sammy1

[Monkey2645]

I'm sure they just meant starting from year 1 again. They don't skip years except in very exceptional circumstances so year group is dependent on age. As the others have said her contemporaries will have completed pre-primary and probably kindy too. My son finished pp today - they can read, write sentences, know all the basic sight words for spelling, basic maths and science - sounds like your daughter will be at about the same level when they head into year 1. From what I can gather they'll move on to interpreting persuasive text conventions in year 1 (I wish I was joking)

[danone]

Thanks all. I was just worried she will start again with "this is a cat" "my book is red" "the cat is happy" )

I don't mind what it's call, either Reception, preschool, pre kindy, etc as long as she'll be in the next level she'd be if we were to stay in NZ

[ali]

Thanks all. I was just worried she will start again with "this is a cat" "my book is red" "the cat is happy" )

I don't mind what it's call, either Reception, preschool, pre kindy, etc as long as she'll be in the next level she'd be if we were to stay in NZ

 

I think the most important thing is to be with their peer group. She may very well bring home something she has read before, remember the teachers will need to see for themselves what she is capable of. My daughter could read before she went to school and brought home books without words (the magic key series - oxford learning tree) in Reception class initially, she soon progressed to books she hadn't read, but the ones without words were fantastic to sit with her and get her to develop her vocabulary, what she thought would happen, how did she think the children felt etc, what did she think they might have said to each other etc.,