School Daze

[rwrylsin]

I've long been aware that some people have their child's education all mapped out before they've even finished gestation. We want this secondary school, we'll have a better chance of getting it if he goes to this primary school, and that means we should try for this pre-school ... but it's geographically restricted so we need to move house for a couple of years.

To which I say "Bah, I will play no part in this insanity".

Growing up in the country, you went to the nearest primary school, and then to the nearest secondary school. If you were lucky, they were located in your town. While you could chose to go somewhere else the distance involved meant you'd want a really good reason to subject a kid to the extra commuting. So the whole idea of choosing a school is a little alien to me. My only real question is "Will Bub be able to walk there, and is cycling an option?"
We have a primary school in walking distance, it is apparently "a good one" as well, so no problem. Secondary school I refuse to think about right now.

David & I both went to state schools. Mine was pretty good I think, although in the years since I have come to accept that there is a reason why universities offer special consideration if you went to a rural school, as if it were a handicap. David politely describes his as "adequate".
Nonetheless, we're both pretty comfortable with the idea of state schools. We're happy with the way we turned out, and he'll have plenty of educational support at home. I guess I don't really have huge expectations of school, and assume a lot of the more useful learning experiences will come outside of school - so the more free time we have for those the better.

So why I am I talking about school then, given Bub is not yet one year old?

A friend recently described queuing up to register their child for kindergarten, with people getting there ridiculously early in the morning to be near the head of the queue. Queuing for kinder? What new madness was this? So I went to check out what our local system involved.

Fortunately, no queuing required in Whitehorse where Kinder places are centrally managed. But that doesn't mean I can forget about it for a few years.

You register for "3 year old kinder" the year before, when they turn 2. (3 year old kinder? More madness!) Then you have 4 year old kinder. I'm not entirely clear whether this has an effect on primary school, but since I'm looking at our nearest primary and the closest kinders, they all list it as a feeder so presumably it will all work out ok.
Does skipping 3 year old kinder create any problems? Although having thought about it, the short hours mean it's more of a playgroup outing than anything else, so would probably be good for him, assuming we can afford it.

Every teacher I meet points out that given his birth date I have the choice of when to enroll him in primary school, before or after he turns 5. My immediate inclination is to hold him back, I think we start a lot of kids too early, school learning is too restricted, and being ready academically doesn't necessarily mean you're ready emotionally. So far Bub is showing every sign of being a quiet introvert like his parents so will probably benefit from being older when he starts.
But he's not even 1 yet! I'd rather wait and see how he is at 4, when he can talk and I have more idea what is going on in his head.
But I have to enroll him in kinder the year before, making him repeat kinder while his new friends move on just doesn't seem a good thing. And if he does 3 year old kinder then I have to decide the year before that. Can you get away with having him repeat 3YO kinder while his friends have moved to 4YO kinder at the same place? Basically, this time next year I'm going to be deciding whether to enroll him early in his first kinder year, or wait.

I wanted no part of this insanity! Can't he just be a toddler for a little while?!

Anyway, looks like we have no kinders within walking distance, but 3 are an easy cycle, albeit with some exposure to main roads. (Well, we do have a Montessori in walking distance, but I doubt we want to pay for it). So current plan, 2 or 3 years out, is to obtain a bike kiddie-trailer for Bub to ride in to kinder and back. I shall preference the three closest kinders according to cycle-friendliness when I apply and boldly assume they're all fine.

I refuse to check where the secondary schools are. We'll discuss that with Bub whenever it is that we have to make that decision.

For now, time to decide what sort of cake to make for his first birthday cake.

Comments

[mireille21.livejournal.com]

With regards to when to decide what year Bub should start primary school, most parents around here seem to do that at the 3yo Kinder mark. That is, they enrol their child in 3yo Kinder and at the conclusion of that decide whether to go on to 4yo, or whether to do another year of 3yo depending upon their social readiness, etc. This seems to cause the least amount of upset on all fronts - they are still at that age where they roll with everything, and trying to enrol your child for 2 years of 4yo kinder seems to upset the bureaucratic apple cart from what I can tell. You have to pay out of pocket for a second year of 4yo, and this seems to leave parents who haven't done 3yo at a quandry because they are trying to determine whether their child is ready yet, without any basis for determining it ... because their child has never been to Kinder.

For what it is worth, if Bub is not going to a childcare facility that has a proper Kinder program (where you can get good feedback from the teachers about their progress), doing 3yo Kinder is an excellent idea. If nothing else, I look at kids at J's Kinder who were still clinging to their mums weeks into kinder because they had never had that experience of being apart from mum. J simply skipped off to go have a ball. Also, I found that a proper structured Kinder was great for giving J some extra stimulation and other experiences that he wasn't getting at home.

People rave about the local Montessori school here. I guess I should check it out, just to know I have covered all the bases, but I doubt I could afford it anyway. And different horses for courses too. I *had* intended to check it out with regards to Pre-School, but J is really happy where he is anyway.

[rwrylsin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, so far Bub hasn't been in any childcare, and at present I'm not sure if he will or not so figured the 3yo kinder would be good for socialisation at least. Using that experience to decide sounds like the best bet.

I've heard good things about Montessori in general, so will probably check them out, but I'm pretty sure they'll be cost prohibitive for us.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

The flip side to the issue of being ready academically not necessarily meaning you're ready emotionally is that the academically inclined kid might be bored as hell and disruptive if held back. I was in a split grade 3/4 class and apparently spent a lot of time listening to the grade 4 side because it was more interesting. If I'd somehow been in a grade 2 class at that stage, it probably wouldn't have been a good experience for any of those involved. I was happy with my parents' attitude, which was that you can always repeat a year later, but you can't get a year back.

Having to try to plan years in advance, however, would make it harder than it used to be.

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

Yes. I always kept crashing into the barrier of "year appropriate" activities. And it's not just boredom - many of the teachers felt actively threatened by this and saw it as a threat to their authority (although it wasn't until much later that I actually realised this was the case). Then again my primary school had a lot of bad teachers, especially those of the "you are here to learn from me" rather than "we are here to learn from the universe" variety. Fortunately the school had a brilliant librarian who fed as knowledge as fast as she could (or rather taught us how to find it ourselves), and a covert underground of good teachers that helped with voluntary activities.

It wasn't just my primary school either, apparently. It appears that the socially progressive true believers managed to gain control of the SA Education Department in the 70s and their mandate was socialisation rather than education. The amusing thing I discovered when I went to Tasmania for a year was that the Tasmanian Education Department believed that South Australia was so backward that I actually had to sit an exam in order to attend high school there. [Although by mistake I was given the wrong exam, and despite passing it with mostly flying colours (I was sub-par with the foreign language section because I'd never actually been officially taught any), they decided that, no, I could not skip 4 grades. Which was a good thing, as that school had some of the best teachers I'd encountered (at least in comparison to what I knew), which taught me the above maxim of "you are not here to learn from me, but rather from the world around you, and I'm here to help."]

[rwrylsin.livejournal.com]

Apparently our local primary also caters to gifted students, whatever that means these days. I'm hoping it works out that they're willing and able to be flexible with what and how they teach all the students. We shall see.

[rwrylsin.livejournal.com]

Everyone says you can always repeat later, but then there's so much stigma attached to being the kid that got held back that it rarely seems to happen :)

I started early and was fine with formal classwork and tests, but never socially integrated in my schools at all which meant I never learned anything in group work - my favourite teachers were the old-school ones who wanted everyone to just sit quietly and do their work.
But, I had other issues including pretty much skipping kinder entirely which probably didn't help, and Bub will be his own person, so... at this stage we wait and see.

My parents had the same attitude as yours, which I certainly agreed with at the time. Now I'm thinking... one year later isn't actually such a big deal. I would have had my driving license when I started Uni, that would have been easier. Everything else would have been much the same.

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Since we moved fairly often, keeping me down a level at same later point would have been very easy and non-disruptive, as it could have happened when starting at any new school. In reality, it was never going to happen, because I always thrived on new experiences and performed much better at the start of new schools than later, once I got bored.

As regards the end of the process, I lost most regard for secondary school's value by about half way through. I was happy to learn the useful things, like Dungeons & Dragons and board games ... oh, and anything to do with computers. That was only a tiny proportion of the whole, which meant that I gradually got to dislike almost all of it. To escape it to uni, where I could concentrate on those things, was my whole purpose. If I could have done anything to cut years off that useless secondary school process, I would have. Entering uni at 17 was great, especially all the free grog. (Almost nobody checked proof of age of uni students in those days. It would be less fun in the anal-retentive nanny-state mentality of current times.) If nothing else, getting out of uni a year sooner than some meant earning $20k I wouldn't have otherwise had.

[reverancepavane.livejournal.com]

Of course, when it comes to secondary state schools a number of our mutual friends (who have become teachers that have taught at that school), actually are quite surprised that David came out as sane as he actually is. Unless it's all a cunning disguise.

Then again my old secondary school has such a small collection area for non-Music students that it has actually raised house prices by 10-25% as people try to move into the area in order to go there. There is a waiting list for rental properties.

My other secondary school didn't have that problem, mainly because of geographical location it fed almost exclusively from Privilege and had no shortage of funds provided by the auxiliary and donation drives.

On the other hand, some other friends are working on getting their kid into the University of Tokyo. And she hasn't even been born yet. But if you don't get the "right" kindergarten, you won't get the "right" lower school...

[hnpcc]

I feel your pain. I have no idea about how I even start this - it's too early, dammmit!

I'm with you on the country primary/secondary thing - I was amazed to discover that women in my training group were spending months working out which state secondary school to send their child to - going to the open nights (all conveniently held on the same night FFS), and getting all the paperwork in by May. May when their child was in Grade 5. (again FFS).

I have never been quite so tempted to move out to Birchip in all my life. ;-)

I would probably enrol bub for 3 yo kinder - if needs be you can always defer or repeat 3 yo kinder, and I agree with the other person who said it's easier to repeat that year than 4 year old. (Incidentally the country town where I grew up did 3 and 4 year old kinder, so to me that's quite normal!)

They're still so young though, and it just feels strange looking at all this already, when they're only just home from hospital relatively speaking.

[traeemery.livejournal.com]

Yeah, such a minefield. I had friends that sent their kid to a Monetsouri kinder only to have to pull her out because she was under stimulated by the teachers draconian ways. Which I would have thought was very odd for that system.
Another set of friends ended up taking their daughter to kinder in another counsel's jurisdiction because all the local ones did "free learning" which didn't prepare kids for starting school at all well.
I think that the strategy that some parents use of enrolling in multiple high schools then picking a final one closer to the time, in consultation with the kid, is what we'll do. Hopefully the local primary school 4 doors down will suffice for that period before then. Reluctant to go the Catholic school a block further away because I would prefer a balanced education towards religion.
But heck, who knows. You can't separate the social from the academic with schools. And M and I both would have benefited from a gifted students program and extra curricular stuff outside the school group in primary school to make it less miserable.