Todays blog update on the Victorian School System is brought to you by one very very confused Marita.
See yesterday I got a new pair of jeans.
My much beloved old pair of jeans had a button fly.
For two years I’ve been able to undo my jeans with a simple flick of the wrist, pop the top button and if you had the correct angle all the other buttons followed. Very easy.
But now.
Oh the Drama!
The Humanity!
My jeans have a button and a zip, getting them undone is a complex two step process of undoing the top button and then pulling down the zipper. I don’t know that I shall ever fully recover from this trauma.
So back on topic and lets discuss schools. This is to answer Chiloe’s question
“Could you tell me what is the schedule for australian kids? ( school hours)
I’d like to compare with french kids.”
Which I thought was a really good question.
Wikipedia has a little bit of basic info.
The Victorian Dept. of Education and Early Childhood had heaps and heaps (possibly too much) info.
A bit of info about PreSchool/Kindergarten/Kinder.
But this is my experience.
3 year old PreSchool - this is optional and not all parents enrol their children in 3 year old preschool. Your child must turn 3 years of age before the 30th of April in the year the are doing PreSchool.
The enrollment age is important to remember - see Annie’s birthday is on the 1st of May - one day after that cut off, so she is amongst the oldest in her class, almost a full year older in many cases. Heidi on the other hand is currently one of the youngest in her group as her birthday is on 24th of January. I have to keep this in mind when I compare their accomplishments at PreSchool as not only is there the autism but there is a good 8 months age difference also.
3 year old PreSchool is (in our case) 2 sessions a week, both 2 hours in length - often 3 year old PreSchool sessions are scheduled for the morning as the children still have afternoon naps and get cranky during afternoon sessions.
4 Year Old PreSchool - this is as far as I can tell not compulsory but is highly recommended and as the fees are partially govt. funded it is often cheaper than 3yo PreSchool even though the sessions are longer.
Both the PreSchools I have experienced offer 3 sessions a week at 4yo level - Each session 4.5 hours in length. Some PreSchools offer two days of 6.5 hour sessions as an alternative for 4 year old PreSchool.
At both 3 and 4 year old PreSchool the first term is mostly used to ’settle in’ the children, each class is split in half and only attend for half the session for the first month. Then the classes are merged together again but still only attend for a half the session. This time is spent by the teachers familiarising themselves with the new children - easier to do when only half the class is there. Also it gives the children time to get used to the routine of PreSchool without exhausting themselves.
And having mentioned terms I might just write a little about that. The School system here runs on 4 terms a year. This year the dates are as follows:
Term 1: 29 Jan (pupil free day), 30 Jan (students start) – 20 Mar
Term 2: 7 Apr–27 Jun
Term 3: 14 Jul–19 Sept
Term 4: 6 Oct–19 Dec
The School year begins in January and finishes in December.
Primary School - Starts with Prep at age 5. Prep is the what Annie will be doing next year.
School hours are 9am to 3.30pm
School Days - Monday to Friday
For the first term of Prep the two schools we are considering run a transition / settling in program, for this term the prep school hours are 9am to 2.30pm
School Days for Prep transition / settling in - Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.
For the first term only the children get Wednesday off school.
Before and after School care is offered at most schools now for those parents who work and can not get their children picked up at open/close time.
Children attend Primary School from Prep to grade 6 (age 11yo)
Secondary School - grades 7 to 12 (12yo to 17yo)
Hours are again 9am-3.30pm
Days - Monday to Friday.
That is about it for my knowledge of the School system. Hope it wasn’t too confusing.
Now I’m going to go practice undoing my fly without catching anything in the zipper or breaking a nail.
Life is so hard sometimes grin
