澳洲Sydney的小學

Elise@Sydney

Thank you Szebaba for referring me to this forum (8 May 08). (This is my first time posting a message in this forum. I found  that some words are connected together when I previewed the passage. I hope it will be fine when it is published and you will not have much difficulties in reading it.  Sorry!)

I have been in Sydney for 6 years – not too long indeed. I am more thanhappy to share my experience with the parents here and hope the informationprovided below will be of help to you.

(1) Primary education here is free of pressure andfull of fun. For public schools, it doesn’t really make big difference to which schools to be attended. Once you live in the “boundary” of a school, the schoolis bound to take your kids no matter how full they are. That’s why some parentspurposely move to those “good” areas in order to go into the “good” schools.Those good areas are normally the higher income areas. I am more familiar withthe Hills District, North-West part of Sydney. This is the area I settled since moving to Sydney partly because of the “good schools” around.

(2) When we say a public primary school is good, itis normally is determined by words of mouth, the availability of “outstanding class” (OC) in year 5 and entry rate to “selective high school”. Students haveto take highly competitive examinations in order to get into OC and SelectiveHigh. The main objective of these examinations are to identify those gifted andtalented kids and provide them different curriculum (or higher level work) inorder to further bring their potentials out.
They are on voluntarily basis. Most of parents here (I mean the Aussie parents) actually are not care about these examinations and their children willjust move up from the main stream / public schools.

Kids takingthese examinations are largely from Asian (particularly Chinese & Indian)families and they usually take a lot of after-school tuition classes in orderto prepare for those examinations. If you stay closer to Chinese communitieshere, you will feel the same “pressure” like that in HK – my kids should go tocoaching schools. It will be too much if I go on to explain. Afterall, yourkids are still young and you still have plenty of time to understand theeducation system here.

(3) For private schools, they are broadly dividedinto Christian/Catholic schools and other non-religious ones. School tuitionfees range from A$2,500 to A$20,000, not including uniform, excursion, specialevents etc. People like to send the kids to these schools mainly because oftheir reputation of strict disciple and better school resources (of course youpay them). Some private schools also perform very well in academic area. Theyhave a higher level of demand on students’ academic performance and school tests/examinationsare round the year even at primary grades. You don’t need to be aChristian/Catholic in order to get into these religious private schools as mostof them will reserve a certain quota for non-Christian families. However,without doubt, you will have much higher chance if you are of the samereligious background as the school.

(4) For non-English speaking background students,schools provide “English as Second Language” (ESL) program for students whose Englishlevel is not adequate to catch up in the class. Some schools run ESL atkindergarten but some provide the program for year 1 and above students.
While teachers will tell you whether you kidsare required to be put into ESL program, I would suggest you to keep closecontact with the class teachers (don’t be afraid to ask) about your kids’performance and request for ESL program if you notice that your kids arestruggling hard with English.

(5) Our kids come from a Chinese background, wherelanguage is captured by depending on cues, recall, and memory dependentassociations. Learning to read English, however, is very different.Essentially, it is about processing sequence of sound and letters.
We reckon that some kids do need extra helpin learning English from outside schools. The English learning centers, named“I Can Read”,
I am working at provideprograms on reading, writing, oral presentation etc. They are developed by 2Australian Education Psychologists, approved by the Ministry of Education in Singapore and taught in 7 countries. The programs are not onlyfor non-English speaking students. Actually, at the I Can Read centers in Sydney , a lot of students come from Aussie families, whosefirst language is English. Most of them do not have learning difficulties butfor various reasons are behind the required standard at schools. I witnessedthe great improvement these kids have made after learning with the programmes.If you wish to have more information about the I Can Read, please see www.icanreadsystem.com .

That’s all the information I can think of at thismoment. Please feel free to ask if you need further information on the above. I will tell you as much as I know.

Elise@Sydney

Hi F Forest,

Not all public schools have OC. This webpage give full info on OC at NSW  http://www.schools.nsw.edu.au/le ... nts/ocplacement.php

OC is a 2-year programme for year 5 & 6. To get into OC, the kids have to take an OC placement test which are open toYear 4 students. Schools will announce, normally in May, when applications for OC test are invited. The test will take place in Juy and result will come out in November. This is a very competitive exercise. Apart from test results, academic performance and schools' recommendations are also taken into account. It is always said that the OC placement test is very difficult. A lot of coaching schools out there provide programmes/trial tests of OC and a lot of non-English speaking kids are sent there in order to prepare for the OC test. 2007 OC placement result showed that 42% of students accepted for OC were from non-English speaking background.

I have 3 kids of age 15, 12 and 7. We live in Baulkham Hills and my kids all go to Crestwood schools. Crestwood Public School is quite a good primary school though it doesn't have OC. Crestwood High School is not too bad though quite some parents from Crestwood primary will put their kids in private high schools.

In my area, Matthew Pearce Pub School (just a few minutes from Crestwood) has OC. It is a big size school with nearly 900 students (Crestwood has about 600 students). Not surprisingly, from what I have said above, you will see a lot of Asian faces in this school.

Feel free to write to me if you have any more questions.