Wednesday 26 April 2017

School Down Under

Hello everyone, today is the first day of the second school term of the year, I had to go and get Leo this morning as Jessica has no fuel and no money for fuel till this afternoon, since I was up anyway it wasn't a bother to go get him.

Natasha rang while I was having breakfast and wanted to know if her dad was home, he was and as he was sitting next to me I passed the phone over, she had a flat tyre and needed him to go and change it, which he did because that is what fathers do.

Anyway since it is day one of term two I thought I will talk a little about school down under. Our school year runs from January to December and is broken up into 4 school terms, each term is roughly 10 weeks long. The school day is generally from 9am to 3pm but some schools have earlier starts at different times usually that happens with high schools.

Of course education is compulsory for all children aged between 5 & 17, our schools are broken up into generally speaking primary school and high school, students attend primary from kindergarten to year six and high school from year seven to year twelve.

A number of years back it was introduced that all students she attend school till the end of year 12, when I was at school and when my girls were at school you could leave after year 10 or when you turned 15. I left after year 10 as there was no way I was smart enough to go on to years 11 & 12, Tim left school halfway through year 8 when he got a job and both Kathy and Jessica left school as soon as they were old enough to leave. Natasha stayed till she was asked to leave which was half way through year 11.

Then there is tertiary education at universities or colleges or you can go to tafe if you wish and there is also vocational and training programmes.

We have public (government) schools and private schools with regulation and funding of education being the primary responsibility of the States and Territories but the Federal Government also plays a funding role as well.

Around 60% of all students attend public schools with the other 40% attending private or independent schools. All but one of Australia's 43 universities are public and the student fees are subsidised through a student loan program where the payment becomes due when graduates reach a certain level of income.

There are also many online tertiary options including doing tafe online, this is popular with people who work and study at night or on weekends, although there are many Tafe courses held at night as well. My youngest daughter attends Tafe three nights a week, which is why we have Leo three nights a week.

Even though school fees are voluntary if you attend a public school there is still a lot of out lay for parents with equipment or book packs stationary items and of course excursions and now there is the added cost of a laptop once your child hits year 5 they are expected to have a laptop to use this can be bought through the school or you can bought elsewhere but can't be just any laptop has to be a certain type with certain programmes and is generally kept at school.

When I was at school the government supplied everything as in books and pencils and rulers but not any more, also the back to school bonus which was around for many years is gone so really no bloody help from the government with the cost of school now days.











8 comments:

  1. This was so interesting, especially since there are some major conversations going on here about whether college should be free. I've got a son in a state college, which is expensive and another in a state school in another state,which is incredibly expensive. Unfortunately if anything changes here it will be too late for us.

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    1. Yes getting a good education shouldn't be so expensive

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  2. Costly affair these days for public schools. I know the primary school 3 of my grandchildren go to there are 3 uniforms each to be paid for at the beginning of the year, plus books and so on.

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    1. So true and so many schools only sell their uniform through the school which can cost more then if you could get it from say Lowes like you could in my day

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  3. In public schools here we always had to buy all our supplies (paper, pens, pencils, notebooks, etc) but they supplied the books. There were fees for being in extra curricular activities (usually sports teams cost the parents a bit) and we had to buy our gym uniforms. We started school in the fall and went straight through till spring with two weeks off over Christmas and a few holidays off. So the summers you were off. It's still basically the same as far as I know. Interesting to hear how it is there. I think kids could leave school when they were 16 if I recall. But ll my knowledge is from almost 50 years ago--LOL! I know I hear a lot about how much less funding there is for schools so I don't know if they have to buy books these days or what is going on. I know they collect funds and supplies for kids who can afford to buy the list of school supplies. I can imagine they would expect kids to be able to buy or have access to computers these days. That is a LOT of money! You make me wonder what it is like here now. Thanks for sharing. :)

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    1. I expect you will discover more about the costs now days when you gorgeous grandson starts school which will happen before you know it

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