Differences in Primary Education

Robert · Posted: Tue Mar 02, 2004 10:02 pm Post subject: Differences in Primary Education

I though to share some differences I have noticed between UK and Christchurch schooling at primary level.

1. Sports. Kids here do more sport in general, especially triathlon/duathlon type events which are arranged both at the school, between schools and by sport canterbury locally.

2. Music. My oldest child was offered lessons in a large range of musical instruments (with some on offer for loan from the school) and fees of $35 for a terms tuition in violin and no charge for recorder. The music tuition was available younger and in a much wider variety than in the UK.

3. Homework. Hardly any.

The kids get reading plus about 20 minutes per week. IMHO this is plenty for young children. In the UK, homework was taking up to 2 hours per week with deadlines that meant staying up late or missing out on evening activities.

4. Play Equipment. All the schools I have seen have decent size fields and monkey bars/ adventure play gear. often this will rival local parks for scale and quality. All is set up safely. Most seem to have a pool. You do get the odd minor injury from the play gear coming in to A&E but nothing serious. fingers crossed

Occasional greenstick fractures mostly.

5. Classrooms. My kids school rooms are older than their UK school and seem much less well equipped. On initial inspection they looked somewhat dowdy compared with the networked, state of the art kit in England. Seems that they get by without electric blackboards though.

6. IT. I think that the school is aware that the internet exists. I am not sure if they know anything else about ICT. again IMHO this is no bad thing as my kids spent 2 wasted hours a week on ICT in the UK.

7. teachers. My kids went to a good church school in the UK but they had trouble recruiting staff. Here there can be up to 50 applications for each post in a primary school.

8. Discipline. Top notch. No messing about tolerated. whip

9. School Bus. Many schools have a door-to-door bus service. 75 cents each way.

10. School dinners. No such thing here and often no outside catering either. Our school hs a deal with Subway who provide a meal on Fridays for $5 (optional and not very healthy) but few seem to take it up. I met one parent who was irritated by having to prepare meals daily after being used to the meal service in the UK.

Finally: HAIRY MACLARY! Lynley Dodd is probably NZs most popular author for young children and the books are brill for the under 7s. Do give a thought to buying some before you come to NZ with young kids. It will give some continuity to reading and books are expensive here!

rantoff

r+j · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 4:23 am Post subject:

Thanks for the info Robert Clapping

I'm a primary teacher and will be looking to work in Canterbury area, probably Christchurch so the idea of 50 applicants per vacancy is worrying!!

my 2 daughters will also be going to primary schools and will be glad to hear about the activities, they seem quite positive about the thought of moving so fingers crossed

hopefully it will stay that way. They both learn instruments here and it costs a lot! so good news about music tuition fees.

thanks
Jus

Robert · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 5:49 pm Post subject: Piano

We also have a piano tutor who comes to the house. He charges $50 per week to give a 3/4 hour lesson to our eldest and a joint 1/2 hour lesson to the other two boys.
He advised us (after shipping!) that we could have bought a piano here very cheaply. We would have been better off selling ours in the UK and buying one here - we could have had a load of extra cash that way. Hey ho...