Moving from Australia to London with kids

[karpouzi]

Hi mums,

We are looking to move from Australia to London when my eldest finishes primary school? Has anyone done it? Will he be able to apply for grammar schools in the UK? Also, starting in September secondary school in the UK means that he won’t finish primary school on Aus. Is that possible? He is a September kid so he is already the oldest in class so I don’t want him to repeat a year again!

North London definitely does. But the exams are around the end of the summer holiday, just before the start of year 6. So you’d need to be in London a good year before they were due to start school.

Honestly - think so hard about this. We did one year in the U.K. from Aus and our kids attended private schools in Surrey. They genuinely couldn’t wait to get home. It’s SO different being a kid in Aus to the U.K. They found the schoolwork fine, but the lack of sport, the weather, the other kids were all a surprise to them. In the U.K. they found kids still made fun of people for being different which they’ve never had in Sydney. They even heard kids using “gay” as an insult and my older son was mocked for being smart and hard working, again, something that has never happened at his school in Sydney.

Yours may have a different experience in London of course. My kids like the U.K. and loved our travels in Europe and my oldest has said he would love to live there as an adult but the kids seemed very similar to what it was like when I was at school 35 years ago!