Moving from London to Australia

[muminwestlnd]

Hello everyone,
We are a young family and we are thinking of moving from London to Sydney. It is a big move and I want to do the right thing by my family. My priorities are for my children to be happy in life and performing well at school. We have stable jobs, we live in a lovely area in London and my children are both happy at their school. However, I am unhappy in London, the weather takes the life out of me and we have no family or real friends we can count on. Being in Australia means we will be near my husband's family and close to childhood friends. It sounds like Australia is an obvious choice, but when I started doing my research, it may be that I won't be able to secure a private school for them (Australian registers their children to school when they are born) or able to easily move if things don't work out. Also, it seems there is a lot of bulling on Australian schools too. We have friends at elite Sydney schools that are struggling emotionally. In London, we are spoiled of choice of schools (you will always find many good private schools). Sorry, I know it may sounds snobbish but do want to keep them in a private school as it is what their are use to. We are not rich by any means as our salary goes to the children's school and a mortgage, but also moving probably means that we won't be getting as much salary in Sydney. I would love to hear your thoughts (please be kind). How likely is to get a place in a reputable school in Sydney (registering a year and a half in advance)? Is bulling common thing in Australian schools? Is it really helpful being close to family or may be a pain in real life?

I agree with you. We went to Aus in 2023 for our honeymoon. I joined various groups to get a proper perspective of the ups and downs of moving. If I went off Instagram then you could be fooled into thinking everyone was living the dream (and I'm sure some are!)

@muminwestlnd Sorry, just saw your questions to me, DH and I are currently on holiday in Bali 😁 Sydney is generally safe but of course nice houses and fancy cars attract opportunistic theft as I’m sure they do in London too. It’s funny, I am so used to most houses having CCTV I don’t even think of it as unusual until someone points it out.

Someone else explained the tiered independent school options really well, generally the top tier schools are the ones people put their kids’ names down for early - often there will be generational ties. It is really interesting standing at a North Shore train station around 7am, there will be kids wearing 10-12 different uniforms as people think nothing of a fairly long journey to school and parents of multiples will often choose different schools to suit their kids. Tbh if I had understood the system better when we arrived I would probably have sent mine Catholic as they tend to be low fee with good behaviour and decent results. Not the fancy facilities of the top tiers though. DS2 is in his second year of teaching in a local public high school having never been to one himself and absolutely loves it - he is adamant that the public system is where he wants to be to make sure all kids get a decent education, not just the people who can afford to pay.

Thank you, that's very helpful. Interesting you mentioned catholic schools tend to have good behaviour, some other comment mentioned that catholic school are for people with behaviour issues. I never thought some people could travel at 7am to go to school. That opens more options, fingers crossed :) Have a lovely holiday in Bali.

I have lived in Sydney for nearly 20 years and I don’t know a single person like this. The weather is beautiful 80% of the time. Yes you get some hot days in summer, but then you swim or go to the beach. It’s very rarely above 35 and more often around 28 in high summer.
Even when my kids were small, I could count probably 10 days where it was just too hot to do things outside all day. You might miss the middle of the day, but morning and evening are available!

Interesting reading these replies. We often visit the U.K. and I find it much more expensive than Australia for eating out - I would say almost double the price.
Our private school isn’t snobby at all (and we are on the north shore) - plenty of Toyotas, Nissans etc doing the drop off.

We actually lived in the U.K. for a year two years ago and the bullying that my older son received (for being foreign and a little bit nerdy) was unbelievable. Here he has friends from all over the world and although I am sure bullying does exist, I have never heard anyone mention it seriously. The school is very hot on relationship building.

Cost of living is so much cheaper here. I pay around $200 for electricity per month. My expensive summer bills (when I use air con) are around $350 a month. We have a 5 bed, 3 living area house. In the U.K. we paid £250 a month and had to pay for oil on top of that.

Council tax is $500 a quarter - in surrey we paid £300 a month.

Rail fares into the city are around $2. My kids get free rail and bus fares on school travel.

Groceries are a little more here. For a family of 4 (2 teen boys) we pay around $350 a week and in the U.K. I paid around £150. Food here is much better quality though.

As you can imagine, I totally love it here!

Thank you for your honest reply, I am so happy to see your post. You are so right! London is soooo expensive, eating out is certainly double. I wonder if people are saying “don’t come, it’s too expensive” (even though I have just been to Sydney) to demotivate people from moving?! The only thing stopping me are schools. Do you mind letting me know what school you are referring to in the north shore? 🙏🏽Did you register well in advance? My children current school in UK focus on the right behaviours too as oppose to trying to stop bulling. I am so worried about changing my children’s school.

I’m not super comfortable naming my kids school, (even though it’s big!) but I will say it’s in Hornsby and was a boys school and now is co-Ed. You should be able to find it via google from that!

The one down side I would say with private schools here in comparison to the U.K. is that they are huge. We have 320 in year 7 for example and even the primary school was big (year 6 had 180). The classes are fine and they do a lot in houses to make sure that kids don’t get lost. But it is a consideration. Neither of my kids have any additional needs but I don’t know how that would go in such a big school.

The schools are also quite full on - they do a lot of co-curricular and mine are in school at 6.45 and 7.00 four days a week doing orchestra, sports, choir etc. They also play sports on Saturday morning all over Sydney. So worth not living too far from school.

it is right to say that lots of people put their kids down very young. Mine started in Kindy so have gone all the way through but it is worth contacting schools you like the look of to see if there are places - sometimes you get lucky.

It used to be that the schools were less academic than U.K. ones but I think that has changed over the past few years. If you’re academic you will certainly be challenged in school, but equally there is a feel that if you’re not academic, you don’t get left behind; they’ll find your “thing” whether it be drama, sport, volunteering, design, tech etc. It’s not all about pure results.

It’s also less competitive to get into university here (there is a lot of competition for the top courses) and basically if you want to go, you can. Equally there is less stress if you don’t go. Plenty of people do apprenticeships etc and those kind of jobs (electrician, builder, plumber) are highly paid and well thought of. There is definitely less snobbery about jobs here.

@Ozgirl76 you came back 😁 That was DD’s school Y10-12. Unfortunately she got a bit scuppered by COVID but God she loved it, she has now finished Uni and still says they were the best years of her life.

That’s so cool! It is a really great school, both my kids are very happy there and we’re happy with it too. I’m so pleased it was so great for your daughter too!

@Ozgirl76 @Flatandhappy Thank you so much, that’s very helpful. I’ve been recommended the same school by friends as my preference was coed. It wasn’t high on my list as it’s a bit far (my husband’s family are in the inner west). It’s high on my list now though 😊

Let me just say, you are going to love the weather so much you’re not even going to care.
I’ve seen backpackers from England literally just stand in the sunshine looking at the flowers in a state of pure joy and happiness because of how BRIGHT they looked.
If will change your entire personality. You’ll become beach people. Get the kids in sport, surfing. Come on now, get over here!

I would love to but still waiting for school offers :(

Wishing you the absolute best