Moving to North Wales. Too many questions.

[Evamagone2015]

hi!
Our family is moving to Wales from North England to Llangollen area.
One of our child will need to start reception (he will be 5 in September), and our other child will need to go in year 6.
I have a lot questions I have no idea where to start.
Does in Wales national curriculum is different than in England and do you have any tips/websites/reading lists I can prepare my daughter who is already struggling in school?
Also should I start giving her every week few new words in Welsh?
As she is already struggling we are a bit concerned after listening rumours that schools in Wales are more strict.
If to be honest I do't mind more strict school I just would like to prepare my child to give her some confidence :)
Also should I register my children for school places already now if we are moving in summer?
Thank you for your replies :)

The first thing to say is to forget about schools being stricter, that is not the case in Wales. Yes there are some strict schools but no more than in England.

There is a different curriculum, which will include welsh, so your children will need to pick this up, but most children adapt fairly easily to this. It will be your year 6 child that will be more disadvantaged by this. Anything you can do to help get a start on this would be good.

You cannot apply for a school place until you have an address which you are moving into and in many places until you have actually moved. If you are talking about Llangollen itself that is Denbighshire but if it is to the east of Llangollen, like Acrefair or Cefn Mawr then that is Wrexham LA. So you need to check and then contact the LA involved to confirm exactly what the arrangements are. Parents have just been advised the schools that reception year will start at in September and this is the likely to be the more difficult school year to get places at as the class is kept to 30 or less.
Schools are inspected in Wales by Estyn. It works differently than in England and schools may go up to 6 years before they are re-inspected, so you need to be slightly more careful about whether what the report says is still current at the school.
If you want to ask more specific questions then it might be best to PM me and I will try and answer them.