Anybody living abroad with a child in a school . . . .

[dogwalker]

Can you help my son age 11 with a short project please? He needs to know a little about a foreign school and how it works compared to his own, eg what time do they start and finish, what do they eat at lunchtime, what subjects do they do, what do they wear, what do they do for physical exercise, how do they get to school etc. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

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My daughter's only 5. Would her info help?

Thanks K&TG her info would be great. Are you in the USA? I'll get in touch with the details ggglimpopo. Where are you by the way?

Just going off to make tea so I'll be back on here later.

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Yes, I'm in the USA.

She's in kindergarten, but it's a private kindergarten. If she was in a public school (state school) she would take a school bus to school because we live more than 2 miles from the school. (As it is I drive her.)

She starts at 8 and finishes at 2.

She wears a uniform which consists of a red or blue polo shirt with the school logo on it, and navy or khaki shorts or trousers. On Fridays they're allowed to wear their Primrose school t-shirts and denim shorts or trousers.

They start the day with circle time where they recite the pledge of allegiance, look at the calendar, and talk about the upcoming day. Then they go to "centers" and do maths, reading, science or computers. They also do Spanish once a week, and they get stories read to them and sing songs.

They have a snack mid morning (crackers, cereal, fruit or something similar) and then they play outside on the playground for a while. For lunch they always get a hot meal. Sometimes pasta, sometimes chicken nuggets, sometimes meat and potatoes. There's always some sort of veg and then fruit for dessert, and they have milk to drink.

After lunch they have quiet time where they have to lie down for 20 minutes and they can either sleep or read a book quietly.

She gets homework about once a week and they have 2 days to finish it.

The school year starts early here in Florida - the first week in August - and it's done the last week in May.

Any other questions?

This is her school.

Thanks K&TG thats great. GGG I'll be sending an e-mail on to you v shortly. We do have msn as well. Thanks. I think he'd quite like to have a new e-pen-friend anyway!

My son, also 4 and 5 at the time, went to school in Amsterdam for a few years. If it helps, their school day was similar in length, 8.50 to 3.15 but until the end of Groep 3 (year 2) they had two half days a week, finishing at noon on Wed and Friday. From Groep 4 on, this reduced to one half day.

School uniform is unknown in Netherlands and the kids wore whatever they wanted. Lots of children went home for lunch and if you stayed in school for lunch, you had to pay extra for the supervision as it was not considered part of the school day. School dinners are also unknown, if you stayed in school you brought your own lunch.

Most of the children cycled to school (of course!), the foreign kids could be picked out by the fact that they were the only ones wearing helmets! Otherwise walking or bus was the preferred method of transport, very few came by car.

Holidays were similar. The first two years of school were not academic at all, no reading or writing, very little number work, just lots of craft, gym, singing, stories etc. After that, it seemed to be similar to school here except that they start languages much earlier as a matter of course.

Almost all children go to public school, there is much less pressure to get into the "right" school as there seems to be generally less difference between schools and for those kids who do go to private school, the fees are less than here.

Teachers are called Juf - pronounced Yuf (for a female) or Meester (for a man) followed by their christian name so my son's teacher was Juf Katya.

Hope this helps a bit!

I had two dd's at school in Indonesia, Yr2 and Yr 10. They were driven to and from school by our driver, starting classes at 7.50am and ending at 1.40pm. School uniform at junior school was a blue batik fabric for both girls and boys and a sunhat in their house colour, while seniors wore pale blue shirts and navy trousers/shorts/skirts.

The school is based on the British system so it wasn't radically different to most English schools in terms of lessons. There were children from about 70 different countries there so some went to EFL classes. Because of the tropical climate they had to wear sunscreen all the time and weren't allowed out unless they had their hat. Water was available all the time, coolers dotted all over the place.

Some children ate very unusual, to British eyes, foods - in dd2's class one child's favourite snack was dried fish eyes! Lots of children had a nanny who would hang about school and feed the child at meal times, (Though the school wasn't happy about that at all!) Typical foods were nasi goreng (fried rice) and satay.

Probably the most unusual aspect was that the school was guarded 24/7 by the Indonesian Army, due to terrorist threats. All entering vehicles were checked for bombs by soldiers with semi-automatic machine guns and everyone, inc parents, had to wear ID at all times. Soldiers with pistols patrolled outside classroom areas and made sure cars etc didn't park nearby. Amazingly, the children didn't really seem to be bothered, they just seemed to accept it all.

ds is 6 and attends an International School in Switzerland for ages 3-18 which loosely follows the US grades (ie Grade 1 here is UK Year 2). They start at 8.55 and finish at 3.15 although on Wednesdays they finish an hour earlier. The School Year starts mid/end August and finishes mid June. His school is 15km away from home and he travels by School Bus each morning and afternoon. From his classroom he can see both the lake and the mountains. There is no uniform so they wear casual clothes and footwear.

His subjects include German lessons as we live in a Swiss German speaking region, Computer Lab, Art and Music as well as the basic Reading, Writing and Maths. His current teacher is Canadian but previously he has had 2 American and one British teacher. Teachers are known by their christian names.

At lunchtime they have a choice of hot meal or packed lunch but the food is very similar to UK -pasta, pizza etc with salad and fruit. They enjoy swimming and PE throughout the year but have a Winter Sports field trip which is either sledding, ice skating or skiing for the older kids.

hth

DS is 4 and goes to asilo (infant school/nursery school) in Italy. We walk to school and he must be there before 9.30 (we usually get there about 8.30 so I can go to work)Lessons start at 9.45 until 11.30 when they get to play outside for a while before lunch at 12.00 - always some sort of pasta dish, followed by a meat/fish and veggie dish, followed by fruit and, if someone has a birthday, cake. School finishes at 4.00 but there is an option to finish at 1.00. They have gym classes once a week and also religion. The 5 year olds also have English language classes. They all wear a uniform apron, sort of like a lab coat which covers their clothes, pink or white for the girls and blue for the boys. The school year is early September until end of June with a break a Christmas and Easter (no half term holidays)...and he loves it!!

am in aus

11 yo go to primary school and they would be in year 6. they go to school from 9 to 3 with about 30 minutes morning tea and 45 - 1hr lunch time.

Phys ed they have 1 - 2 days a week but older students would play interschool sport on a fri afternoon.

At lunchtime - unlike the UK - they do not have dinner halls - they have what is called a tuckshop which would sell sandwiches, hot food, fruit, drinks and junk food of course. A lot of children would take their own lunch to school.

Whilst school uniform isn't compulsory, most children do wear a uniform - usually dress/shorts and shirt. Trainers or school shoes. Lots of school shirts are sunsafe with a protection factor of 50.

Children are not allowed to play outside unless they have a hat. this is in queensland. Big on sun safety here.

the subjects they would do - english, maths, science, arts, music, geography, history, foreign language. Except for music, phys ed and foreign lang - they would have the same classroom teacher the whole time.

They go to high school at the start of the year they turn 13. Our school year is late Jan to mid Dec. SUmmer holidays - 6 weeks over christmas time. They have 10 days holidays at easter, 2 weeks at june july and two weeks lat sept.

They start primary school aged 5 - year they turn 6.

Get to school by car, walk, bus or ride bikes.