Moving to UK from Oz

[OzMama22]

Hi! We are moving to London-ish (we still dont quite know where!) in May 2010. My DS is 7 and DD is four and a half. DS is in Year 2 in the Australian system and DD was due to start Prep (the 1st yr of school) next Feb. What I am basically (ha!) trying to find out is what is expected of kids at the end of Year 2 (UK) and Reception? I found one website that said at the end of Yeat 2 there are teacher assessments and most kids would be hoped to be at Level 2 (but then could find no info as to what this actually means!) I guess what I'd like to know is will my kids (both bright) be about avg, ahead or behind. This especially concerns me with DD as she had no formal schooling yet, she attends a Montessori childcare centre 3 days per week while I'm at work. She is starting to read, writes by copying quite well (better handwriting than DS!) and draws like there's no tomorrow (get about 10 drawings per day on avg!).
Second question: how soon do we have to get our kids into school after we arrive (early May) - we've been told UK system much stricter with attendance than Oz schools. I am supposing that we have to have an address before we can enrol in a school?
Any thoughts or tips on settling into a new school system would be very much appreciated. Cheers,

I would say that by far most important criteria in deciding where to live would be the choice of school. It can easily be a difficult enough job here, it certainly won?t be easy from Oz!

You may start at Local Education Authority Web Sites, find the names of the schools and start your search at the OFSTED web site.

You may also try a Map site and try to pick up the school names shown and then make enquiries.

StreetMap - MultiMap - UpMyStreet

You may Post here asking about a particular school but replies are rather subjective.

The school wouldn't register your child without a UK address but you may wish to establish e-mail contact with the school of you choice, asking for advice and enquiring if there are any places available, so that when you arrive on their doorstep they won?t be too surprised!

Contact the school when you arrive and arrange a start date as soon as possible.

School attendance is monitored very closely here; one of the measures of a school is attendance rates. Much research has been done indicating you get better results with better attendance and worse attendance tends to lead to worse progress (quite astonishing really!).

It sounds like your children will fit in fine.

May is the start of the British summer so bring a raincoat, an umbrella and something warm!

We moved from Sydney to London 4 years ago in May when DD1 was 5 (had just done one term of kindergarten) and DS1 was 3 (no pre school at all). DD1 went into the end of reception year. Some of DD1's peers had been at the (private) school for 3 years (nursery, pre-reception and reception) and were writing neat little paragraphs about 'what I did on the weekend', whereas DD1 could just about write her name in spider-scrawl and could not read much at all. DS1 was fine as he just went straight into pre-reception. It took DD1 about 2 years to fully catch up. In year 2 she did a remedial reading course, but by year 4 she won the Academic Achievement prize for her year, and a place at a very competitive selective school. In my experience, most kids coming from Australia or the US are slightly 'behind' (whatever that means) mostly because London kids seem to start full time school at an amazingly young age. BUT, with the right support they catch right up with no problem at all. Hope that helps, the UK education system can seem very strange coming from Australia!

Another thing I forgot - Levels (which are written as things like 2c, 2b, 2a etc) have no relation to years. Very confusing. There are website resources out there that explain the attainment levels. Try googling 'England attainment levels key stage 1' and see if you get anywhere.

Look at the www.dcsf.gov.uk website. It's not simple to find anything but if you search for the 'standards' bit of the site, you should be able to see what the levels are and what your children would be expected to know at each level. Also, if you go to the TDA website (www.tda.gov.uk I think), you can register and view the Primary Magazine online. It has up-to-date info about all things primary school and new initiatives.

Thankyou so much for all your thoughts, I will look into these ideas/websites.
It seems like quite a minefield and quite tricky to get the timing right! I remember feeling the same way when we moved to NZ a few years back now, and it all eventually worked out...