Relocating Ireland to Edinburgh

[IrelandtoEdinburgh]

Hello, We are relocating to Edinburgh from Ireland and I would be very grateful for any information. My children are 7 (p3) and 4 (pre-school) and we are moving mid school year, hopefully around Easter. My main question relates to the curriculum and how similar/different it is?

Hi there, welcome to Edinburgh. I’m afraid as I don’t know anything about the Irish curriculum I can’t tell you about the comparisons. I imagine they won’t be worlds appart and your child’s teacher will do an assessment on reading level etc when you start the school to look at matching your child’s personal learning journey. Scotland follows the curriculum for excellence, give it a google for an overview. It is basically a themed framework that literacy, numeracy, creativity etc hang on.
At p3 even if school settings are wildly different in education terms there won’t be that much difference it’s not like secondary.

The process for getting in to a school is very different here, your school is determined by your address which is matched to a catchment school in your area. You cannot register for a school until you have an address. But you can enquire of the council which schools may have places especially for your 4 year old for next year p1 which is usually the critical factor. Moving mid year will also mean you might not get in to your catchment school if it is already full. Have a look here for more information . www.edinburgh.gov.uk/catchmentmaps and here www.edinburgh.gov.uk/directory/13/primary_schools

thank you for the info

If the school has capacity in the relevant year you probably won't need proof of address though. DS is not in his catchment school, the school had a place and we pretty much waltzed in.

I'd recommend you ring around the individual schools when you have an idea of where you want to live too.

Also, if you're not already, be aware that the age cut offs for starting school and therefore the subsequent year groups are different in Scotland to England although I don't know what they are for Ireland, e.g. a Year 6 in England could be a P6 or a P7 here.