Moving from the US to UK and changing schools

[momof3inLA]

Hi there!
My family will be moving to London next fall... My children attend the local public school here in Los Angeles.
They are currently 8yrs old-in 2nd grade, and 11yrs old- in 5th grade.

My question is, what is the major difference between the curriculum used in the US and the UK?
Will my children have a very difficult time with learning in a UK school?
What can I do to help prepare them for the new ways of learning and subjects that might be different from what they have been learning in the US?
thank you,
Lindsey

History might be very different for the 11 year old. It might be nice to read some horrible histories books or for a lighter, silly, less in depth route watch the horrible histories programmes.

Even the 8 year old might enjoy the programmes

Your 11yo will go to secondary here, have you got the schools all lined up? London schools can be brutal to get places in. Secondary in England means having a programme of about 12 subjects to juggle (am not exaggerating) and a college-type schedule (different schedule every day of the week, or even a rolling 2 week timetable, every day different for 2 weeks then start over). I find it astounding, too.

History lessons would be enormously different, but depends on the school.
London is so cosmopolitan, they won't find things too difficult.

I dunno know about curricula now, but compared to my own CA childhood, my primary children do heaps more science, engineering, cooking, geography, sport competitions. Secondary they do textiles, '(work)shop', geography, 2 foreign languages simultaneously but not every day so the learning curve is appallingly bad.... few other subjects we never had offered.

They do heaps less PE.

Don't mind if you want to pm me.

The first thing you will have to get your head around is that it may take some time for your DC to get school places. You will not just be automatically be given places in your local school, it may well be "full". The LA has to find you a place, but that may even be in a different London borough. You can however remain on waiting lists and if a place comes up and you are top of the waiting list, you will be offered the place.
When it comes to fighting for a school place, come back here and there are people who can give you advice.

Next big shock to people from the US is that some State schools are religious, and biased entry to those of that religion/denomination. All state schools can and should have religious based assemblies (even the non-religious ones), these are normally "broadly Christian". All state schools are required to teach RE. However all State schools also teach evolution.

Finally the next big shock if you are in London, is that children are expected to get themselves to school using public transport, especially by secondary age (most primary children are still walked by parents). If you could move in August this is one skill that I would be trying to teach your children.

You will probably not be able to apply for school until you get here.

Otherwise, read British books, and especially Horrible Histories, and children cope very well even when they have little English.

The biggest diff for us was the methods of calculation. Some school's in the Uk use number line addition and subtraction. Matrix multiplication instead of the traditional methods. There are loads of youtube videos that explain this and it is really great for mental calculation

My oldest came to the UK in year 5 and they didn't make her learn the new methods because all her operations were consistent and correct. She learned them in upper school.

I wouldn't worry too much about history and RE at their ages. Much is made about the UK schools being way ahead of the US schools and this depends greatly on the state you're from but I found that is much more of an issue before year 4. After that the US curriculum catches up. My kids literacy was rated as strong when they came into the British School system. It might be worth going to the DFE website or downloading a SPaG test to understand what grammar and punctuation is required. I looked at the SAT tests when we moved here to understand different emphasis in the curriculum.

Another thing I had wished I had done is got them a tutor and gotten an assessment before entering them into school. For inwardly bound children, schools have 2 years before they are held accountable for their performance - they'll want to progress your child - but be careful with the initial assessment. They can set a student back a year or more behind the rest of their cohort.

1 more thing. In the US 6th grade most students are studying the same topics. There will be some gifted and advanced study working ahead of the grade and some behind - as you know.

In the Uk in Year 5, the students in the main streams are on level 3, 4, 5 ( a few may be on 6). There is a quite a big difference between 3 and 5.

No one has mentioned it, but I imagine spellings must come into it. Colour, favourite, grey, to name some off the top of my head.