Move to Newcastle

[noralk]

Hello you beautiful mums:)
We are a family of 5 and planning to move to NewCastle. After some research we found out that Newcastle is the best and safest place to raise children. We have a 14 years orld girl and 2 boys (8 and 10). We need som advice and help to understand how the schoole system works. Today we live in Norway, so my children cant talk english. How should solve that? we really need and appreciate some good advice

You will need an address in Newcastle to apply for a school place here; you cannot do it in advance. So you can either identify the schools you want to go to and try and live near them (and hope they have places) or pick a place you’d love to live and identify schools after that point.

Do your children speak any English at all? I would be looking for lessons before you move because it will be very hard for them otherwise.

My oldest daughter can speak and write english, but not the others. Is there any possibility to take lessons in Newcastle? Because that type of lessons for children dont exist here.
How about privat schools? School fees?
How is the job marked for pharmasist in Newcastle? I have master degree in Pharmasy for University in Oslo

I can't imagine Newcastle being a better and safer place to raise children than Norway (I'm from Newcastle and have spent a lot of time in Norway).... but anyway......you must have your reasons.
There are plenty of children who move to UK schools with little or no English and learn very quickly indeed. If the children's home language is Norwegian, the languages are related so this makes it a little easier than if they were coming from the background of an unrelated language. I think the 8 and 10 year old would pick it up very quickly in their primary school.
I've been out of the country for a long time now so I am not up to date with the current provision for speakers of another language.

I think you'd have to look for a job first and then choose an area to live and then look for schools.
You'd need to move fast though - no one knows what is going to happen post-Brexit in March 2019.

Private schools: Newcastle High School for Girls
Dame Allans, Newcastle Preparatory School, Royal Grammar School,
Newcastle School for Boys.
Google them for info.

8, 10 and 14 are not standard entry ages into English state schools. Assuming that your children have not had birthdays since 1 Sept, they will be going into Year 5, Year 6 and Year 10. Certainly in primary schools, there are maximum class sizes, and a school can then only admit more children if the class size is not full. So in Y3,4,5,6 mac class sizes is 35 (with very few exceptions). If a Y4 class already has 35 pupils in it, you will not get a place. You can go on a waiting list though (this in itself is not “one in/one out”, there are prioritised admission criteria). Because of this, it can be difficult to get into a popular school, particularly more than one child.

You may be best off finding out which school have places for those year groups and then choosing your living location once you know where you can get school places.

As for Pharmavy jobs - we’ll Newcastle has a big teaching hospital and big university. When I lived up there I knew quite a few academic pharmacists.

Than you all for your advice. Norway is for sure a beautiful and great country to raise children, but it is a small country with few oppertunities.
We thought maybe move next summer, do you thing that will be an issue?
Than you for your advice

If you move next summer, then your middle child will be looking at entry into secondary school (assuming he is 11 before 1/09/19). Application for secondary school into Y7 in Sept 2019, via the standard route is happening now, with the deadline in mid October. So after this time, you will need to identify which schools actually have places to accommodate your 2 older children. This is all for state schools, I have no knowledge of private schools.

I noticed a typo in my previous post. If your 8 year old was transferring to an English school now, he was be entering Y4. From 1/09/2019 he would enter Y5 (assuming he is 9 by then).