Closest State Primary School

The tour today was of the closest State primary school to our house. This for many people would be the first choice of primary school for their child, for a number of reasons.

1) State primary schools are super affordable, this one is $100 per child, per year, bargain! That includes all their books, pencils, stationery etc. Additional costs are for swimming, camps (3-6) and excursions, and uniform, which was a fairly standard Aussie primary school style.

2) Convenience. This school will be walking distance from us. It makes drop off and pick up easy and means that you will meet people who live in your local area. It makes attending out of school hours activites or meetings easy to get to and may even allow you to make a network of like minded people who you can share school pick ups with, baby sitting etc.

3) State schools must meet the minimum government regulations and must be accountable to those regulations. While this sometimes might be frustrating for schools, it does mean that all children have minimum standards that they should be reaching.

4) Diversity. State schools give your children a great opportunity to mix with everyone from their community, not just a specific religion or socio-economic group.

So how did today's school rate? Pretty good.

There were a few issues that I will have to consider more carefully, such as, this school has decided not to run LOTE, the principal believes that it doesn't work in Victoria, and not in this area. His thoughts are that one hour a week will leave the children with extremely limited language skills (counting, days of week, some songs, colours etc) that wont have them fluent in a language, and then in high school they learn a different language. While many of the students are already speaking a second language at home and struggling with English, so a third language is not ideal. These are valid reasons not to offer LOTE, however what about the argument that LOTE can introduce a whole new culture for a child, what of those children who have no exposure to other languages at home?

This school council has organised a Speech Pathologist to be at the school once a week to assist the children that need it.

They have additional aides and programs for children not keeping up with the minimum levels. They did not have any programs for those at the other end of the scale.

The school grounds are currently a building site, so can't be properly considered, the stimulus money certainly going to good use with a new library and gym, and a few new classrooms. These will be ready for next year, so the Preps will have a lovely school room and facilities to get them started.

Standard transition program from kinder and buddy system that is popular with schools now.

It was also wonderful to hear that the school doesn't zone. In fact we were informed (as I expected earlier) that State schools are not zoned, if you apply, you should get in (this can depend on visas, residency etc). Government regulations also suggest Prep classes are capped at 21, this is a recommendation, and up to the school.

The teachers were all using the interactive white boards, the students were all very polite. The school was clean, calm and comfortable. Possible that it hasn't changed much over the last 50 years, but that can be a good thing.