First off, I want to say that so far I'm very impressed with the Australian primary education system - honest I am. Classes are so well staffed that last year I gave up asking the names of all the different classroom assistants I encountered after a while, settling instead for a nod and smile.
And the 11-year-old girl (AKA 'the tweenager') - following a series of interviews and auditions last year - has been offered a place in a high-school dedicated to the Arts for 2014. This is very good news considering the fact that many people send their children to private schools for their secondary education, and the school in question is not just of good repute, but also free. Winning!
Teachers here are well-paid and well-accommodated as far as I can tell (many work part time, sharing classes with other teachers for one or two days a week), and mercifully - apart from a brief mention in the school creed - they generally keep God out of the classroom.
Like anywhere, the standard of education a child receives rests almost exclusively with the abilities of their teacher, and for the most part we've been lucky in having some truly excellent teachers (although my eldest son's last teacher was, I felt, a little unable to understand his 'uniqueness', and seemed quite confused by the level of blood, excrement and Islamic zombies which made their way into every essay. And when I suggested we keep in touch via email, so that I could keep abreast of his progress, she looked as perturbed as if I'd just suggested a threesome with her and the principal.)
So yes, generally I'm a fan of the education system here.
That is until we get to the agony of the school stationary lists - of which we received four - detailing a long list of items expected to be purchased before the children return to school after the summer hols. I'm pretty sure these lists were churned out of an Enigma machine, since 90% of them made no sense to me whatsoever. The remaining 10% just seemed unnecessarily precise and exact.
My six year old - who has only recently learned to wipe his bottom effectively - had a list of 17 items on his, totaling $85, containing items (among many, many others) such as -
CODE QTY BIN DESCRIPTION
2014796 4 410 BOOK EX WA 300X215 48PG 24MM THIRDS
1290053 1 940 PENCIL CASE OMAX 215X125MM TARTAN 1ZIP POUCH
1290126 1 941 PENCIL CASE OMAX 375MM246MM TARTAN 2ZIP POUCH
1689320 1 1145 COUNTER PLASTICS 30S
I read through the whole list several times, and apart from the question 'why does he need two tartan pencil cases? - and why TARTAN?' I was at a loss as to what on earth it all meant. The 11-year-old's list was even more complex and twice as long.
When I was six we were required to show up to school with our packed lunch - unless you had school dinners in which case you brought nothing - and that was it. And on PE day it was nice if you brought some shorts and a t-shirt along, but should you forget these items, you simply stripped down to your knickers and vest (which sounds a bit weird now to be honest, but they were simpler, more innocent times...) and pranced about to Music and Movement in your undies.
Last year, when we showed up on our first day of school with nothing more than his school bag, the six-year-old's lovely, wonderful, oh-I-miss-her, teacher, dismissed my apologies and said 'to be honest, all this stuff coming through the door is a bleedin' nuisance'.
She was a very wise woman.
Emboldened by this memory, this year we rocked up to his new teacher's class in much the same spirit, bearing little more than a pencil case and some crayons.
-'Does he have all his things?' she blinked.
- 'Oh, haha, no, not yet!' (cue to tell me it's ok)
- (Silence)
-'Oh ummm...sorry...!' my smile faltered..
She fixed me a stare and turned around to talk to another - better - parent, while two dozen parental heads turned to get a look at the bad mother among them. Taking my cue to exit, I slunk from the classroom, shamed and chastised, the two-year-old toddling behind.
It couldn't be put off any longer, I headed to Office Max to address the problem.
Two minutes in it was clear that a) anything we might need had been sold out, and b) I was losing the will to live. The specificity of the lists were making my brain hurt ('wooden ruler, unpolished - 30CM'. 'Scissors, blunt end, 150MM SS').
'Sod it, I'm going to K Mart'! I told the two-year-old defiantly. He nodded solemnly.
And an hour later I emerged from K-Mart laden down with several bags of brightly coloured plastic items which would 'do', vindicated that I had out-witted those horrid lists, PLUS I had saved myself a couple of hundred dollars in the process.
OK, so we still don't have half the items on the mysterious list, but so far nobody seems to have noticed....
And the 11-year-old girl (AKA 'the tweenager') - following a series of interviews and auditions last year - has been offered a place in a high-school dedicated to the Arts for 2014. This is very good news considering the fact that many people send their children to private schools for their secondary education, and the school in question is not just of good repute, but also free. Winning!
Teachers here are well-paid and well-accommodated as far as I can tell (many work part time, sharing classes with other teachers for one or two days a week), and mercifully - apart from a brief mention in the school creed - they generally keep God out of the classroom.
Like anywhere, the standard of education a child receives rests almost exclusively with the abilities of their teacher, and for the most part we've been lucky in having some truly excellent teachers (although my eldest son's last teacher was, I felt, a little unable to understand his 'uniqueness', and seemed quite confused by the level of blood, excrement and Islamic zombies which made their way into every essay. And when I suggested we keep in touch via email, so that I could keep abreast of his progress, she looked as perturbed as if I'd just suggested a threesome with her and the principal.)
So yes, generally I'm a fan of the education system here.
That is until we get to the agony of the school stationary lists - of which we received four - detailing a long list of items expected to be purchased before the children return to school after the summer hols. I'm pretty sure these lists were churned out of an Enigma machine, since 90% of them made no sense to me whatsoever. The remaining 10% just seemed unnecessarily precise and exact.
My six year old - who has only recently learned to wipe his bottom effectively - had a list of 17 items on his, totaling $85, containing items (among many, many others) such as -
CODE QTY BIN DESCRIPTION
2014796 4 410 BOOK EX WA 300X215 48PG 24MM THIRDS
1290053 1 940 PENCIL CASE OMAX 215X125MM TARTAN 1ZIP POUCH
1290126 1 941 PENCIL CASE OMAX 375MM246MM TARTAN 2ZIP POUCH
1689320 1 1145 COUNTER PLASTICS 30S
 |
| Mission Impossible |
I read through the whole list several times, and apart from the question 'why does he need two tartan pencil cases? - and why TARTAN?' I was at a loss as to what on earth it all meant. The 11-year-old's list was even more complex and twice as long.
When I was six we were required to show up to school with our packed lunch - unless you had school dinners in which case you brought nothing - and that was it. And on PE day it was nice if you brought some shorts and a t-shirt along, but should you forget these items, you simply stripped down to your knickers and vest (which sounds a bit weird now to be honest, but they were simpler, more innocent times...) and pranced about to Music and Movement in your undies.
 |
| Now this I understand... |
Last year, when we showed up on our first day of school with nothing more than his school bag, the six-year-old's lovely, wonderful, oh-I-miss-her, teacher, dismissed my apologies and said 'to be honest, all this stuff coming through the door is a bleedin' nuisance'.
She was a very wise woman.
Emboldened by this memory, this year we rocked up to his new teacher's class in much the same spirit, bearing little more than a pencil case and some crayons.
-'Does he have all his things?' she blinked.
- 'Oh, haha, no, not yet!' (cue to tell me it's ok)
- (Silence)
-'Oh ummm...sorry...!' my smile faltered..
She fixed me a stare and turned around to talk to another - better - parent, while two dozen parental heads turned to get a look at the bad mother among them. Taking my cue to exit, I slunk from the classroom, shamed and chastised, the two-year-old toddling behind.
It couldn't be put off any longer, I headed to Office Max to address the problem.
Two minutes in it was clear that a) anything we might need had been sold out, and b) I was losing the will to live. The specificity of the lists were making my brain hurt ('wooden ruler, unpolished - 30CM'. 'Scissors, blunt end, 150MM SS').
'Sod it, I'm going to K Mart'! I told the two-year-old defiantly. He nodded solemnly.
And an hour later I emerged from K-Mart laden down with several bags of brightly coloured plastic items which would 'do', vindicated that I had out-witted those horrid lists, PLUS I had saved myself a couple of hundred dollars in the process.
OK, so we still don't have half the items on the mysterious list, but so far nobody seems to have noticed....
