The local education system: advice for parents

[toorak_girl]

- I want my daughters to be able to write and speak perfect English. It seems only the top 1% of the population actually manage this.
- I want my daughters to do more than rote learn. I want them to be imaginative, inquisitive and even distrust what they see and hear around them until they have thought about matters for themselves.
- I don’t want my kids to be doing hours of homework at age 7/8/9.
- I don’t want them to feel pressure to get good grades, certainly not until O-levels. But I also want them to be strong academically and have a range of options at 16/18.
- I don’t want to get sucked into a mentality where we as parents feel pressure and get sucked into tuition and ‘enrichment’. This applies especially to my Singaporean wife who is, shall we say, easily influenced by peers.

It's funny, but reading that, I could just hear the Singaporean couple who were our neighbours back home in Melbourne. They would say that what you mentioned would be the top reasons why they migrated.