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Comments on Avondale?

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sixofus
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Comments on Avondale?

Post by sixofus » Sun, 08 Feb 2009 5:37 pm

Anyone have kids at Avondale or experience with it? I think it looks good -but I hear people say that it is too small to give the resources you need. My husband and I think small is not necessarily bad - in fact we think it could be a plus for littlies (Grade 1 and Grade 4)? I will be visiting this month to check it out personally and would like to know if there is anything specific i should look out for and ask about.
Any comments?

Jacqui Wong
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Post by Jacqui Wong » Wed, 18 Feb 2009 11:52 am

We chose Avondale Grammar for the small size and community feel. We are very happy with our choice. I have a son in yr 2 & his class has 25 kids with 3 teachers every morning during literacy & maths and 2 teachers in the afternoon. My daughter in yr 4 has 1 teacher and 1 aid for 12 kids! You can't beat ratios like that and I have seen my kids really come on as a result, especially in reading. They have also had lots of opportunities like talking in assembly and being on the Student Representative Council which I believe they would not have got at the huge International Schools. All the teachers know all the kids and it has been a very smooth transition for my kids from Australia to Avondale. The school principal is wonderful. Sure the resources do not match the big International Schools but I believe for primary school, my kids have all the resources they need at Avondale. The best thing is to come & look yourself. Your kids can come to Avondale and do a trial day. Let me know if you want more information. You should also talk to our enrollments officer Sarah Bowler. Ph: 0011 65 625 88 544. Good luck.

mumof3
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Avondale

Post by mumof3 » Fri, 20 Feb 2009 9:50 am

Have you visited Avondale yet and can comment? I'm about to head over and see it for myself. I know 3 families that are/have been at the Australian International School and love it but a smaller school has great benefits for the whole family.
How is your year 4 girl feeling about a move? My daughter says she won't go and that is causing more stress than the actual move!

Lulu Mee Lah
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Avondale

Post by Lulu Mee Lah » Tue, 03 Mar 2009 6:55 am

I had a look at Avondale yesterday and had a tour with the lovely Sarah. I got goosebumps from the student to teacher ratios. How can a kid not thrive there when they will be known as individuals. The principal also seemed like a great bloke. I'm planning to look at some local schools today - Marymount and Balestier Hill. My big question will be - is Avondale $40,000 (I have two daughters to pay for) better than the local school?

What parents and students always comment on when they love a school are the teachers and the community and the caring for the individuals -not the buildings. So I don't really care if the facilties don't match other bigger schools.

mandrew
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Re: Avondale

Post by mandrew » Sun, 15 Mar 2009 10:58 pm

Lulu Mee Lah wrote:I had a look at Avondale yesterday and had a tour with the lovely Sarah. I got goosebumps from the student to teacher ratios. How can a kid not thrive there when they will be known as individuals. The principal also seemed like a great bloke. I'm planning to look at some local schools today - Marymount and Balestier Hill. My big question will be - is Avondale $40,000 (I have two daughters to pay for) better than the local school?

What parents and students always comment on when they love a school are the teachers and the community and the caring for the individuals -not the buildings. So I don't really care if the facilties don't match other bigger schools.
Hi Lulu,

We moved here over Chinese New Year from NSW and had our daughter in Queenstown Primary for a month and although the school and staff was nice the style of teaching was not going to give our daughter the sort of education we wanted so we moved her to Avondale early this month and she's right back on track now.

There are many reasons why we decided to pull her out of Queenstown and maybe other local schools are different but suffice to say she was not really enjoying school or learning (like she did in Australia), and although the level of maths was as good as in Australia the level of english is not very good, and she found the mandarin teacher extremely intimidating. The teaching style at Queenstown very much relies on rote learning and no student ever asks the teacher a learning based question in class. Also class sizes were around 33 students per class

Putting your child into a local school requires a huge commitment of time and energy from parents/carers and given both my wife and I work full time we could not keep up with the daily homework requirements and erratic communication from the teachers. You must spend time with your child EVERY day checking her homework book and making sure she completes everything required that day. If not she will be publicly shamed in front of the class by the teacher the next day, and BTW it's up to the students to be able to copy into their homework books what the teacher wants from them, if they get it wrong or you cannot read your childs writing then bad luck. Some say this could be character building but seems more destructive of any students self-confidence to me.

Also Queenstown was a morning session school which meant our daughter had to be at school by 7:30am every day, I am not sure who this was worse for, me or my daughter ;-)

Oh, and almost all children seem to be tutored after school everyday in Primary One, and the teachers expect that.

Take a look at this local website perspective on what you need to be prepared for with local Primary One, it is very accurate from our experience:
- http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum ... .php?t=117

And this is an interesting discussions from locals on the tutoring requirements:
- http://www.kiasuparents.com/kiasu/forum ... c.php?t=88

Hope this helps.

Lulu Mee Lah
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Post by Lulu Mee Lah » Sat, 21 Mar 2009 6:27 am

Hi Mandrew, Thanks for the feedback and it confirms a lot of what i felt. It so happens that we have decided on Avondale. Education is something I am happy to spend money on if it means I believe it will give my kids the best chance to learn and be content. Balestier Hill would have been my pick of local schools but I think the transistion for my children would have been very challenging for many of the reasons you have mentioned. I felt right at home at Avondale and I think my daughters will too. I just felt out of my depth at the local schools. We are looking forward to our singapore stay now. We may just bump into one another some time soon. Lulu

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