a different guest wrote:Bella - the sports at the SES school are straight out of the 1950s. Cricket and rugby for the boys, netball and and softball for the girls. *now where is that eyerolling smilie?
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I have two kids in the state schooling system and I am very impressed with it.
You will find state schools these days very much have a whole of child approach. Academic kids are encouraged but for those whose talents lie elsewhere (art or music or sport, whatever) their achievements are also celebrated. "every kid is good at something" is the approach - and being acknowledged as "good at SOMETHING" often leads to being good at other things.
Also, given the diversity of kids within the state school system - appreciation and acceptance of difference, getting along with others etc. are all a natural part of the curriculum. I think there would be less of this (outside theory) in an sop school. Please excuse me for making a gross generalisation that may be offence (and not to mention incorrect) - but my experience of sop people here is they are generally anglo and middle class "aspirational voter" types.
Australians like to think of themselves as an egalitarian society. This ideal is worthy to uphold. I don't think you would necessarily get this in an sop school.
One final note is practicality - it is SO nice for kids to go to school in local area. They see their classmates at the park, and organising play afternoons is easy. The school IS the local community. Do you want to be part of that community - or have a separate one thru the sop?
My school if about an hour away from me. I rather not think that the school is a local comunity, but a family. My school is a family, the head knows everyone's name, everyone knows everyone and so we are, by far a local comunity. I suppose it depends on the child as I have friends who left my school because they found it too suffocationg, however for me i found the protected small enviroment warm and home-like. My freinds all live more than and hour than me, but as we are older traveling to meet centrally is not much of a problem, mind you most of them have been together since they were four, over 12 years now, and they have grown together like sisters do.
We have lacrosse as our sports lessons, however we also do athletics, netball, badmington, used to do swimming, also rock climbing, canoeing, hiking, mountian biking, even did parachuting as an extra thing... If you request these sports, the teachers at my school with much enthuasim will organise it! all it needs is a matter of speaking up. We're tryign to get self defence classes too, something like Judo...
Each girl participates in everything. And that is what I like about it, just because you're not good at sports does not mean you can get awat with it. Every girls has to do school activities, ie. sports and singing. If every girl does everything... surely she must be good at one of those things, and like any school, whether govment run or not, the girl is encouranged in the places she is best at. THose who are good at singing sing for the whole school, those who are good at playing matches with for thw whole school, those who are good at writing, win writing competitions for the school, those who are good at maths, win the maths challenges for our school.
Like i said earlier, it depends which enviroment your child suits. Those who didnt like the attention or found it slightly intruding into their personal lives in my school left. those who liked it stayed.