QLD schooling?

[Freya]

I have a just turned 2yo and a 9mth old who are currently in daycare one day a week at a LDC.

I was just wondering a) what age do they start pre school and b) what age do they start school?

I did all my schooling in NSW so I have no idea what the deal is for other states.

[nic]

anna, if you check out the education qld website, it has the details of when kids start prep.

eta: Ok, had to go and put DS down, sorry for the short reply. The Ed QLD website says that when they start prep (preschool) they must have turned 5 by June 30, the year that they will be starting prep. Then when they start year 1, they will be turning 6 that year (before June 30 obviously)

There is a table on the website that has the birth years, and what year they will start prep to make it easier to understand.

Nic

[MantaRay]

It's recently changed here Anna. They start preschool when between 3 1/2 and 4 1/2 (birthday between July 1 and June 30). So DS1 was born first half of 2005 and does pre-school next year. DS2 was born second half of 06 and will do preschool in 2011.

Just a warning with pre-school though, there are no publics pre-schools here yet (Anna Bligh announced funding for some but they won't start for a couple of years). So your main option is C&K which is community run (and expensive LOL). And there is no guarantee you'll get in. It used to be that you had to put your child's name down at birth to get in. It's not quite so bad now, we got DS1 in for next year and his name only went down when he was 2, but you would still want to get on the list ASAP. Otherwise, you can do an alternative preschool program (Montessori, day care etc), or just skip all together and wait for prep (one year later than pre-school). HTH.