Although a lot of private schools have a primary school you will find most are a lot smaller than the high school because this is very, very common. Both my brother and I went from a public primary to private high school with no issue, at least 80% of students entering the first year of high school were new.
i'm going to go against the grain here and say that i love the idea of a p-12 school. i think it is awesome to go through that long with the same bunch of kids and not to have to go through such a huge transition at such a difficult stage of puberty. we are sending our kids to a p-12, and about 70 new kids will enter the school at year 7 level, so they will have lots of opportunity to make new friends and social circles, but will still have their established friendships.
I agree with Ginger. My girls are going to a private school that goes from kindy to Yr 12 and I love that they will have a stable environment. I moved around schools a lot s a kid and I absolutely hated it. The school has only two streams the whole way from kindy to Yr 6, and then there is a larger in take, which is something I also like about it.
Having seen the difference between what my kids are taught and what the kids at the local public schools are taught, I'm very very pleased with our decision.
While judging on the website might not be a fair assessment, I think judging on how you feel as you walk around the school itself is a good idea.
FWIW, I had to "fight" my DH to send the girls to private school from kindy, but now that he's seeing the results he is completely on board.
I think school requirements also change in relation to the individual child. Some kids will do really well no matter what school they go to, but others maybe won't fair so well in either the public or private system.
I went to public primary and private secondary. Many kids start in year 7 so your kids wouldn't be odd. The friendship groups always change dramatically at this time. It's not something that I would worry about to be honest.
Just my experience... but I went to the same school from P-12 and if anything, that was problematic for me socially. I was a pretty shy, anxious child in primary school and I felt that by year 6, I'd been pigeon-holed. This is who you are and this is your status in the social hierarchy. I always wished I'd gotten a chance to reinvent myself in year 7 like all the other newbies did. They just got to rock up and declare their hand as they saw it then. Nobody had any preconceptions and they tended to be more popular in many cases because they were new and interesting!
As a kid I went to a few different schools due to moving house and then went to the local school for high school (by then we were living in the country). My entire education was in the public sector.
I am now a teacher in a public school, so I can see things from that perspective too.
If it were me, I wouldn't recommend going to the same school all the way through. I agree with some of the above posters that changing schools at least once during schooling can be a good chance to 're invent' yourself. I see so many kids these days who can really benefit from a change after finishing primary school. This is especially true for those kids who seem to be given a hard time from others, they get a chance to start somewhere new and make new friendships.
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