Moving On

The chicken wings, marinated earlier in the day, are grilling in the oven and we're gonna bring it over to a friend's place later for dinner where the adults will be having beef curry. Boy, after a busy day, am I hungry!

These first 2 days of March have been significant, busy and we know the coming weeks will get busier. KK started his first day at a new school on Monday and on the same day, we also took over the keys to our new house. Our new place is in fact an older house and slightly smaller, a far cry from our current place. Yet we are willing to give up a modern and spacious townhouse, a wonderful landlord and good neighbours and go through the hassle of moving house, all in the name of education.

To cut a long story short, we have not been satisfied that KK is reaching his fullest potential in his current school and the move to a better school is neccesary for the future of our child. I believe I've fallen into this category know as "kiasu parents" but I don't think I have a choice. In Singapore, MOE assigns all the teachers, sets a very clear syllabus for all schools to follow and set an academic standard so high that even the worst school cannot go very wrong if they follow MOE guidelines. Here in Australia, teachers are recruited by the principals and schools have a much freer hand in the curriculum, so standards can vary greatly between schools. In the past, no one knows where each school stands as there are no rankings nor a central source of information on their academic performance. There is however a standardised test that all Australian kids take at Year 3 and 5 called the NAPLAN (National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy) test and this year, the results of all schools were published on a centralised website set up by the Federal Government. The published results allow parents to compare how well the schools did among other schools of similar profiles. There is a common belief that private schools are better than public ones but with this website, we can see that this is not the case all the time. In any case, this publication proves what we have known all along and confirms the necessity to shift. The early signals that we have made a wise move are encouraging. KK has reported after 2 days that he finds this school more interesting and has declared he likes this school better.

As for the house, I believe that as soon as we settled in, we'll get used to it soon. With some furnishings and decorations, an old place can look pretty cosy too. Most importantly, it's the family and not the house that makes a home.

But gosh, I'm gonna miss my dishwasher and electric oven!!