Schools and Education
The education system here in Spain is somewhat different to England.
One of the main things that you will notice is that many of the schools do not have a "school uniform" policy. In my opinion, not a good thing, as you cannot tell who is a student versus who isn't!
The other thing to note is that here in Spain, parents are responsible for buying all their childrens school books; such as text books, exercises boks, reading books, school stationery and even toilet rolls for the younger ones!
Here is a useful link to a site providing detailed information on the Certifications achieved here in Spain in comparison to taking GCSE's. Especially useful if you already have children in school in the UK and are thinking about bringing them out to Spain to continue their education.
Wendy of The Sierras magazine wrote an article during 2007 as below:
One thing I didn’t know and possibly if I had done a bit more research before moving my entire family to Spain, I would have found out, was that you have to pay for school books, not only text books but work books as well.
In fact, you have to fund everything, including pencils (lápices), pens (bolígrafos), pencil sharpeners (sacapuntas - don’t you just love that word!) to baby wipes (toallita húmedas) and toilet rolls (papel higiénico)! It is not just one initial outlay either. For some reason one of my children, loses everything on a regular basis. I must have bought at least 20 sacapuntas, I don’t know how many gomas (erasers) and tijeras (Scissors). Guaranteed on a Monday morning when I’m nagging about homework that a pencil (lápiz) cannot be found and a frantic search under all the furniture is conducted, looking for a stray pencil. The reason I should have done my research better is that I have 4 children and it has proven to be quite costly.
My younger children in theory didn’t need to start school straight away as they were under 6, but we felt it was an important way for them to integrate and learn the language, the downside is that the books for that pre-primary level are even more expensive! Over the last couple of years the Junta de Andalusia has funded many of the different years school books (at least 80% are paid for). This year for example I will only have to buy books for one child. This changes yearly so nothing is guaranteed.
So how do you go about it? Normally in your local village or nearest town, there will be a supplier of school books and at some point during the summer holidays they will have been given a list of books that every year needs. It is just a matter of putting your child’s name down on the list and what year they will be going into. Sounds easy doesn’t it? But actually it can be quite stressful for both you and the shop assistant! Invariably some books turn up, others don’t, many days are spent to-ing and fro-ing, you get to the point when you don’t even know what books you have or haven’t got.
Then school starts and the lists of supplies are given out and it would seem are needed straightaway. Things would be easy if we had Tesco or Asda around the corner - with their Back To School policy, advertising in July for things you don’t even need for school in England, but unfortunately the local ferreteria (hardware shop) or tobacconist are not set up in quite the same way. The first year was obviously more difficult because I didn’t have a clue what a sacapuntas was, so I first had to translate the list before I could go shopping, it is certainly easier now. In fact if you have a relationship with your local shopkeeper, just give them the list and go back later, much less stressful!
The other thing your child might need to know is that the amount of homework here is much higher than in the UK. When my daughter was 7 in the UK, she did 10 spellings over the weekend (alright rushed on the Monday over breakfast), my son of 7 in Spain has two pages or more of either maths or lengua everyday, fine if you can speak the language, but expect to spend hours of frustration (and tears) trying to help them, not only are they learning the subject but its in a new language, so you need a good dictionary - this doesn’t always help as I have translated every word in many a sentence to still not having a clue what they are asking.
They all seem to get there in the end though, it is certainly true what they say - kids do adapt and I take my hat off to all of them, can you imagine sitting for 4 or 5 hours a day having Spanish spouted at you and not understanding a word it. How tedious, but we expect them to just get on with it!
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