Hi there!!

[KenZo]

Hey there! My family and i will be migrating to Adelaide in the tail end of 2016. We are making our preparations as i post this thread. I have been reading various threads on this forum. Some good advise but some contradicting ones as well. I guess different strokes for different folks.

 

My wife and i have been working in IT advertising for the last 10 years. We have not secured any employment yet but are actively applying to see if we can nail down a job (highly unlikely but worth a try). We have an 11 year old daughter.

 

There are a couple of priorities in our mind.

(1) Getting a job - A full time one would be great. However a parttime/casual job will also do.

(2) School - Can anyone recommend a good public school? I read about Adelaide High School and Glenunga Int high School. Are they any good?

(3) Suburbs - Any nice family oriented suburbs to recommend? We will be renting for 6-12 months before we consider buying a place. We are looking at the $250-350 per week range.

 

We are anxious to start our lives in Adelaide and look forward to hearing your experiences. Cheers!

[Blossom]

Welcome to the forum. Your first couple of posts will take a little while to be visible, do to us having to check for spammers. :-)

 

Have you ever visited Adelaide before?

[KenZo]

No i have not.

But we will be making a trip to Adelaide in May/June to reccy the place. However we have been to other parts of Australia. We accepted a state sponsored visa to Adelaide.

[snifter]

I'd think getting your child into either school will be tough, given the demand for places.

 

If your daughter starts Y8 at Adelaide HS, as in you are living in the zone before the start of the school year (and I would guess can prove a years lease) then I'd hope that would be enough. Otherwise the chances of getting in are slim. There are special entry programmes but your daughter would be facing lots of competition for a place and it would require a good standard in whatever it was to be in place already.

 

Glenunga is the same. If residing in the zone prior to the start of the school year (and again, they may want a years lease) then a place can be gotten. Outside of this, I'd say not much chance. Their website says the following (note the length of time residing in the zone will be taken into consideration). What they are trying to end is people moving into the zone just to get their kids into the school, then moving out a while later. They want longer term residents and all that.

 

As of 17 July 2015 Glenunga International High School (GIHS) reached student enrolment capacity. For 2016 the school will be unable to offer Year 9 - 12 enrolment placements to prospective students regardless if residing in or out of GIHS' zone except for students seeking entry at Year 10 for the International Baccalaureate Diploma which GIHS offers on behalf of DECD schools. Details of the Enrolment Capacity Management Plan can be found in the Education Gazzette. Families seeking enrolment at GIHS are directed to a neighbouring school or encouraged to remain at their current school. Applications can be placed on our register for enrolment and should a placement become available GIHS will contact the family (preference is given to families residing in GIHS' zone and the length of time the family has lived in the zone).

 

 

TBH if you are putting your eggs into those schools baskets, have a healthy budget to afford the price for a decent rental in one of those zones and hope you find a job that will continue to support that. If not, look further afield. You mention 2 schools but there are a fair few others that while perhaps not quite at the standard as those two, are still excellent and very highly sought after. Your rental price range won't get you much at all, if anything in the zones for those schools. A 1 bed unit, perhaps something with another bedroom but you may forgo a parking space or it not be a nice apartment or some such. I'd expect an apartment building. Or a crappy street/row of houses type of thing. That's in the 5000 and 5006 postcodes anyways. The area for Glenunga I'd expect the same but it has more houses and units than apartments possibly. Your budget should stretch there but again, small though perhaps a unit over an apartment.

 

To buy in either of those zones would be very pricey. At least for a house. Even units would be one big chunk of change.

 

Personally I think there are other areas that provide very good school options and suburb options that don't come with such a hefty price tag.

[KenZo]

I'd think getting your child into either school will be tough, given the demand for places.

 

If your daughter starts Y8 at Adelaide HS, as in you are living in the zone before the start of the school year (and I would guess can prove a years lease) then I'd hope that would be enough. Otherwise the chances of getting in are slim. There are special entry programmes but your daughter would be facing lots of competition for a place and it would require a good standard in whatever it was to be in place already.

 

Glenunga is the same. If residing in the zone prior to the start of the school year (and again, they may want a years lease) then a place can be gotten. Outside of this, I'd say not much chance. Their website says the following (note the length of time residing in the zone will be taken into consideration). What they are trying to end is people moving into the zone just to get their kids into the school, then moving out a while later. They want longer term residents and all that.

 

As of 17 July 2015 Glenunga International High School (GIHS) reached student enrolment capacity. For 2016 the school will be unable to offer Year 9 - 12 enrolment placements to prospective students regardless if residing in or out of GIHS' zone except for students seeking entry at Year 10 for the International Baccalaureate Diploma which GIHS offers on behalf of DECD schools. Details of the Enrolment Capacity Management Plan can be found in the Education Gazzette. Families seeking enrolment at GIHS are directed to a neighbouring school or encouraged to remain at their current school. Applications can be placed on our register for enrolment and should a placement become available GIHS will contact the family (preference is given to families residing in GIHS' zone and the length of time the family has lived in the zone).

 

 

TBH if you are putting your eggs into those schools baskets, have a healthy budget to afford the price for a decent rental in one of those zones and hope you find a job that will continue to support that. If not, look further afield. You mention 2 schools but there are a fair few others that while perhaps not quite at the standard as those two, are still excellent and very highly sought after. Your rental price range won't get you much at all, if anything in the zones for those schools. A 1 bed unit, perhaps something with another bedroom but you may forgo a parking space or it not be a nice apartment or some such. I'd expect an apartment building. Or a crappy street/row of houses type of thing. That's in the 5000 and 5006 postcodes anyways. The area for Glenunga I'd expect the same but it has more houses and units than apartments possibly. Your budget should stretch there but again, small though perhaps a unit over an apartment.

 

To buy in either of those zones would be very pricey. At least for a house. Even units would be one big chunk of change.

 

Personally I think there are other areas that provide very good school options and suburb options that don't come with such a hefty price tag.

 

 

Great advice snifter! I will discuss this with the wife. I really appreciate your feedback.

[NicF]

To be honest I don't think you will get much in any area worth living in for less than $300 a week. Have a look at rental prices on realestate.com.au for an idea of what is available. Just be aware that places can often look much better in the photos than in real life.

 

We too would have loved to have lived in the zones for Glenunga or Adelaide High as they are excellent schools. On what we paid for our rental we could have afforded to rent a place in the zones but we would have struggled to buy anything that we would have wanted to live in so we widened our search to areas a bit further north, but still on the east. We ended up settling in the zone for Norwood Morialta, which is in the next tier down school wise. Other good schools are Brighton, Henley High and Unley. We also considered Banksia Park High which seemed to get good results and as far as we could tell looked like a good school. The areas in the zone for Banksia Park are very nice, leafy areas but we're just a bit further away from my mother in law than I wanted to be. Have a look on myschool.edu.au for the zones for the different schools.

 

My eldest son attempted to get in the ignite program at Glenunga, which is another way in if you don't live in the zone and your kids are not actually at high school yet. The ignite program is a gifted and talented program. This required sitting four exams and the top 100 students get offered a place. The year my son did the exams there were over 400 kids competing for a place. My son came 150 out of over 400 and got on the waiting list but didn't actually get a place, so is at Norwood Morialta instead. Modbury Heights and Reynella (I think?) also do the ignite program.

[snifter]

I don't know if Reynella do the Ignite programme but Aberfoyle HS does.

 

There are other decent high school options as mentioned above. Plus others not mentioned.

 

There is a list of the top ranked (NAPLAN) high schools. http://secondary-school-ranking-adelaide-south-australia.street-directory.com.au/

It includes both state and private. I'd not put too much into it as it changes yearly as results vary across the year groups. However, it will perhaps give you a starting point of schools name/location wise and you can then research more using the http://myschool.edu.au/ and reading up more info on particular schools and researching areas for rental prices etc. Also actual exam results will be different to NAPLAN.

 

When we were looking at areas and school considerations, although needing primary first, we used the primary ranking list (and the high school one to a point but knowing lots can change in a few years) and focused on areas where the top 100 schools were listed. Of course, we narrowed it down a lot more as there were a lot of areas we didn't want to consider but it gave us our short list of about 10-15 schools in areas we liked and we went from there. As it was we had 3 or 4 primary school options from the 100 list to go for in the area we settled in and in the high school list in the next few years have 2 possibles, one of which has dropped a bit in the rankings, the other has gone up. Of course, we are not basing our high school choice on the rankings but it at least gave us a starting point for a decent performing school results wise (so long as they remain on the list and are pretty consistent). We are also considering private for high school but that will depend on a few things as time progresses.

 

ETA - Of course, there are other schools that are outside of the 100 on that list. You can put in a school name or part of it and it should pick it up for you. So if you are curious about a suburb but don't know the school name, put the suburb name in and hopefully something will come up. Or put the suburb into the Myschool site and it should list the options.

 

There is also this site (where the NAPLAN one takes its info) https://bettereducation.com.au/school/secondary/sa/adelaide_top_secondary_schools.aspx That has a link or two on it that may be of interest. I copied over some info on how it compiles its info

 

How does Better Education Australia rank schools?

 

Disclaimer: There are a large range of factors that impact on academic results in addition to the role played by the school itself. These include the SES (Socio Economic Status) background of students, whether the school is selective in its student intake, etc. It is for the reader to do his own research and draw his or her own conclusions.

 

Better Education Australia provides primary and high school ranking information based on academic results including

- median VCE score

- percentage of VCE Scores of 40 and over

- percentage of HSC exams sat that achieved a DA (Distinguished Achievers)

- number of HSC all rounders

- number of top achievers in HSC

- number of First Place achievers in HSC

- NAPLAN test results

- Median ATAR score and percentage of TES eligible students with a ATAR >= 65

- Percentage of OP/IBD students who received an OP 1 to 15 or an IBD

- percentage of Stage 3 course enrolments in the school where a WACE course score of 75 or above was achieved

- percentage of Stage 3 course enrolments in the school where a WACE course score of 65 or above was achieved

- Best schools by course (NSW, WA)

- percentage of students in the state's top 1%, 5%, 10% and 20% measured by ATAR. (Currently only the Victoria independent schools data is complete. see Private School Ranking | Catholic School Ranking | Selective School Ranking | Public School Ranking)

 

 

Terms explained:

NAPLAN - National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy. The first NAPLAN tests were held in May 2008 for all students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in Australia. For the first time, students were assessed on the same test items in the domains of Reading, Writing, Language Conventions (Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation) and Numeracy. Before 2008, students had undertaken different tests in each state and territory. The average score is 500. The spread of scores has been set so that just over two-thirds of students' scores lie between 400 and 600.

 

ATAR - Australian Tertiary Admission Rank. ATAR has replaced ENTER, UAI , TER. See more details in the next post.

 

ENTER - The Equivalent National Tertiary Entrance Rank is the percentile ranking based on an applicant's VCE study scores which reflects their performance relative to all other VCE students. VCE results are reported in intervals of 0.05 from 99.95 (ie 99.95, 99.90 etc). Students cannot achieve 100 as they are part of that population and cannot outperform themselves.

 

UAI - The Universities Admission Index is used by universities across Australia for student selection. UAIs represent a rank order of students based on achievement in a specified number of courses and are reported in intervals of 0.05 from 100 (ie 100, 99.95, 99.90 etc). ACT UAIs are equivalent to those in NSW.

 

TER - The Tertiary Entrance Rank is identical to the ENTER in Victoria, and the UAI in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. It is used in South Australia, the Northern Territory, Tasmania and Western Australia.

 

OP - The Overall Position (OP) is a tertiary entrance rank used in Queensland. Instead of being a percentile rank (0.00 - 99.95) like the other state TERs, the OP is a number from 1 to 25, where 1 is the highest and 25 is the lowest. An OP is a student's state-wide rank based on overall achievement in QSA-approved subjects. It indicates how well the student has done in comparison to all other OP-eligible students in Queensland.

 

Students are placed in one of 25 OP bands. The approximate distribution of students across the bands is shown below. For example, in order to achieve an OP1, a student's achievement must be in the top 2% of OP-eligible students in Queensland.

Approximate distribution of students across OP bands:

- Band 1 - about 2% of students

- Bands 2 to 6 - about 19% of students

- Bands 7 to 21 - about 73% of students

- Bands 22 to 24 - about 5% of students

- Band 25 - about 1% of students

 

ENTER, TER, and UAI are equivalent, ie. the ENTER which is only used in Victoria is identical and equivalent to UAI used in NSW and the ACT, and to the Tertiary Entrance Rank (TER) used in SA, NT, TAS and WA. The Overall Position (OP) used by Queensland is different, but conversion tables are published each year to convert the OP to or from an ENTER/TER/UAI. For example, an ENTER of 90.00 from Victoria will indicate a sufficiently similar degree of attainment as a UAI of 90.00 from New South Wales.

 

What's the difference between ENTER and UAI?

1. The ENTER perfect score is 99.95 while UAI perfect score is 100. In Victoria, there are about 20 to 30 students who got this perfect score. Because of the size of the group only one student receives UAI 100 in the ACT.

2. UAI is not directly equivalent to a percentile rank among those who completed year 12. A UAI of 90 is not equivalent to placing in the top 10% of the state. The TER, the UAI's predecessor, was different because it defined the student population as only students in year 12. The UAI attempts to rank students who did not progress to their senior years of High School by estimating what they would have obtained. Hence the rank is kept consistent throughout the years despite varying year 10 drop-out rates as the rank is always measured relative to a year 10 cohort, with the ranks of the drop-outs being estimated.

 

IBD - International Baccalaureate Diploma.

 

TES - Tertiary Entrance Statements.

 

TEE subject - a subject for which there is an external examination. Scaled marks from these subjects can be used to gain a tertiary entrance rank (TER).

 

VCE - Victorian Certificate of Education

HSC - Higher School Certificate

QCE - Queensland Certificate of Education

WACE - Western Australian Certificate of Education

SACE - South Australian Certificate of Education

NTCE - Northern Territory Certificate of Education

TCE - Tasmanian Certificate of Education

Edited April 1, 2016 by snifter
eta

[wrcaston]

Hey, we got our 11 yr old into Trinity College in Blakeview and we are very pleased with it. Rental was $250 a week until our house build was completed so could fit your budget.

[KenZo]

snifter: Thank you for the information. It is a lot to digest. I will definitely go through it carefully. I will check out the schools that you mentioned to make some comparisons. Thanks again.