Education
Debunking the Myths of Private School Enrolment EDUCATION IN BRISBANE 22
Wendy Johnston, Director of Marketing & Communications at St Margaret’s Anglican School, has over 10 years’ experience working across three private schools in Brisbane as well as first-hand experience enrolling her own two children in three schools! We asked her about the policies and procedures for enrolling a child at private schools in Brisbane
MYTH #1 You have to enrol from birth to get in: One of the most common questions school registrars or enrolment staff is asked is: “When do I have to enrol my child?” Should you ring
up from the birthing suite and instruct the registrar down the telephone line as your newborn son wails in the background: ‘It’s a boy. Book him in.’ That’s not fiction. It happens. It’s not often from the maternity hospital, but can be soon after. A recent enquiry posed just that question to the St Margaret’s registrar, saying attendance was a long way off, ‘she’s only two weeks old’ but they did want her to be ‘well placed on any waiting list’. Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to the question of ‘when should I enrol my child?’ and enrolment policies vary widely. The one constant, I believe, is that your child must be born, and you will most likely be called upon to supply a birth certificate at some stage.
Your Local Families Magazine – Brisbane Issue 8 - February/March 2015
Some schools will guarantee places based of date of application, i.e. the ‘first in, best dressed’ approach, some schools rely on an interview process and progress reports from schooling to date, and sometimes a swag of other provisos.
MYTH #2 If you don’t belong to that faith you will never get in For some other schools, an application to enrol will not even be entertained until the child is a certain age. Some schools in the Catholic system operate like this with different conditions holding a varying degree of sway: does the family being to the local parish; is