What is school (elementary/junior/high) in Australia like?

My school day consists of 6 periods (classes) with a half-hour morning tea break and a 45min lunchbreak. School begins at 8:35 with homeclass where they call the roll then I’ll have two 50min periods before morningtea at 10:30. Then two more periods with lunch at 12:35. Then we have homeclass again to check everyone hasn’t wagged off and then two more periods before home at 3:05pm.

Lunchtimes are usually spent hanging with your friends. There is no cafeteria, but there is a “tuckshop” where you can buy food. Bar heavy rain, we always eat outside. It’s nice cause you can just sit in the sun on the grass and chat or throw a ball around or something.

I don’t know if american schools are anything like what they are in the movies but nevertheless Australian schools are nowhere near al cliquey. Sure there are friendship groups, and there are the people considered popular, but everyone still mingles and get’s on reasonably well.

School starts usually at 9 AM (obviously it would be the same almost everywhere., and are made up of students from the years 7 – 12, all in the one school. A lot of the time, the high school is next door to the primary school, which makes it easier for primary schoolers to make the transition to high school.

Classes are often referred as “periods” here, in which each period can last anywhere from 45 minutes to 1 hour, depending on the school you attend.

There are roughly 5 periods in each school day, up to 8 periods depending on how long each class runs for.

Before starting your first period of the day, each student has to attend a “Roll Call,” which runs alphabetically, based on the studen’ts surnames names (eg: Joseph Aarons – Simon Castle will be in the Roll Call room A – C.)

School uniforms are compulsory – and each student must wear their uniform every day except when participating in Sports Days (often held on Wednesday afternoons or Friday afternoons at 1PM) and on fund-raiser days, such as “Mufti Day” (where you can pay 50 cents to dress in your normal street clothes or just wear your school uniform and not have to pay.)

But from wearing your school uniform on a Mufti Day, is generally frowned on by other students, who consider you too cheap to want to pay the 50 cents.)

Lunch is held around 12:30 PM every day and lasts for roughly 30 – 40 minutes (again, depending on which school you attend.)

During lunch, we do not sit in a cafeteria at all, but outside in the ovals (or playing fields) where a student can either buy their lunch from a small sop inside the school grounds known as a “canteen” or bring their own lunch from home.

If it is raining during lunch, then you have the option of either sitting to eat in a classroom, provided you do not break anthing there, or sit in any number of enclosed place around the school grounds that are not open to the elements.

After lunch, students commonly have one more period before being allowed a 5 – 10 minute break between classes before attending the last two periods of the day.

School lets out anywhere from 2:45 PM – 3:15 PM, based again on which school you go to, and if it is a sports day, the students are generally allowed to leave around 2:30 PM, if the teacher is in a good enough mood.

School holidays –

During odd times of the year, we have some school holidays while still in school. These are mostly for sporting events, such as swimming carnivals (held during the summer) and cross-country athletics (held the majority of the time near the end of Autumn, or Fall.)

The school system is divided up into four seperate Terms, which consist of 10 – 12 week periods of attending school, and 2 weeks holiday in between each. These normally fall around religious holidays, such as Christmas and Easter, but we often have long weekend holidays, to celebrate a certain Australian events.

This is all I remember for the time being, since it has been a while since I last went to school. I hope this elps in some way, though.