Hi there and welcome to my blog! 

My name is Emily, I’m 15 years old and I’m from York in England. Tomorrow I am flying to Canada. I will be an exchange student at a high school in Vancouver. I am so excited!

As I will be attending a Canadian high school, I've learnt a little bit about the school system in Canada so I know roughly what to expect. Children in Canada go to elementary school from the age of 6-7 (known as grade 1) until around the age of 11-12 (grade 6). That’s quite similar to England, but we are generally a year younger: We start primary school (as we call elementary school) when we are around 5-6 years old (year 1) and leave in year 6 when we are 10-11 years old.

Then, children go to a junior high school for two years. After grade 8, they change to a high school. They go there until they are about 18 years old (grades 9-12). When pupils are in grade 10, they can choose whether they would like to attend courses to prepare them for work or courses to prepare them for university. How cool is that?! We don’t have that in the UK in our A-levels. We just choose three or four subjects to learn and that’s it.

After grade 12, students can go to college or university. Of course, this option isn’t for everyone and instead you can work, do an internship or some kind of vocational training.

What I find really good and also very important is that pupils with special needs in Canada can also attend mainstream schools and be taught in classes with everybody else. I had to think about my classmate Zack when I read that! It’s great that he has the chance to learn with us at our public school.

What’s more, did you know that Canada offers language courses in a second language? The official languages of Canada are English and French. In fact, I once read that 61% of Canadians speak English as their mother tongue and 26% speak French as their mother tongue. Anyway, when you visit Canada, you can take English or French courses – and they are taught in another language that you can understand, such as German or Arabic. I think that’s a fantastic opportunity to try to integrate yourself by learning the language, and you don’t have the problem with the language barrier at the start. 

What about schools in your country? Please tell me about them. You can leave a comment below. 

Anyway, those are my fun facts about schools in Canada for now. Stay tuned for more information about Canada as well as my experience and stories when I finally get there - just one day to go! Tomorrow afternoon I will be in Vancouver, Canada!

Thanks for reading!
Emily