Singapore Expats

Can anyone please tell me if K1 is the equivalent of preps in Victoria. My son is in K1 here in Singapore but I think it's only by chance that he is there as he was born 3 months premature and I think if he was born on his due date he would still be in nursery 2.

Just wondering as we hadn't planned to send him to school (preps) until 2011 when he would of just turned 6.

Thanks heaps,
Rachel.

As a rough guide the Singapore pre-school education goes like this:

Playgroup 1&2 - 18 months up
Nursery - 3 years up
Kindergarten 1 - 4 years up
Kindergarten 2 - 5 years up

The first year of school here is usually from 6, but I'm not sure exactly what they call it. My daughter is 3.5 and is in Nursery (born Aug 2005). They are already very into teaching alphabet, reading, and other things. Ages and classes don't really match up between Singapore and Australia, because they start a fairly intensive education very early here.

But to answer your question - yes K1 is a pretty close approximation to Prep in Victoria.

I always thought that K2 was equivalent to Prep in Victoria, (where average age is 5 to start school, although you at least have the choice there).

However the level of the curriculum etc is more K1 = Prep because they start reading etc earlier here and are expected to be able to read, write etc before reaching P1.