NZ doesn't have the same set system of school years as there is in France. And you will find that the subject matter and skills tackled will not be the same, necessarily, and if they appear, will not necessarily be taught in the same order as you have been used to seeing. When you approach a school wanting your child to start there, they will place him partly according to what you can tell them about him, and partly according to how they find he works - there is quite a bit of flexibility on the matter of chronological age.
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Originally Posted by nativecolo
), but he fitted straight in to the class. Then, less extreme - in our household, the adults are British, but also French-speaking, and there have always been occasional French visitors and phone-calls. Our own children just absorbed understanding of some French by being around while it was used - from very small, they would say, for instance, after overhearing my end of a phone call in French, 'So who is that who's coming to stay next week?' or, 'Can I come when you pick that man up from Heathrow?' When we were on holiday in France when our daughter was 9, she was out playing on her own, and came back later telling how she'd got talking to an old lady who lived just up the road from the campsite, who'd called her to see a calf being born, and she'd managed that situation without ever having had a formal French lesson in her life. And when our son was preparing for GCSE exams (school exams taken aged 15/16), he didn't go to French lessons because another subject he was interested in was timetabled at the same time, but he nevertheless sat the French exam and got A for the oral and written sections, almost entirely on the basis of experience at home and on family holidays.
She has an active imagination, remembers all kinds of things, sings songs ("real" or nonsense), is just about getting a handle on letters, and so on - that's enough. No pressure 
