When is a College not College?

When you're here in New Zealand. The term "College" here is equivalent to high school in The Philippines. I surmise this is the British schooling system, as compared with ours which has an American approach to it. That's just my theory though, so feel free to correct me.

The kids from both countries start out with Kindergarten (or Kindy. There are also Day Care Centres and Creches) for kids 3-4 years old. I attended Kindergarten also when I was a kid and that was that. On to grade 1. So I am truly bewildered by other schooling options that we have for today's kids. There's Nursery, Pre-school, and also Day Care Centres. We did not have those back in our time :-).

At age 5, kids here start formal schooling. That's Year 1, and they are in Preparatory School til Year 8 (12 years old). And then they start College! That's Years 9 to 13 (13 to 17 years old). This is also called Secondary School.

After this, education continues for many through a trade school, polytechnic, or a University (also called Uni).

It was quite confusing at first but we soon got the hang of it. Another familiar institution is Kumon. There are Kumon centres here; we were actually thinking of having Jo-Lo enrol in one before our application to migrate was approved.