May is school enrolment month in Canberra - and it's a process

Whether it's choosing a preschool for your little one or a high school for your not-so-little-one-anymore, it's a process. So. Many. Choices.

My daughter is starting Year 7 next year and the last couple of weeks have been a whirlwind of come-and-try days, open evenings, prospectus' and decisions about co-ed or single-sex; public or private.

As parents, we've been given the spiel by the principals - all impressive, it has to be said. Current students have told us what they love about their school. Again, great advertisements for their school.

The schools' enrolment campaigns rival a federal election's.

My daughter has come home with rocky road she made in the high school kitchen at one of the come-and-try days (a true sweetener, if ever there was one) and even a photograph of her with the other kids on the day labelled Class of 2028. Well, that's settled then. Locked in.

But seriously, in Canberra we are spoilt for options when it comes to our kids' education.

And the whole process got me thinking about my own high school years.

Growing up in a small country town, I had two choices - the local public high school or the Catholic high school in the next village. Actually, I had no choice. I went where I was told. And that was to the Catholic high school where we had about 400 kids from Year 7 to Year 12. My daughter will probably be going to a school where there are almost that many students just in Year 7.

I couldn't have loved my high school days more. We probably didn't have the extensive range of subjects but never thought we missed out. I know we got a great education, but, more importantly, friends for life. It was only six years of our lives but the impact and the memories still reverberate.

The school was perched above the Hunter River and the biggest thrill was when a sheep would wander through the playground. I remember one recess one of the ratbag girls raided the lost property box and somehow came up with a long, flowing dress from a school musical and a Mr T mask and donned both before careering around the playground. It still makes me laugh. We had school discos where we danced to Get Into the Groove by Madonna (still my favourite song) while dressed in the fashion of the time, baggy denim overalls mostly.

There was a school cat called Earless who was subject to the most morbid speculation about what happened to his ears. Rats maybe? There were overhead projectors - remember those? And one small room for "computers", where practically nobody went.

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We rode to school in doubled-decker buses, many re-purposed from Sydney suburban runs, but now passing farms along the way. I suspect many of our bus drivers now have PTSD.

There was the day one of the boys threw a fire cracker out the window. The next morning, we drove past the same spot, the paddock menacingly blackened. Another day a kid brought his pet chicken on to the bus. My best friend and I would hang out the window and bang the side of the bus until the driver would come up the stairs and yell, "Will you bloody kids stop that bloody racket!" Pretty sure we were in Year 9. We did improve.

Our teachers were mainly young and gave us a sense of thinking beyond ourselves. They were also fun. There used to be wall phones in some of the classrooms (fancy) and the geography teacher would ring the maths teacher and hold the receiver up so we could sing Green Acres for him. So random. So funny.

So, yes, school is about more than the facilities and the curriculum and the lure of overseas trips. If you can get out the other side a half-decent person, being able to read and write and add up, with happy memories and the same friends almost 35 years later, I think it's done its job.