School Supplies and Paper Size

For today's entry, let's start with school supplies. If you're travelling from Canada¹ to the US (or certain parts of Central America) or vice versa, then yes, by all means, bring school supplies with you if you have the space/budget. However, if you're travelling from Canada to the United Kingdom, don't bother!

This is not a subject I'd researched at all before our move, having many, many other things to think about. But considering both my children would be in school here, and considering how expensive those zipper binders are, I thought bringing school supplies with us would save precious time and money.

First of all, paper in the UK is not the same size as paper back home. And it only has two or four holes—not three like ours.

For example, in Canada standard letter size is 8½" x 11" (216 x 279mm). The UK "equivalent" would be A4 at 8¼" x 11¾" (210 x 297mm). So ours is shorter and wider than the one used in the UK.

What we call legal size in Canada is 8½" x 14" (216 x 356mm). It has no ISO² equivalent. In other words, you could maybe print Canadian legal stuff on A3 which is 11¾" x 16½" (297 x 420mm), but I'm not sure.

Hence, school supplies such as zipper binders, notebooks, duo-tangs, plastic sheet protectors, loose leaf, project report jackets, printer paper, all of that is irrelevant. Leave it in storage or donate it to a local school or charity before moving. Envelopes shouldn't be a problem, but you can also find those quite cheaply in the UK.

Anything that would go in a pencil case is fair game, but bear in mind, as of primary school, children in the UK are taught to write with pens. In cursive. And without white-out. (They do this "delete as necessary" strike-through thing, which you will discover upon filling out all that paperwork before the physical move. For convenience, have a small ruler that fits in the pencil case, if you're trying to be prepared.)

So, once you've gotten the ball rolling, paperwork will happen. Opening bank accounts and getting rental agreements will be just some of the things you will find yourself trying to do, and since it's long distance, everything will be done by email. They—the UK people—will expect you to print out their forms for prompt signing and returning. You will notice that printing these forms using your equipment in Canada will be a bit touch and go. The printer may cut off the ends or shrink the forms. Abstain from punching your computer/printer/laptop. It's not your printer being touchy; it's just their format versus ours.

Also remember: if, like us, you bring your Canadian P.C. or laptop with you to the UK, your word processor (and other software i.e. .doc, .pdf, .xls, etc.) will retain its original print sizes. In other words, it will think it's still in Canada, even though you've changed the Time Zone setting to UK.

We bought our printer in the UK, so I can't say we've had too much trouble when printing from files saved in Canadian formats, however, we do sometimes get half-printed pages, or other weird glitches, which can be frustrating if you have a paper to turn in. My advice in this case would be to get yourself off to a library, open your saved file from a local machine, check it over in case it needs editing/formatting, then print it off there.

One last thing. Here in the UK (at least as far as the county of Hampshire goes), when they say "public school is free", they actually mean public school is free: no fees, no hidden costs, no school supplies to buy (other than pencil case goodies). More on this at a later date.

Need more info on paper sizes? Wikipedia has a helpful entry on them.


Foot Notes //
¹ Canada, the United States of America, and certain parts of Central America (from what I've read), utilize the same standard paper sizes. In this post, "Canada" and "Canadian" will also refer to/include these other countries.
² International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 

Photo credit: Petr Kratochvil of PublicDomainPictures.net