The best things in life often come by chance. When we’re young, we always hope someone will show us the way, offer a strategy, and hand us a quick fix — but life’s truth is far more whimsical. There is no fixed formula;more often than not, it is the unexpected that shapes our journey. 

— Anna Quindlen

“If he is not destined to reach the top of the pyramid, I hope that wherever he stands within it,he can find the dignity of being human and express himself to the fullest within his means.”

For many middle-aged migrants, the decision to move to Australia begins with concerns about their children’s education,She was ateacherwho facededucational challenges with her two children— so how did she find a way forward?

Below is the personal account of a Newstars Beijing client applying under the skilled migration stream,from contract signed 04 January 2022 to Subclass 491 visa granted 22 November 2022.

I am 39 years old. I graduated in 2011 from a 211-ranked normal university in China with a master’s degree in early childhood education, and took up a position that same year at a vocational and technical school in southern China. Going overseas had once been my dream. In my final year of postgraduate study, my supervisor arranged for me to go on a year-long exchange to the United States,but I had already married by then, and the fourth-tier city where we planned to settle had no use for overseas experience when it came to employment, so I let that opportunity pass.Over the next decade or so, I was consumed by work, buying a home, and raising children — caught in a constant cycle of anxieties,the longest-running and most overwhelming of which was the development of my eldest son.

From around the age of three,I noticed he spoke less than children his age and seemed slightly behind in cognitive development,but given that his physical coordination was outstanding — he was running around confidently by three or four — my husband and I kept reassuring ourselves: trust the child, let him bloom in his own time.

Before long he was ready to start primary school. My eldest still struggled with expression; his ability to narrate coherently remained below his peers.My husband insisted on enrolling him in a provincial model primary school,reasoning that a child with weaker abilities needed an environment made up of children from high-quality family backgroundsto minimise the risk of bullying.

From Year 1 to Year 2, all of my spare time was devoted to tutoring my eldest. He worked incredibly hard, yet his results hovered perpetually around the pass mark,and I began to realise that the path of academic achievement would likely be an uphill struggle for him for a long time to come.In such a fiercely competitive environment, I worried that the cumulative weight of failure could cause irreversible damage to his sense of self.So I adjusted my expectations for him and focused instead on physical activity and overall wellbeing.

Then, in the second half of Year 2, my mother was picking my eldest up from school when she overheard other children saying a classmate had been bullying him — and urged me to take it seriously. In fact, from as early as Year 1,my son had frequent bruising and discolouration around his hips,He said a classmate would forcefully shove desks into him during cleaning time,and there were often footprint marks on his legs and body.The teacher gave little response.To keep the peace so he could continue studying without disruption, I chose to quietly endure and worked with him at home through role-play scenarios to teach him how to protect himself.

Around the end of Year 2, I ran into a female classmate of my eldest while at a shopping centre,This girl recounted in detail, one by one, how my son had been bullied by multiple students at school,and I,quietly pressed record on my phone.After saying goodbye to that girl, I felt a whirl of conflicting emotions. Even so, I kept my silence and repeatedly told my son: if someone bullies you and the teacher does nothing, you must protect yourself.

Soon into the first term of Year 3, the class got a new homeroom teacher — and a strange, seemingly inexplicable series of events began. I started receiving calls from different parents every day,saying my son had hit someone, or pushed someone, or taken someone’s belongings,. Every day I ran to the school to apologise, took other children to hospital for checks, mended torn clothing, accompanied children for X-rays and eye examinations — and yet, no matter how patiently I tried to educate my son or how humbly I approached the parents and teachers, nothing improved.I knew my son would never behave so badly without cause, yet the teacher and other parents seemed all too ready to take the opposite view without question.

Left with no choice, I began waiting at the school gate after hours to speak with students directly. Through casual conversations I gathered, I learnt that my son’s situation at school was genuinely difficult, and the root of the problem did not lie entirely with him —many children knew he was good-natured and easygoing and frequently took advantage of that, and he would only fight back when he truly could not take any more.

In the evenings I would take my younger son with me to visit the homes of classmates, hoping to build a fuller picture and gather evidence. On the surface, those parents advised me to lower my expectations — though in reality they seemed indifferent. Some even suggested I transfer my son to a martial arts or football school, and a few gave me a pointed look up and down as they saw me out.By this point, I felt utterly despondent and hopeless. I stopped blaming my son and instead felt an even stronger urge to protect him.

Before long, my eldest could no longer attend school.Every time I brought him in, within fifteen minutes the teacherwould find some pretext to have me take him home again, so we kept him out of school for two weeks. In the hope of getting him back into the classroom, we made an appointment with the head of a children’s hospital. The doctor was startled to hear that my son had been unable to attend school for so many days;he wrote us a letter of guidance, encouraging us to be a strong backing for our son, to support and encourage him, and to go directly to the school to negotiate.

So I decided to send the evidence and voice recordings I had collected to the school and arranged a meeting. I expected that the strength of the evidence would bring justice — but to my dismay, the school’s response still hinted that perhaps we should consider transferring.And I made my position absolutely clear: we will not transfer!Only then did the school back down and drop the transfer suggestion. After the meeting, the parent committee also approached me seeking evidence;they too had long been dissatisfied with both the head teacher and the assistant teacher. The parent committee’s formal complaint and petition letter was soon sent to the school.The key points were: the teachers’ poor management had led to excessive conflict within the class, seriously disrupting parents’ daily work and lives; the teachers’ failure to focus on teaching had left the class’s results at the bottom of the entire year level; and the parent committee unanimously demanded the self-funded installation of CCTV cameras in the classroom to monitor teaching and class management.The volume of sustained complaints had apparently become too much for the school to absorb, and the homeroom teacher was finally replaced.

My eldest is now in Year 5. Aside from still struggling academically, he has not attracted a single complaint since.

That experience caused me tremendous psychological damage — but it also prompted me to think much more deeply about the state of education my children faced. 

When I was certain that this education system — built on selection and elimination — was not suited to my child, I no longer wanted him to keep competing in a contest that held no meaningful purpose for him.If he is not destined to reach the top of the pyramid, I hope that wherever he stands within it, he can find the dignity of being human and express himself to the fullest within his means.

I must also thank my relative, who was furious when she heard what my son had been going through at school and encouraged me to try my luck overseas.

If you can’t keep up with the race, just step off the track!

So in January 2021, I began preparing for the PTE exam,with the initial goal of enrolling in a Graduate Diploma in Early Childhood Education in New Zealand.On the eighth day of the 2022 Lunar New Year, I sat the PTE for the first time — and walked away with a dismal 47. Seeing how far I was from the target, I found an online tutor and practised with them for less than a week before the holiday ended and I was back to the demands of work. On 17 July 2021, after the school’s end-of-term activities wrapped up, I threw myself back into PTE study. This time I left both children with my mother and my father-in-law, moved into a place on my own, and gave it everything I had. On 5 August, I sat the exam again and scored 67 — with only the reading component one point short of the target.On 26 September, I finally cleared all four components at 65 and finished with a total score of 71.

What followed — applying to universities and waiting for the border to reopen — was genuinely nerve-racking.On 15 December, Australia announced the reopening of its borders, but there was still no word from New Zealand.

At that point, I had no choice but to turn my attention to Australia.

After an extensive search for information, I found that Australia’s society and economy were more developed, but that the time and financial cost of studying and migrating there was higher, and that for someone who was 38, the risk was also considerable. After consulting no fewer than twenty migration agents,I was caught between a longing for Australia and deep uncertainty about my own prospects.Around that time I got to know Carrie online — her situation was similar to mine, so she kindly introduced me to four migration consultants.Of those, only Lao Wu said that my occupation was on the skilled migration list and that I could pursue state nomination under Subclass 491.

I remember it was a drizzly day and I had brought my entire class to a hospital for PCR testing — my mood matched the weather, a fog of uncertainty. The pathway Lao Wu had mapped out was one I had never heard of. When I got home, I started researching. The next day, Lao Wu called me for the first time and gave broad answers to my questions, but just as I was about to ask more, his work hours ended and he said we’d continue later.

So we crossed into 2022, and I used the three-day New Year holidayto look more deeply into what I found and to confirm that an offshore state nomination pathway did indeed exist.The morning after the holiday, I signed a skills assessment contract with Lao Wu.At the time, I still had strong doubts and a lack of trust,but I reasoned: if it fails, I lose a few thousand yuan; if it succeeds, I gain two years and around 600,000 yuan in study fees saved — exactly as Lao Wu put it, a big return on a small stake.

Shortly after,the skills assessmentwent through without a hitch — passing without interview on 16 April.

Occupation: Vocational Education Teacher

I then began preparing for the IELTS,as eight in all four components would satisfy what Lao Wu hadoriginally planned — the SouthAustralian state nomination requirement.To give myself more study time, I placed both children with their grandparents over the summer holidays and rented a study room by the day.

-On 1 August, I happened to discoverthat I met the ACT state nomination requirements,and immediately contacted Lao Wu and Tracy;

-Pre-application submitted on 8 August;

-Received a pre-invitation on the evening of 10 August;

-Formal state nomination lodged on the evening of 22 August;

-Formally invited on the morning of 23 August.

-The entire month of August 2022 can only be described as magical and extraordinary — the invitation came faster than anyone could have anticipated, the whole process was so smooth it left me breathless, both astonished and overjoyed!

-On 21 September, Tracy lodged the visa application for my whole family;

When I learnt there were applicants who had been waiting three years without a Subclass 489 grant, my mood crashed. Energy is conserved — and luck must be conserved too, I thought. It felt like I had used up every last bit of my good fortune, and a long wait was surely ahead.

– On 25 October, I urged my husband to take leave, bundled up both children, and drove to Guangzhou early in the morning for our medical examinations;

– In early November, Guangzhou went into lockdown — another lucky escape, a cold sweat of relief!I then threw myself back into work: teaching, managing student conflicts, maintaining group chats, checking in, collecting QR codes, collating household contact lists, organising student PCR tests — plus a steady stream of unexpected tasks handed down by management.

– 21 November,I worked late again, not getting home until 11 p.m. I had barely fallen asleep when I woke with a start at 4 a.m., thoughts of the visa seeming endlessly far away keeping me from getting back to sleep. Waiting for a visa grant is truly an ordeal —yet the very next morning, I received an unexpected notification that the visa had been granted! The processing time had been just two months!

My work had always been relentlessly tedious, and my career hadn’t gone particularly smoothly over the years. I had long since given up any hope for a job I could see the entire trajectory of from day one.That same afternoon after the grant, I rushed to make an appointment with the principal and submit my resignation.During our conversation, the principal offered little in the way of congratulations — the tone was more one of questioning, and some degree of veiled scorn. But I was no longer angry. I went cheerfully to the HR office, filled in the formal resignation form. In the formal exit interview, the HR manager reviewed my years of service and noted that I had always been diligent and that my workload had consistently been at full capacity. When asked for my reason for leaving, I deliberately avoided the word ‘migration’ and instead recounted all the injustices I had experienced at the school over the years — the full story. The manager’s response was essentially: given the pandemic environment, being able to hold onto a job with decent income is already something to be grateful for. But none of that mattered to me any more.

Seeing that I was not going to change my mind, the manager pressed further: ‘Have you found something better? If so, we can let you go with peace of mind.’ I said: ‘Yes.’ He then said: ‘If you change your mind while we’re still processing the paperwork, you can withdraw at any time.’ I simply said: thank you for the school’s care. And I felt not the slightest tremor inside.I respect the teaching profession and once loved it deeply — but everything I encountered in this most grassroots of roles over so many years had left me thoroughly exhausted, body and soul. In my heart, this is not what a school should be.Management asked me to see out the rest of the term. Many of my students cried and asked whether they would ever see me again.

But I truly had no more attachment to this place. I only wanted to leave the good, the exhaustion, and the resentment behind in one clean stroke. I wanted to go home, rest properly for a few days, put everything at home in order, and land in Australia as soon as possible to begin working towards the Subclass 191 requirements.

Looking back on my migration journey, I can say that everything happened at exactly the right time — not too much, not too little, not too early, not too late.

First, meeting Lao Wu — the one person among more than twenty consultants who pointed me to this path. Without him, I might have gone to New Zealand and ground out a PR I would never have been fully satisfied with.

Second,I just happened to catch the first wave of Australia’s skilled migration surge,with everything falling into place effortlessly.

Third, my PTE score, matrix points, and EOI score all scraped the threshold at exactly 65 across the board.

Fourth, my invitation came so fast that the universe didn’t even give me a single day of anxiety or waiting.

Finally,I turned out to be — as far as I know — the fastest person among all Subclass 491 and 489 applicants to receive a grant(Editor’s note: this is because applicants in teaching occupations have been among the highest-priority in recent years).

All of this coming together at exactly the right time felt truly like it was meant to be — as though the path had been arranged long in advance, and every green light had been set just for me.I am deeply grateful to Carrie, and even more grateful for having met Tracy and Lao Wu. Thank you for spotting me — struggling to keep my head above water in the waves — and pulling me and my whole family to safety.

Finally, I hope that within three to five years I can find the right job and place to settle, buy a home, and reunite my family under one roof as soon as possible.

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