Infant or primary school?

[Flairmaine]

And does it matter? Thinking about schools and whether it's better to start in a good primary school where they'll stay until age 11, or an infant school where they move on when they're 7. Seems a shame for them to go through the process of making friends at age 5 only to then need to move again to a different school two years later. Just some morning musings really whilst I ponder over school choices. Any experience?

Most infant schools will feed to a particular junior, usually fairly close by, where the majority of children in that class will go, it's not like they won't know anyone unless you move them to a different area. Where I am, we have a couple of infant schools and if you go to, say infant school A, 95% of the year will move to junior A. Those that didn't move up had either moved areas or went to a special needs school at year 3.

Personally i have never known infants and juniors being in seperate buildings ,is it a thing in certain parts of the uk?

There is a very popular school near us that has Infants and Juniors and you have to reapply for Y2 as it’s completely separate.
I know quite a few families who didn’t get a place due to a big estate being built, pushing them out of catchment or older siblings had left so no sib link to push them up the criteria or for other reasons completely beyond their control
Its one of the reasons we didn’t apply to that school
I probably wouldn’t risk it if there’s a good Primary that goes right through.

Yes. We have 2 in our area. One is going through the process of becoming a full primary, as they are now.sharing a site and have shared a headteacher and management team, the other is remaining as 2 different schools but afaik they are still closely connected.

In our area all the infant schools have a linked junior school. For all bar the religious one attending the infant school is the third admission priority (below SEN and looked after children), so theoretically possible not to get a place but the tiny numbers of the above two categories plus the juniors going to 32 in a class means it's never happened.
Saying that I didn't like the juniors for the one we're in catchment for so went for the all through primary we're also in catchment for, and am very glad I did as my daughter has SEN that only became apparent as she started school and, having built relationships with the SEN team, would really struggle moving to a whole new school next year.

I’m pondering this too. But the infants school we like is just so far above and beyond all the primaries it seems worth the moving-on hassle to give DC the three years there; it’s magical. And like pp have said, linked to the junior school. Not keen on the junior school particularly, and then DC will need to move again – vs the 4-19 school round the corner where they could go right through – but it’s worth the trade-off for those three years for this particular school, I feel.

@x2boys yes, very normal here to have infant & juniors. In pretty all the cases in our city; they’re right next door to each other so the children stay with the same ones they’ve been with since reception.

An infant school Keeps ur kids younger for longer as they don't mix with children much older. There's a big difference between 3yo and 11yo.

I've gone for an infant school which feeds into a good junior - 90% of the kids feed into the same junior

Yes. Our juniors is a good 15/20 min walk from the infants we used.

I have to say I disagree with infant schools keeping children younger for longer, my experience is the opposite. In a primary school Y2 are still seen as “ infants” whereas in an actual infants school Y2 are seen as the “older” children, they are given significant responsibilities around the school, and high expectations are made of them in terms of being good examples , for example taking major parts in school productions, speaking out in Assembly. And most children rise to the challenge.

There's a popular school near me that is infants and juniors. They are a good 10 min walk between.

We liked the school but ultimately chose a primary school because it suited DS better.

Since he's been at school though I'm sooooo glad we didn't go for the infant junior thing.

We had a younger child too and she is 2 years younger than her brother.

It would mean they'd only have 1 year together on the same site before we'd have to do the double drop off. The 2 schools start and end at the same time and there's no facility to have children walked between them or to have a short after school club for the kids. It means so many parents drive to school making such awful traffic issues.

Of course if there is no other sibling or there is a big age gap this won't be so much of an issue.

@twizbe that's crazy, ours our staggered by 10 minutes for precisely that reason. Also, regarding the mixing with older kids most primaries have separate playgrounds (or at least separate times for infants and juniors) so they don't actually mix much. My children say they barely see each other at school.

Situation here is that most children from 2 different infants schools fed into a single local junior school (a few children also left and a few arrived).

I found it worked well - the infants was smaller which I think is great when they are younger as it's more personal , and also meant they had more chances to take on responsibilities earlier (the Y2 were oldest in the school so got the chance to do things like "library monitor" and being buddies to younger children. Then, just as they were getting to the stage of outgrowing the school they got to move to a new one, meet some new people, make some new friends. DS especially would have found being forced to stay at the same school for 7 years, really stifling. Also, because it was a clean break the change in expectations between infants/junior (e.g. more responsibility for organising yourself) was really clear.

The split in schools also meant more tailored resources (although a slight downside is that e.g. choice of books was more limited at infants as aimed at a younger age group). Plus a big junior meant more clubs/activities etc.

I had this. The infant school is lovely, but the junior school wasn’t, and is much, much larger - 3 classes per year. The primary school I chose for Dd is just as close and only 1 class per year.

Dd is a sensitive little thing though and I know changing schools, even with her friends, would have been difficult.

I chose a primary - I didn’t want the hassle of my children at separate schools for a few years due to age gap. That said, my top priorities were general “feel” and friendliness, SN provision for my oldest and location - being able to walk to school and have local friends was a big factor in our choice. If the infant school had ticked all the other boxes I’d have got over the hassle.

It's almost all full primary schools round here. There's one nice village infant school, but I didn't go for it because a)the linked junior school is a fair bit further away and b)having two kids, I want to minimise the amount of time they're at different schools, so staying in one from 4-11 is definitely an advantage!