To think the induction to Year R is a bit OTT?

[Cherrypie32]

1hr settling in sessions at the school, once a week for 6 weeks from end May. Visits from nursery, visits from preschool, then a teacher visits us at home in first week of term. All this and then they only start school with 2.5hr mornings or afternoons for a couple of weeks. This is going to cause all our normal routines alot of disruption not to mention cost money. I don't know what I am going to do with DD for the 1hr sessions. DS is already used to an educational setting 4 days a week, is a happy, well adjusted boy who enjoys new experiences. Personally I think a couple of times with me, then the other visits is more than enough. I don't even work but can't imagine the difficulties it would pose working mums. I can appreciate there will be other children who for many different reasons need extra time to settle but shouldn't that be a parents choice?

DS1 is probably one of the children who will benefit from a longer settling period, he's quite shy and not particularly keen on change. Even so, I'm wondering what the hell I'm going to do with DS2 for all the (no siblings allowed) settling sessions.

I think I said could see that some children would need it, a couple of sessions would be perfectly reasonable and I am sure working mums could work with that too.

Same, no local family here and my friends are all Mums who will also be expected there, again prob could have sorted grandparents coming to cover off a couple of occasions. Anyway never mind, will have a chat to friends and to school who must have had 'feedback' on this before. Thanks all x

At dd2's school the teachers went to the preschool setting to see the kids, and at home if they didn't go to preschool.
Then they had two settling in sessions before the summer holidays, but the groups were split into those born between sep and mar and those born between apr and aug.
The older group started school on the first day of the new term and did full days straight away. The second group started about 10 days later and did full days from the off. This was easier because I just kept her at nursery until the day before she started school.

Well I think the parents conveniece does matter actually outragedatthepriceoffreddoes.

Children don't exist in a vacuum. They are part of a family.
When something stresses and upsets a parent it is not great for the child. As Angeldelight said upthread, parents often have to use up valuable holiday, adding to the worry they already have about what the hell they are going to do in the holidays.
I know someone, who is a part time teacher, who is always saying "school is not childcare" etc, but that is easy for her to say, with her 3 day a week, term time only, husband working flexi hours in the public sector, grandma helping every week life.
For the rest of us, however, school needs to consider the feasibility of working parents being able to juggle their commitments.
It's no good acting like the children's needs are completely isolated from their parents needs.

I agree with your friend that school isn't childcare.

They only start school once, and I can see that it can beard for working parents to juggle, but that's just part of having children. The school does have to consider what they think will be best for the dc. Why else would they do it? It's not just for fun, or to irritate parents, it's because they have experience and know what does and doesn't work to give children the best start to their school lives that they possibly can.

YANBU.

I know the idea of this sort of induction is to give the children the best possible transition into school, and I'm sure it is best for many children, but if, as is the case for many other children, this means being passed from pillar to post to accommodate odd hours here and there at school, it is far from the easiest transition.

We have decided to send the school a polite email thanking them for their invitation and saying we would love to attend 2 sessions as this is the amount of help I can get to have DD and also allows DS to finish his happy time in full at Pre school.

The whole thing is total nonsense, DC should all start together doing full days from day one!

DD1 was put in the opposite half of her class to the people she knew at nursery.

She finds friendships hard to establish, others sadly find her easy to exclude. It just gave them one more excuse

That's sad for her and you Star, I have heard they try to keep friends together at this school to aid settling. Really though it's not the half day starts but more all this faffing about for weeks beforehand that has bothered me.

Surely school is childcare though? If the government expect people to go out to work based on the fact that their children are at school? I say this as a SAHM too. It doesn't take much imagination to see that this kind of faffery is very difficult for working parents. I can't see how it's best for the children either if what actually happens is that they end up passed from pillar to post for childcare because the parents can't get time off work. Surely they'd be better off in school doing something not too taxing for them. Most kids have already been used to pre-school/playgroup/nursery before starting anyway so it shouldn't be that much of a shock to their systems. Maybe parents should be given a bit more choice about it all?