to think the whole "phasing in" thing at school is just a PITA!

[Maggietess]

DD2 starts school tomorrow, the equivalent of reception class. We have first day she stays for an hour with mum or dad (great idea). Rest of this week shes in for 2 1/2 hours a day (OK I'm still with the idea in general).

Then some more kids start next week so we've another week of in til 1130.
Then the week after its 1230.
Then finally in the 4th week it's full day til 2.

And this is the improved version of settling in, it used to take nearly til halloween to get them all in with a couple of kids starting every day.

I can understand the teachers needing a couple of days, even a week to properly get to know everyone but is 3 full weeks of it not a bit ott???

They then repeat a slightly shortened version of this in P1.

Add to that that our junior school finishes at 2 and senior school at 3 and you have some parents doing collections at 12.30, 2 and 3. Total pita.

Surely its all just a bit unnecessary given that most kids these days will have been at some form of nursery before??

Or AIBtotallyU?

Yy devora! And to all who aren't starting full time til January you have my and sympathy! I thought I had it bad!!

Re the nursery bit, I don't subscribe to the prolonged settling in for nursery any more than I do "proper" school, I still believe mot kids (I recognise not all) will have attended some form of daycare and be well fit for the routine. I honestly believe a reverse system where those kids who were more sensitive about change in routine and/or had never experienced daycare should have the option of shorter hours rather than (after say the first week) all other kids fitting in with them.

Anyhow, I'm off to bed, big day tomorrow don't u know! thanks for all the comments.

Ps bawling at the idea dd2 is jig enough to be at school where did my baby go....

*big... Grrrrr damn u fat thumbs

My children started school full time from day one. They were fine. It was in the days when younger children started in January which seems a much simpler option, as we just kept them at their nursery until that point. If they had started at a school with daft staggered times I think I would have been very tempted to just start them later. ds in particular would have found the lack of routine incredibly difficult.

The fact that each school makes up completely different arrangements suggests that there is no consensus as to what is better for the children, in which case choosing particularly difficult arrangements for families seems really really unhelpful. Plus there are also threads where parents are trying to get arrangements into place for their children to start very gently for very legitimate reasons having major problems suggests that most of the arrangements are for the school's convenience rather than for children/families.

Oh and when they went to nursery it was full time from the first day. Also fine.

Good luck to you for tomorrow, Maggietess. And to your dd, of course (though I'm suspecting you need it more )

Thanks devora she had a great time, I was abandoned at the door for all the wonderful toys in the room. She didn't want to go home!

My DD started reception last year, thankfully, she started at 8:30am and finished at 3:30pm from the start. Made no difference to her at all!

YANBU as I'd find it a major PITA! Good luck

Agreed, Maggie and AGG. I deducted from our "voluntary" contributions to the school an amount to cover the extra childcare costs of the settling in stage.

With my kids, all it meant was that by the time the later ones arrived, there was a little clique who knew each other already, so it made things, if anything, more difficult for them socially.

Haven't had a chance to read all of this but wasn't there somebody on MN last year who won an argument with her child's school and despite the fact that they were supposed to be doing mornings or afternoons only for a long settling in period, kicked up a fuss and managed to force the school to take the child for mornings and afternoons?

Can't remember the details of how she did it, just remember thinking argh wish I'd thought to do that for my dc!

But somewhere in the depths of the legalities she managed to find a few key phrases that meant her dc could stay at school all day rather than have a long extended settling in time - and I think that once she had discovered this, several others in the same school then went on to use the same reasons to get their children to stay the full day too.

Sounds like it would be useful for people on here if anybody else remembers this and is able to point to a thread or knows what the key bits of useful info are in order for this to happen!

The only good thing, is that we don't need to put up with this nonsense anymore.
I am soooooooooo glad that I had the courage, knowing about the recent law, to politely request from my school that they put ds2 in full time asap.
I didn't want to use the whole of my annual holiday entitlement, in September alone.
I knew my rights and would not have accepted anything more, than a week of half days.
I did it really politely. And the school agreed. But if they hadn't, I wouldn't have left it there.

If you are a SAHM, do not work, or have suitable alternative childcare, or have a young summer born child, and want phrasing, then great.
It you do not have childcare, work fulltime or part time, or simply want you child not to have to phasing, then fortunately, you are now well within your rights to veto all this.

Hopefully, we won't have to have threads such as this in the future.

Not read all the ranting!
When I were a nipper, it was the norm for younger babies not to even start until Easter! I myself started school at Xmas. It worked. It worked for the jolly good reason that younger children who have not been in nursery full-time are unused to a full "working week" and need time to mentally adjust.
DS is a January baby. He was fine, could have gone in FT earlier.
DD is a late July baby, she was knackered, tearful and frankly, could have done with starting FT at Xmas.
It is a pain to organise work, yes. It is a pain to organise childcare. But it's your child: if it suits them to integrate slowly ( and I think we do it too quickly: DD wasn't able to cope until way past Xmas), then suck it up, really. We are lucky we get the option.
(Cue lots of people whose 31st August baies were just fine)

They're at school for years and years and years. We start them too young, IMO, and that's coming from an ex-teacher!

8 weeks retro?!

Does/Would your HT allow her/his own staff to work flexibly for those 8 weeks if their child was starting school with a similar system?

Just realised I sound like an arse. Of course, employers should be reasonable and allow for this. I did it via friends and relatives, but if you don't have this, then it's madness, That's why I think there should be a flat rule, like there was when I was small, before a certain date, start then, after, start then. That way, the playgroup gets the faff and the funding to deal with it.

nooka spot on!

My kids' school was full time from day 1 of Reception and they were absolutely fine, as were their classmates.

I am so glad my kids had the phasing in period. School is not the same as nursery and it takes a bit of getting used to.

At the last P1 induction I was at - a few years ago now - one of the dads complained at length at the fact he was going to have to work his hours round his child for two weeks. It was just horrible to listen to. There was absolutely no understanding from that man that the process was there to help his child settle. It was only two weeks.

The next year all the kids were straight in from Day 1. Probably easier on the parents, but I think some young children might have really struggled.

Rosesarebeautiful - whilst you might not like to hear it for some parents flexibility is just not that easy. I work in an infant school. I wouldn't be allowed to take time off here and there, or "work around my child" - mainly because I have to be in a classroom looking after other people's children.

My DD's primary does FT from day 1 and there experience is that almost all children cope perfectly fine, and for the odd one that finds it harder they
offer flexibility which is organised between the teacher and parent involved.

Not all children need the phased starts. Infact many do not.

sheridand - had that system here until a year ago. TBH it wasn't very popular with parents, children, and to an extent even the reception teachers.

The youngest children, who we are always told need the most support, end up going into pre-established classes and have to fit in - its busier, friendships have been made already, half the class already know routines.

When DD started school that system was still in place and DD wouldn't have started til January. It was one of the reasons I sent her to the independent school I did = because they all started together in September and without the lengthy phased starts either.

Oblomov what law did you quote/how did you approach this with your school? Guessing I have left it a little late to attempt something similar with dd's school (tho still 3 weeks to go until her first settling session then another 4 weeks of part-time) but I guess if they have had other approaches they may already have put something in place..

To add a different perpective, I've just been trying to explain to DD today that she's not going to be at school all day tomorrow like her older brother (and won't be until week 4). She is desperate to be at school and have her lunchbox.

So our routine for the next two weeks will be:

Do normal walk to school, drop DS off, then walk home again with DD
Persuade her to eat lunch early
Walk back up to school to drop DD off at 12.30
Come back again alone to MN catch up on some work
Pick them both up at 3.15

Then in week 3 DD switches to mornings + lunch, then full time as normal in week 4. I haven't taken any annual leave over the summer holidays so that I can take these 2 weeks off now.

I completely understand that children need settling in time (and DS as a summer born was exhausted in the first term) but if you have more than one child there's all this to-ing and fro-ing to the school.

Rhinestone this is the main crux of my argument. For some kids it will definitely be beneficial but for a large cohort it will be very difficult to explain why the routine is not what is expectes/what an older brother or sister does, and the changing nature of it (I find) really flummoxes them.

I genuinely think my dd and all bar 1 of the kids starting today would have been grand starting a bit longer today and a quick straw poll of those parents suggests those who haven't done it before felt they didn't know what was best and those who had done it before thought it was a pita that didn't benefit children, in actual fact faster would be better.

Yup I did poll them in the corridor (shameless )

Hulababy when my ds started school his whole class were January starters, and the other class had all the September starters. I guess the numbers must just have worked out with a good split that year. It certainly worked very well for us.

sheridand one of the reasons they got rid of that system though was that when they did studies over time they discovered that there were long term knock on effects - can't remember the exact stats but something like on average it made a couple of UCCA points difference to those that started at easter and double that for those that started in the summer.

Summer babies are much less likely to do really well at A-levels and get to good universities when they start a couple of terms behind their peers born earlier in the academic year - not least because they miss the first critical introduction to learning and only get one term of it compared to the three that those starting in september got.

I know that everyone will know somebody brilliant who has an august birthday and got straight As but it's not about the individuals, more the averages - and on average summer born dc that only had one term in reception class are something like 25% LESS likely to go to a good uni and 30% MORE likely to end up in vocational training than those that started in september of the same age. if missing a couple of terms made no difference on long term education then there would be an even distribution of birth months through universities and vocational training/those leaving school early...

It's a sobering thought that their education now at 4 & 5 really can have repercussions down the line at 18!