To wish that for two weeks school was just school

[Flatoutnautilus]

Sorry, have to post this as perhaps I'm just being lazy...
Remember when school was just plodding along for a bit and making friends and working on in-school (!) projects, doing a bit of reading and the highlight was a school play?

When did schooling turn into the action packed and exhausting venture that it has now become with such a mind boggling array of themed days and events all of which seem to need parental involvement ?

In the last two weeks my kids (DS5 and DS6) have had spell-a-thon, raising £ for charity with chores, dress up Friday, gym presentation (two separate costumes needed), two school plays, two away matches, two out of school projects needing completion, a grandparents celebration breakfast, homework every night including 'grammar', spelling, maths and a bake sale. It's really the extracurriculars that drive me round the bend.

Perhaps some kids really need this high octane level approach to keep them engaged but I tend to think it must be an adult's view of what is interesting because neither of my two (& they are usually very enthusiastic about most things) can get keyed up about any of it so I spend my time trying to motivate them to participate while slightly sharing their view that it's all a bit unnecessary. Am I being a stick in the mud? Or is this rammed packed school diary of 'extras' just symptomatic of the hyper stimulated environment that we all live in now?

For two weeks a year I would really like to school to clear the decks on the diary front and just teach the kids without all the extras. Maybe even let them play around with the concept of boredom and see what happens...

ive had primary schools like this it's exhausting bake sales pta world book day dress up space dress up eclipse dress up etc etc the best world book day i remember was when all the kids went to school in pjs and the parents came in and read them stories they were pre teens and loved every minute of it we all took it in turns lay on cushions on the classroom floor to read stories it was nice

I would suggest you all stop enabling it. I have 3 at primary and just don't participate in over 50% of it. Ignore ignore ignore.

They are all dressing up tomorrow (first time this academic year I think) but i had zero involvement in sorting this out.

I participate only at a level i can manage -odd assembly , very rare homework help and occasionally sling them a £ for whatever. Also spent 5 yrs as a governor mind you . . .

That's fine if a) your child doesn't care if they take part or not, or if you attend their mid day open lesson thing, and b) if your child is of an age where you don't have to help sort dressing up days out. It gets easier as they get older in primary school and you can hand a lot of it over to them, but not so easy in the early days.

My dc complain they don't just get to sit and learn something - it's all " yay such fun" like being trapped in ceebeebies. My DC like fun as much as any child btw.

I have to say maybe homework could be dropped if DC actually did the work in school. They spend 6 hours there. Why do they have to come home with more? I don't go to work all day, then come home and put in another hour for fun. No, I do it all during my working day. If I want to piss about with cardboard and glitter I don't do it at work.

And I don't like the charity events. Homemade fairy cakes priced at £2 each! Wtf!

It's all about balance, "No sports teams, no musical productions, no choirs, no crafts based homework" does sounds pretty dull to me too. I actually complained (that's over-stating it, it was more of a query) to my daughter's school because from December of Year 4 until the summer of year 6 (ie 18 months) they do absolutely no form of school play/concert/show at all and was told they are too busy in Year 5. I do realise that a fully costumed show takes a lot of work and time but a simple 20 minute performance to parents of songs they have been learning anyway, or drama skits she assures me they do all the time as part of literacy, surely takes hardly any effort. And performance or showing off what they have learnt does have benefits in terms of improving confidence.

The French system sounds a lot to me like a way of making sure that only the well-off have access to drama, music, arts, sports, as I'm sure all these things exist as paid-for extra-curriculars. At least our schools try to give all children a taste of these things within normal school, and even if you can't shell out for expensive drama classes, they could get a part in the school play.

Our infants and junior schools do have quite a lot of special events happening but my kids get really excited about them, and much of the time they are linked with their curriculum, so I don't mind.

Our infant school has a class assembly once a term, usually about 20 mins at the start of the day so even a lot of working parents are able to watch it and go in slightly late that day rather than taking a day off. This is basically every child in the class saying one or two sentences about what they have been learning that term, showing some of their artwork, singing a song. They do a costumed performance once a year (each year group in a different term).

Lavender - £2 a cake???? Our cake sales sell them for 40p or 3 for a pound!!!

Jolly - it was awful - dc wanting to buy the fairy cakes they'd made at home, me as I don't want to drop £6 on 3 fairy cakes we'd made and also I thought they'd be 20p each so didn't actually have the money on me.

So I explained kindly that they were out of my price range but I could put a pound in the charity box. There wasn't one. Cake or nothing! " ok" I said nicely, put my pound back in my purse and turned away.

The stall was run and organised by rather more well off DC than mine so clearly they thought it was ok. And maybe it was - plenty of dads chucking in a tenner - but not all of us can do that.

I often wonder if schools forget that often parents have more than one child, parents do work, parents have busy lives and are just about holding it all together without a letter a day about a costume, building a Viking helmet or another charity drive.

I so agree with this. We have had a lot going on in our school recently and I feel that if I do something for one child then I want to do it for the other as well, which means it is at least two events per term I am helping with and that doesn't include the dress up days, the various occasions when they need to bring "something" in for recycling day or some other type of crap and inset days. I find it amazing that people have time to work at all (in saying this I am the secretary for the PTA as well though).

I kind of feel that it has become unacceptable to want to have a life outside the school. It's just exhausting.

One thing I have noticed, and I'm not sure how common it is outside of our primary, there seems to be a desire by some parents to fill up a kids day with all kinds of clubs and activities. So much so it is now the norm for kids to do something everyday and if your child only does one after school activity a week it somehow comes across that you don't want to put the effort into your child. That you're a crap parent.

I wonder if this is reflected in our school and the way activities are thrust upon us.

I stick to 2 activities a week here for my DC. Downtime in school and out of school is vital. Kids need time to process the things they have come across and with the constant stream of things that have to be done for school at home its making it really hard to find that downtime where we do absolutely nothing ( and I'm a firm believer that doing nothing at all is just as important for child development as structured activities)

For parents, our school has an end of term assembly / service ( church school) at the end of each term, the Easter one in the morning, the summer one in the afternoon and the Christmas one in the evening, so most parents can get to at least one of them. No preparation / costumes required from parents.
One fancy dress-up day (WBD) per year and one non uniform day ( jeans and Tshirt fine) with a donation to charity.
One sports day ( afternoon) and also a sponsored run on the Friday afternoon just before summer half term.
2 parent/ teacher meeting sessions, one in Autumn, the other in spring.
A school play for Key Stage 2 at the end of the summer term ( evening, no costumes required from parents)
Optional attendance at a PTA coffee morning with raffle in December.

That's it. For the year.

I think our school gets the balance about right.

This sounds exhausting. And expensive. At our kids' primary (EU but not UK) each family puts about 10 euros into a kitty at the start of the school year to cover school trips and extras. The amount is decided on and voted for by parents at the first parents evening. When the money is gone, that's it until the end of the year.

There's usually one class get together per term. Dates are also voted on at the first parents evening. Mostly a Saturday or Friday evening so that working parents can come. The kids do a play, songs or a seasonal activity followed by a BBQ or buffet food together. 2-3 hours tops. Absolutely no parental involvement during school hours.

It's exhausting and sometimes very difficult to keep up with. I'd far rather they ran it as they do in France and have schools for education only. If you calculate the time spent in school doing these extra activities in addition to the time spent in assembly/having lunch/breaks/registration/wandering around with i-pads, the time leftover spent actually devoted to learning is quite small.