To want to reiterate that 'yes' it's August and 'yes' Scottish schools are back

[MammyV]

Honestly on every post on here which mentions a child being in school at the moment, someone, at least one poster states 'are you abroad or something' or 'why are your kids in school it's only august?'
Please please understand that most Scottish schools commence back after summer from around the 15th August, we are not abroad, we are in the Uk (at the moment anyway) and I am fully aware of the English/Welsh holidays as its blasted a cross the BBC enough, just irritates me with some of the comments
(Will get off my Scottish high horse now)
Thanks xxx

So in England and Scotland is compulsory primary school only 6 years?

No, sorry, I've re-read your post. It's 7 years in primary in Scotland. I'm so confused

I will never understand your school years over there! :o

Here you can send them to preschool at 3 or 4, sometimes also called pre-K. I know some school have 2 year old programs but the norm is 3 and 4. It's not a full day. My DD is 3 and will go on Mondays and Wednesdays from 8-11. Next year when she's 4 she will go to the preschool at the actual school which is every day but only 8-10:30.

You can send your kids to kindergarten if they will be 5 by September 1st. Kindergarten used to be half days but almost all schools have full day kindergartens now. In our area "redshirting" is a big thing...if a child is late summer born their parents often hold them out of kindergarten until they are 6. I did it with DS who has a mid July birthday.

Then after kindergarten it's just first grade, then second grade, etc. all the way til 12th grade when you graduate. :)

We also don't have any free school/nursery hours or anything like that. You can't send your child for free education until they are 5 and can go to kindergarten. There are low income preschool programs like Head Start though.

Finderofneedles for a wee while they were called ISIS days, funnily enough they've stopped that now.

I worked it once, that my children who are currently about to enter y8, 7 and 5, would be more school yearsapart if we lived in Scotland because the cutoff points are in different months.

I'm in Scotland.

Both my girls did nursery year at 3, pre school year at 4 then started school when they were 5. they start between 4.5yrs and 5.5yrs, my girls had both turned 5 by the time they started. I started school at 4.5 yrs.

Our primary school day is 9am-3.20pm Secondary is 8.50-am-3.30pm
We started back last Tuesday, we don't get a holiday in September, never heard of that, but we do get two weeks in October( used to be the tattie holidays now it's for going to Florida). We also get a long weekend in November, two weeks in December, a long weekend in February, two weeks at Easter, then finish end of June/start of July. This year we finished on July 1st.

Our P1's go half day for the first two weeks, when my dd1 started they went half day for 5 weeks then full week before the October holidays.

I also can't think of August as being a holiday month. I hear them say it on tv and think No summer is over it's the middle of August, the nights are drawing in, bring on Autumn.

used to be the tattie holidays now it's for going to Florida

On our last trip to Scotland, DH and I flew back home to Florida in October from Glasgow with a plane load of excited youngsters going to Disney. They were very well behaved and very impressed that DH and I could go there easily whenever we want (which is not very often, by the way).

Agree that August isn't a holiday month: it's practically Autumn, as evidenced by the fact that the nights are drawing in - and that I had to spend this afternoon on the touch line in the rain watching ds play rugby wearing my ski jacket

Ds also went to nursery for half days from just before he turned 4. Technically he could have gone to the council nursery from when he was 3 and 4 months old (term after his 3rd birthday iirc) but I didn't get my act together but the child minder was more convenient and as it happens, there was a strike at the time so he only actually missed about 6 weeks of nursery

We get 2 days off in September - fri-mon, so a nice long weekend. Then 10 days in October. We don't go back until Monday so not long until the next holidays!

I was once called a troll after I'd mentioned being in a super market at 10 pm on a Sunday.

24 hour opening here means 24 hours.

Where I live some schools still get three weeks off to harvest potatoes. Students who work the full three weeks can earn about $2,000.

I think it's going to end in a few years though.

I got accused of trolling once because I mentioned the detail that we were blackberry picking at a time when the blackberries weren't ripe in England yet . I did mention in my OP that I don't live in the UK.

Feeling you all in the Scotland thing as I went to school in Scotland... remember when the kids' telly used to come on about 3 weeks into the summer holidays because finally the English kids were off too? (And in the weeks before that you'd stick the telly on at 3pm hoping for a bit of Rainbow and you'd get Sorley McLean walking up a hill reciting Gaelic poetry)

toomuch I had forgotten about the summertime kids tv when I was wee. I remember that so well. Getting up in the morning wanting to watch Why Don't You and getting test match cricket or something instead. And then, lo, the end of July came and it was kids TV all morning until we went back to school!

I wish some other schools did this and spread out holidays, to catch out the tour operators for one year at least.

Waves to CheerfulYank!

We are back next week, on Tuesday. Summer started in the first week of June though. We have Columbus Day, Thanksgiving and the next day, and one or two teacher inservice days off between now and Christmas. There is no mid term break. Weather here is still really hot. DD4 will head off in the mornings with a heavy heart a cardigan in her bag as the AC will be blasting in the classrooms.

My DCs' elementary school went from 8-3. They stopped having a morning break after 4th grade (age 9-10). After that they just had lunch (earlier lunch sitting after 4th grade, later lunch sitting up to 4th grade as they had had a snack).
High school was 8-3, with one of three lunch sittings. You could have lunch as early as 11:37 or you might have to wait until 1:23, or you might be lucky and get the civilised 12:30 lunch spot.

There was no morning assembly as such in elementary school but they had 'homeroom' for ten minutes where they did roll call, chatted and did general notices and housekeeping. In high school there was the occasional 'spirit assembly' at the end of the day but many students took their chances with security and skipped them. There was roll call in every class as class groups were constantly shuffled.

Childcare is really hard for parents here. There is a Park District that offers day camps for different ages. Places are filled by lottery and lottery entries usually fill up within minutes of opening online. There are lots of sleep away camps too, but they are expensive and not available for the whole summer, though I know a child who was sent to one soccer camp after another all summer every summer from age 6 on.
Local teens can make quite a bit of money taking care of children during the summer, schlepping kids to the pool or supervising them playing out, making them meals. All my DCs made money that way from age 14 up.

In Ireland I used to have summer break from the end of May to the first or second week of September. (It was a private convent school, for those who went to NS and are saying No Way).
YYY to the Test Match cricket blues (we got BBC on the east coast).

My school day in junior school was 9-3. We had a morning break, forget exactly when, then lunch for an hour, probably 12:30-1:30, then what always seemed like a long afternoon.
Secondary was 9-4, two morning classes/break/three midday classes/lunch/four afternoon classes. Some classes were double periods. We had a half day on Wednesdays.

We had all-school morning assembly every morning in junior school, consisting of reading of notices and singing a hymn. Afterwards each teacher did roll call in the classroom. If you were late to assembly you could hide in the bathroom and slip in among your classmates as they marched to class, and nobody would know you were so late. I have a dim memory of homeroom for a few minutes daily in secondary and roll call in the first class of the morning and again after lunch.

DS1 is summer born, so the oldest in his year in NI. Would have just turned 4 starting Reception in England, but because of the different cut off date, he started P1 (reception equivalent) already 5. Really helped him to have that extra year in Nursery.

It does mean he'll start his final year having already turned 18.
I'm back to work next Thurs, my class aren't back until 1St Sept.

P1 I think is between Reception & Y1
More formal than R, but same level of work. Beginning with letters and numbers.

P7 equals Y6 the last year of primary school.
1st year equals Y7 first year of high school.

I thought Reception was Primary 1? When we moved my daughter had just started P4 and I was very confused when the new school was saying she would be in Year 3 until I was told that they do nursery, then reception, then the years

interesting about the school day in the US - how long is it in the UK

Yes varies from school to school as different schools have varying start or finish times and may take longer or shorter for lunch. My kids are in 9am to 3pm with 15 minutes morning break and 45mins at lunch, so 5 hours a day in the classroom. My older child at secondary is in a bit longer.

As the system is different in Scotland, you can't say P1 is the equivalent of anything as you are comparing apples and oranges. Children who have just started P1 will be at the very youngest, 4 and a half. Some will have been 5 since March. No children starting Reception in England will be 5 - they will turn 5 during their reception year. All through school there is this at least 6 month discrepancy with the youngest in an age group and potentially a much bigger age gap which makes comparison impossible and pointless. And besides, it only really matters when you're moving from one system to the other. I know a family who moved here after Christmas one year, their middle daughter had been in Reception in England since the September, she was put into P1 and lasted about a month before the parents were told it was best to put her back into preschool until the summer and go into P1 the following year.

The other MASSIVE difference, and one which makes the Scottish system far more flexible is the right to defer and not miss out. If your child is going to be one of hte youngest in the year (usually born December - Feb) you can just tick a box on the enrollment form saying you don't want a place when they're 4.5. They then go the following year when they're 5.5 after another year in pre-school. This is very normal, not seen as "holding them back", doesn't cause problems with the school, isn't seen as a bad thing.

We also don't have the scramble for school places as in other parts of the UK. In Scotland every Primary school has a set catchment area which does not change. If you live in a catchment area, you get a place at your local school. No questions asked. (There are a very few exceptions to this such as people moving half way through a school year). Same with secondary - each Primary feeds certain Secondaries, if you are in the catchment for the secondary, you get a place. You have the right to apply to go to a school which is not your catchment area school, this is called a Placing Request. It will be considered, but ONLY after all the children who live in the catchment area have a space. If there's excess capacity, you might get in.

There are SO many differences between the Scottish and England/Wales system that you just can't compare the two. I know which one I prefer too!

Agree that it's so much better in Scotland without the scramble for places. It seems horribly stressful going by the posts on MN.
Ours all went to the local primary and then we applied for a school out of catchment ( we live right on the border of two counties) and they all got places there no problem.

Hi Math! :)

In the town I live in now the elementary school is K-5th grade, so they have lunch and recess until they ;eave that school. After that they just have lunch. 6th-12th grades are all at the high school but it's pretty separated. 6, 7, and 8th grades are on one side of the building and 9-12 on the other. I wish they didn't go to the big school til 7th grade though; that's when we did. Or even, like some bigger towns, that we had separate buildings. I'd love a middle school for the 6-8 graders!

I had been slowly getting used to the Scottish way and then we moved! Always confuses me that 5th year isn't compulsory (according to OH) .Wasn't in his day anyway. A lot of kids left as soon as they turned 16