Primary school settling in for 3 weeks?!

[Smarshian]

My eldest is due to start school in September. We have just been sent a letter about her settling in. Reception will not be in the first week (1st-3rd September), they will then do mornings (9-11.30) for one week and afternoons (1.15-3.30) for one week, before starting full time from 20th September.
Is this normal?! What are working parents supposed to do for those weeks? She goes to nursery full time at the moment and I will obviously ask them if they can do any wrap around either side, but it just seems a ridiculous amount of settling in and we can’t work around 3 weeks of 2.5hrs or less of school.

I'd raise merry hell about the part time until Christmas, and I'm not one of those who is always 'up the school'!. They aren't even pretending it's for the children's benefit. Hopefully they at least told parents this before they applied?!

No. It's just annoying that people still think school equals childcare

I do not think that for one second.

School is what you arrange your childcare around.

Arranging additional, possibly unfamiliar, care just at the time when your DC needs their (new) routine to be as undisturbed as possible is not good.

plum I tell you what, be on universal credit, and then tell the DWP that you can’t work when your youngest starts school because school isn’t childcare and see their response.

School actually is a form of childcare and it doesn’t denigrate the excellent work teachers do or deny that its main purpose is to educate. But this sort of thing makes life difficult / impossible for working parents.

To dismiss that with ‘well that isn’t the schools problem’ is naive at best and really rather unpleasant at worse. Best case scenario is that a child has grandparents or friends or relatives able and happy to help. But desperate parents will often end up relying on other, more shady, forms of childcare.

And actually I’m sorry plum, that was much snappier than it needed to be and I didn’t mean to sound quite as grumpy, I had a terrible night with ds (5 months!)

I do have a massive problem with this sort of approach though. It’s not just the fact it’s unfair, it’s also that the children it really disadvantages are the children we should be really looking out for.

I don’t expect a school to provide childcare. I do expect them to fulfil their statutory duty of providing education to those legally entitled to it. What I really don’t expect is a school to refuse to provide a full time place and then have the brass neck to claim it’s better for the child for one of the parents to lose several weeks wages or for the child to have to have a temporary childminder or be shunted about amongst friends and relatives rather than just starting school. If your child has been going to a nursery or preschool they can’t stay in it in reception. Another child will be in that place. You have to arrange entirely new childcare for a few weeks duration. It’s logistically incredibly difficult and disruptive to the child at a time when you most want them to have a positive experience. My child could use chopsticks before starting reception, it doesn’t mean I can pull a local childminder wanting a half day, three week job out of my arse.

And I would actually argue school is not childcare. It isn’t a paid setting in the way a nursery or a childminder is, but like most things, it has multiple purposes.

The primary one is to educate, but when a countrywide system is set up, society runs with that as an assumption. So to give an example which is probably a bad one, if you normally provide care to an elderly parent and that parent is admitted to hospital, that care stops falling on you. It doesn’t make you irrelevant but the personal care you provided will be done by employers of the hospital. That isn’t the reason they went to hospital, but it’s done.

Likewise, the function of a school might not be to provide childcare but that doesn’t mean they don’t.

Let’s cut to the chase here. School IS childcare, among many other things. Who else is legally responsible for the child’s welfare during the hours they are required to be in school?

Parents organise wrap around childcare to cover the gap between hours in school and hours they work.

How could it be any other than immensely disruptive for children to have weeks of cobbled together additional childcare outside of these hours? It’s a ridiculous policy that only works for families with a SAHP. Quelle surprise.

The fact that the government kept schools open for Keyworkers children last year shows that they consider school partly childcare... Not as a primary aim maybe, but as a safe place for children.

No. It's just annoying that people still think school equals childcare. It's not,,it's an education establishment . Children are ultimately the parents responsibility, not schools. This attitude is the reason lots of kids start school not Toilet trained or able to use a fork (excluding special needs) some parents expect school to do everything for them

I guarantee you that at our school it isn't the FT working parents who are sending their children in not toilet trained and unable to use a fork (not least because these parents are most likely to use nurseries, which also help out with this kind of thing).

One of the schools we looked at warned that they did a month of half days - oh and they didn't offer wraparound care for reception. They might as well have written 'piss off, working parents' on their website.

It’s not normal and smacks of a school that’s old fashioned and out of sync with society and the parents it serves. It would put me off to be honest! They have to take the children full time from day one, it’s the law. You won’t be ‘that parent’. You’ll be using school as it was intended to be used!

It was half a term when by two started...😖

@Lettuceforlunch

It’s not normal and smacks of a school that’s old fashioned and out of sync with society and the parents it serves. It would put me off to be honest! They have to take the children full time from day one, it’s the law. You won’t be ‘that parent’. You’ll be using school as it was intended to be used!

the parents it serves

The schools solution is bringing the wrap around care lady in early and having the parents pay for care at £9 an hour!

I very much hope someone questioned the legality of this!

It is an out of date 'tradition' from when most mothers were SAHM. Our school does full time from day 1 with the exception of occasional children with SEN who need a more gradual transition in liason with the parents.

Any NT child who has not been to nursery, or ever away from parents, it is more confusing to go back and forth for a few hours here and there. Much better to get into routine from day 1 then confuse the poor child.

I'm sure parents who want a more gradual transition could request it as school isn't compulsory until 5.

@MarjorieBouvier - what’s with the side eye? Schools do serve communities, in the same way that local libraries or doctors’ surgeries might. It’s a fairly usual turn of phrase. Feeling a bit bored this morning, are we? Right back at ya!

Its normal to have a couple of weeks part time when they start school. Its not an attack on working parents! The reality is it is much harder to arrange childcare when they are on short school hours than when they are at nursery. If thats a surprise then you probably haven't thought about it very much.

Schools serve children's needs, not parents.
Whether it is best for the children to have staggered starts is what the school needs to consider/reconsider.

@Mistressiggi - they serve societal needs if we’re going to be pedantic about this!

When the management team of a school meet they work out how best to serve the needs of the pupils. I can guarantee you that "what about society?" are not words uttered, unless in the context of how on earth are schools supposed to fix all the ills of society.

Its not an attack on working parents!

Eh, no one said that. We said it makes life unnecessarily difficult

The reality is it is much harder to arrange childcare when they are on short school hours than when they are at nursery. If thats a surprise then you probably haven't thought about it very much.

You know, it’s comments like this that do the relationship between schools and working parents no favours at all.

Of course we’ve thought about at length. We looked at after school provision, breakfast clubs, pick ups, you name it. Put that all in place. Then we’re told that we have to tear that up and find completely new arrangements, for a few weeks only, when childcare provision isn’t set up for this at all. It beggars belief in the modern world.

@lettuceforlunch

Because its a really entitled attitude to think a school serves you as a parent. Schools 'serve' children and communities. NOT parents.

And it's that attitude that has made teachers jobs so much harder in recent years because parents think they're customers and can make demands and complain if their little darlings are actually little shits.

Schools serve children's needs, not parents.

How are weeks of cobbled together, possibly not great, possibly unfamiliar childcare and immensely stressed parents serving the needs of children?

How are parents unable to pay bills because they have to take time off, serving the needs of children?

This idea that schools are somehow ‘serving‘ children by making their parents lives really difficult is absolutely bonkers.

@MarjorieBouvier - I’m not even going to waste my time. If you choose to be professionally offended by a turn of phrase and want to turn what I said into something it’s not, fine. Have fun with your bad grasp of the English language - can’t be easy going through life like that, mind.