Staged/part time starting of school is unfair?

[FurierTransform]

My DD has just started reception.
The school she's attending have this system where the children don't all start on the Monday full time, but have 4 x 2-3 hour sessions, spread across 2 weeks, to 'ease into it' before attending full hours.

AIBU to think this is totally ridiculous?

I'm sure many people have had to take 2 weeks holiday from their work to bridge this gap between their children finishing nursery, and actually starting school full time, so potentially now will have to forgo a summer holiday, or work over Christmas etc!
Luckily we have flexible jobs so have just about coped.

Seems so ill thought out and inconsiderate to families with 2 working parents.

Sometimes you can - we did with our older one.

But some nurseries won't do it - partly because they get an influx of new children in September and they want to focus on settling them in and not have older ones in and out.

And it may not be practical if you have a school that is doing 2 hours on Mondays and 2 on Thursdays and then other options depending on the phases of the moon

Not sure why schools do this, luckily non of the school in my area do this anymore.
To be fair most preschoolers have done at least 3/4 days a week full time so don’t need weeks of gentle settling in. I am sure it goes back to when kids had at least one parent at home or in part time work. These schools really need to move with the times.

My son had the staggered starts and there were 16 in his class

I ended up having to rush from work to pick him up at midday to drive 5 miles to drop him at his day nursery so could do my afternoon work. This went on till Oct half term

Was a self employed single parent so had towork

You can't please all the people, true.

But the law is quite clear on all this so it would be a lot simpler if schools stuck to it.

@jotunn - there is a standardized process. All schools should follow the admissions code, where, from 2012, all legal requirements have been made very clear. More parents should kick up a fuss. Every school that insists on a staggered start is not meeting its legal requirements and I would never send my child to a school that is shirking its duties from the start. It says an awful lot about their approach!

Too many parents seem to revert to childhood themselves when it comes to a defensive, outmoded head. Don’t! Tell them straight that you’ll be exercising your right to full time from day one. You need to advocate for your child and for your own family too. There is no way I would sacrifice a family holiday because I’d used up all my leave covering a ridiculous staggered start that was implemented on the whim of a headteacher who was MORE THAN A DECADE out of date!

I quite agree - it doesn't affect me now though, I'm more at the stage of dropping them off at University! I just remember what a pita the reception staggered start was for DC1 and was very grateful that they'd dropped it for DC2.

But the law is quite clear on all this so it would be a lot simpler if schools stuck to it.
This, bucket loads of this!

How hard can it be to hold the legal line:

• full time education available to all children in reception
• parents have the option of phasing in, part time, extended transition (whatever they want to call it) until the child is compulsory school age

Under the current legal position, nobody is stopping parents who want a part time education from doing that.

In the current reality some schools are deliberately misleading parents and denying children their right to a full time education.

I thought the same, mine is July birthday (also now 20) and started after the older kids. I will always remember when she realised she'd missed out on a party invitation for one of the older kids 😓because she hadn't even started but party was scheduled later so she was aware of it.

Lots of nurseries don't want people holding places into September and then leaving - and even if they had the space you'd then need to pay full, full-time fees for that period. You wouldn't get 30 hours funding which would make it a struggle for a lot of families. And you've still got the problem of who is collecting them from school and taking them to nursery for the rest of the day or, worse, collecting them from nursery, taking them to school for a bit and then collecting them and taking them back to nursery.

Also re nurseries the hours don’t apply in august so many people try and do annual leave at the end of august to minimise costs. If you do that, you generally then can’t go back adhoc for random days in September. This year will be worse as well as so many nurseries are at capacity.

we ended mid august saving £640 for 2 weeks. To have taken advantage of nursery I’d have needed to have given notice for the end of next week and paid for days I didn’t need. It would have been a hell of an ask to have to come up with an extra £1300 just because the school wants to faff about.

Schools should be making parents fully aware of the choice to do full time or staggered.

There are many of us who need the annual to cover the rest of the holidays, need parental leave to cover sick days, don’t have local family, and as PP previously said, would be wasting hundreds of pounds for a nursery place.

Interestingly I recently found out that it’s quite common for children born near the start of the academic year to be incredibly bored at nursery/childminder by this time as they need better stimulation at nearly 5 years old. So full time may be better for these children.

Like many otherw have said, my son is an October baby and has been doing 5 days a week at nursery, so will actually be at school less. I’ll be sending him full
time to reception.

I'm sure that back in the days where most children spent their early life at home with their mother this made sense, but it really doesn't any more. In fact in many cases it makes things much worse for the child, because instead of going from familiar nursery/preschool routine to new school routine you have this 2-3 week period of a different, unfamiliar and often chaotic childcare arrangement.

Its actually particularly tricky for parents who are teachers themselves: your child is already used to the routine of term time and holidays, parents can't take holiday themselves at the start of the year and have often have their previous childcare arrangements terminsted in July.

This should be done on an optional basis nowadays, let parents think theirvchild needs ot opt for the gentle start but let others come full time from day 1.

That's ridiculous ours never did that, not even my SEN non verbal child.

We had a week of 2 hours each day, with half the class attending in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. It felt frustrating at times, but it was explained to us that it wasn't really about them "settling in" it was more about teaching them the basics of how the Reception classroom works in manageable chunks for them. Introducing them to staff, practice runs of how they will line up at lunch time and where to go, explaining the behaviour expectations, meeting their older "buddies" in the older year group, practicing going to assembly, all that kind of thing. So that when they actually have to start teaching the curriculum they are ready to go, having done all the intro ground work first.

Crucially also it was so that the teacher could spend more individual time getting to know only half the class at once, and the children had more access to the teacher in the initial few days rather than being a face in a sea of 30 kids.

As I said earlier in the thread, we did all of that and more, in June and July, in readiness for the new academic year.

Having 30 in full time from the start is an absolute shit show. I've been there. We've got 2 x 30 classes. Trying to get 60 tiny children through the dinner hall and showing them how to get their food, supporting them with trays, pouring water, taking them to the toilet etc until they learn where things are.

If they are happy with their kids having only 5 minutes to eat because of the time it takes then so be it, they will then come 'fuming' to school about it or do a daily fail sad face! ha ha!

People who come fuming to school or go to the paper are the type who support 2hrs a day. Who spout things like it is best for the children with no evidence base. Likely the same who would be entitled to free hours from 2 but refuse it as they believe the child is best at home, which is only true if the parent provides enough stimulation, social groups, reads etc. The very opposite of those who eg work ft as teachers!

YABU. And I say this as a working DM. The settling is in the child’s interest - not your convenience.

Sort out childcare. Plan in advance. Juggle it between you. Yes, it’s hard, but it’s not fair on your DC to go straight in to primary with no settling. My DC went to nursery 4 days a week from 14 months, but I wouldn’t have wanted him straight in to school with no easing in. Far too big a shock to the system.

Boomboom22
Not in my experience.

All the evidence suggests you are wrong though.

Some children need more time to adjust. You kid might be totally fine but others won't be. It's a big change for them to understand.

Some children need more time to adjust. You kid might be totally fine but others won't be. It's a big change for them to understand
The school admissions code already allows that.

Children are entitled to a full time education from the start of reception but parents are allowed to have part time until the child is compulsory school age.

That's very different from what some schools do, which is present part time education as the default.

If your child settles fine from day 1, you should ask that they go full time from the start!

My DS’s school has done this too although different to yours because it’s until 11:45 for the first two days, until 1 for the third day and then full days from there on out. The teachers said it works well and that they didn’t always do this but much prefer it now they do, apparently the children cope much better being eased in.

I have older DC who went to a different school and they were just thrown in at the deep end from the off. They were exhausted for the first few months tbh but I think that’s fairly usual.

Quite. And so many jobs are not flexible. For example a couple with say two doctor or two teacher parents who cannot wfh and do have not grandparents around. How on earth do they juggle it.

Thank goodness our school let all kids do full days from day one and there was none of this nonsense. My kids liked predictability and structure and would have hated broken days.

if some kids cannot do full days and have family available, then there should be leeway for them to reduce sessions. Otherwise full days should be the default. Many schools and kids manage perfectly well with this.