Reception start

[Blueysmum2026]

Little one starts primary this year. They don’t start full days until 14th September!

This week of 7th consists of:
Monday - 10 minute meeting with teacher, Tuesday - only 2 hour session in the morning
wednesday - not in
Thursday - half day
Friday - half day

They also have 2 weeks for October half term. They don’t seem to make up these dates throughout the rest of the academic year? Can they get away with this? I thought they had a minimum number of days they had to be in school?

I have a relative who is in SLT at a different school and even she has said they are taking advantage and teachers are being a bit lazy!

Also to add it’s an academy trust school

Schools are required to have 190 days in the year, are you sure they are missing some?

The reception arrangements are actually optional, as your child has a right to full time education from the start of the autumn term. Schools tend not to mention this. But it is a bit late now to tell them you want your child in full time from day 1.

Two week half term has been the norm here for a few years now. It was great when it started as we got non holiday prices for holidays for the non half term week. Covers most of the country now.

the phased entry is a PITA but also pretty standard.

You can insist on full time.

These are fairly standard timings for reception. All sessions that your child doesn’t attend will be marked as code X. The rest of the school will be open.
a two week Half term in October usually means that the week is made up at another time in the year either as individual days or the whole week. As another poster said, schools are required to be open for 190 days.

Reception teachers used to do home visits in the first couple of weeks of term before Covid. So your child wouldn’t have been going in at all during that time. Be grateful for small mercies 😂.

I wish I had known this before. It’s tricky as you don’t want to kick up a fuss and be ‘that parent’. I would prefer her to be at school though rather than sitting at home not doing much whilst I WFH!

I have counted all the days, they have another 2 inset days throughout the year.

The important thing is the amount of days that the school is open to children. It doesn’t matter how many inset days they have as they are taken from teacher holidays rather then pupil school days.

This is something primary schools have always done, you kicking up a fuss wont change that you'll just become "that" parent they try and avoid.

It's always been like that and is actually in the interests of your child. Even if they have been at nursery or pre school, Reception is a step up so a graduated start is good for them and will cause fewer problems with settling in.

And presumably you knew all this before you chose this school and decided to send your child there? Particularly the two week half term.

No actually, it’s a new thing from this year!

the frustrating thing is the holiday clubs don’t seem to adopt this, so holiday club only runs for the usual week, not the week before!

God we haven’t done this since the late 90’s My school reception in full time first day unless parents felt they need more staggered start (non did) even nursery only had 2 days of 1 hour then Friday full morning then all day ones can start full time Monday!!!

I don't see how the 'teachers are being a bit lazy'?

If your friend is in SLT, they should probably know the teachers don't make the rules.

she actually said, it’s an easy way for it to count as a weeks worth of schooling days whilst having very little actual work…

This is one of those things that is well known but only to those in the know.

The admissions code is clear: parents can override it. But you're not in a strong position if you don't find out until your child's already started. Was there really no confirmation of dates and times at all before September?

Spoken by someone who has never tried to settle a class of new 4 year olds!

And again, does she think these 'lazy teachers' get a say?

Do they make the rules in her school?

I don't think it's tremendously settling to take kids, many of whom will have been at nursery 8-6 for years, and subject them to a hotchpotch of arrangements probably including desperate childcare favours.

Meh I didn’t care - we requested late as start as possible and didn’t start til 18th last year

we took advantage of a cheaper holiday to France and went to Disneyland when everyone else was back at school

she’ll be in school now for years so missing out at the very beginning a few weeks so what - makes no difference overall

Unless you are self-employed it's really not appropriate to WFH with a child under 7yo in the house. You cannot do either role effectively. It's very weird to not be aware of these arrangements before now, don't know if the school was remiss in not communicating it earlier or you failed to look at a letter/email sent months ago but most people are aware of transition arrangements by May and it's normal to save some annual leave this year to cover the gap, or to keep paying for childminder/nursery until school is full time.

Yes you can insist on your child being full time from day one but this isn't in the children's best interests. It's not like transition into nursery when usually there's only a small number of new starters at any one time. The gradual arrangements are so that the teacher can spend adequate time settling in each child.

Your 10 minutes on day 1 is, for the teacher, 10 minutes 1:1 with each of 30 children, with a 3 minute break between to write notes = a total of 6.5 hours which is all that can feasibly happen in one day. Across Tuesday and Wednesday, 5 pupils at a time can come in for a 2 hour session and the teacher can observe each child in that small group. On the half days on Thur and Fri there are 15 children at a time.

If multiple pupils are in full time from day one, the teacher will definitely miss noticing a child who needs extra support, and things will go wrong. It seems pretty selfish to me to push for this, it may or may not be your child who suffersbut I guarantee that the most vulnerable children in the class are disadvantaged when sensible transition arrangements are overruled for the sake of convenience.

What she didnt say is that they do OTHER work, not just drink champaign and fan themselves. Maybe your SLT friend does f all (the worst kind of SLT who looks down on the staff below them), but I bet the teachers at your childs school work their but off planning and preparing lessons when the half day is over and completing paperwork SLT require of them.

My DC went to school and had similarly extended start wiht lotf os half days, the teacher spent the rest of the time working super hard to get everything ready, making resources, doing CPD, reading through files sent from nursery, etc. Definitely not being lazy.

We had four weeks before they went full-time. It was a bit of a nightmare for working parents. The pre-school next door would take them for the afternoons, but as that was only a 9-3 pre-school, the kids whose parents worked full-time had been at other nurseries, so that meant they had to settle into two new environments, not to mention whatever after-school care they were using! I remember that one friend got a new job, and decided to finish the old one in August and start the new one in October, just to make September easier. The other common solution was to book the grandparents to come and stay.

I can see the sense in settling them in gradually; our school took a few more in each day, starting with the least confident, which was great for getting them settled before there were lots of children there. However now that so many are used to full-time nursery, there's probably less need - I think all schools need to have regard to their local demographic, and watch out for the balance changing between SAHMs and those working full-time.

Some schools use the part-time start to free up staff to do home visits. Again, whether that works probably also depends on the local demographic - if all the parents are out at work, they're not going to be able to do home visits.

Yup, it's normal but very annoying. Thankfully it only happens once, next year will be much easier.

The long half term means you'll have fewer random inset days throughout the year, which is actually easier to manage and allows you to take advantage of cheaper holidays - I wish we had it.

Don't expect school holiday club to operate all holidays - that was a shock when mine started school. Ours operates every half term, one week at Easter and two weeks in summer. Nothing at Christmas. It makes sense when you realise it's mainly staffed by the TAs who also work at the school. If you need more childcare start asking working parents of older children now who they use - there's loads of clubs and activities where we are, but I had no idea they existed because they get booked up so don't need to advertise.

For goodness sake don't start your child's school career thinking that the school are being lazy. They're not.

It’s annoying. But also very standard.

No you can’t kick up a fuss about this.

Just deal with it and move on.