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!

It's only a week, albeit that schedule does look messy. I know friends whose kids schools dragged it out for 2-3 weeks!

Our school opened last Wednesday. Reception kids in for 2 hours on Weds, all morning leaving at the start of lunch on Thursday, all morning plus lunchtime on Friday then in full time from tomorrow. All the kids are in together though. For last week they also arrived 10 mins after the rest of school had gone in so they didnt have to contend with the busy playground for the first couple of days.

DD is in year 3 now but that has been the pattern for a while. It worked well I think and was a short enough period not to mess parents around too much.

The two week October half term will be accounted for in the days later in the year. We get 2 weeks in October but then just 5 (plus a couple of days) for the summer. I really like it. The September to Christmas run is long so the two week break is appreciated. DD was desperate for it in reception and year 1. And 5 weeks is plenty for the summer, another week would barely be noticed.

Schools usually have 5 INSET days per year so keep a look out for more if you've only got dates for 2 so far.

If your friend is SLT she should know better than calling teachers lazy- and I’m glad I’m not in a school with thoughts like hers! What an absolute rubbish thing to say.
I don’t agree with soft starts to be honest as for working parents it’s a nightmare - however you lost me at calling teachers lazy. They have their reasons, it’s not their choice, may help the children settle better- it may not. However this would have all been known before you started, even if it was new this year things like term dates moves take up to 3 years to change. It would have been on the website or the county council site.

if your friend is so amazing calling other teachers lazy maybe it’s teachers like her causing others to leave x

Also most schools don’t do this around where I am so it’s not every school that needs to get ‘with the modern age’.
honestly you should have done more research before your child started school.

It’s difficult to do individually though.

Our school went back last Thursday, but my DD in reception isn’t in full time until a week tomorrow. She was in for 3 hours last week, and just the mornings this week. If I insisted she was in full time, it would just be her in every afternoon by herself - every child is doing mornings, it’s not been split half doing mornings and half doing afternoons.

It’s annoying because almost all the children joining reception will have been in the pre school (genuinely I think it’s about 45 of the ~50 reception starters), on the same site, wearing the same uniform, meeting the teachers, doing PE with the PE teacher, even going to an assembly with the rest of the school once a week etc. It’s not a huge leap to a new environment with all new adults, loads of new children etc.

I also don’t believe that the schools who don’t do this are acting against the children’s best interests, for the people who like to argue that these long settling periods are for the children’s benefit.

Why isn't your child's father getting involved in the logistics of this complicated week? I think most people who have the leisure to post on mumsnet probably has a certain amount of privilege but I was working full time a hour's drive away from home when this week happened for me, and I was only allowed to WFH a maximum of 1 day a week with an absolute ban on combining that WFH with caring for my child whilst working, it would have been considered Gross Misconduct if I had. Yes it was hard. The fact that I survived it wasn't due to my privilege but because I paid attention to the fact that this would be happening and spent time working out a functional plan in advance (which yes involved DC's dad shouldering an equal burden of the inconvenience)

Yes, it's difficult to be "that parent", but schools shouldn't ignore the DfES rules and put parents in that position.

At least you only have to be "that parent" once, unlike those of us with SEND kids!

I'd want to warn the next year's intake, at least.

This kind of invisible thing harms women's employment too.

You shouldn’t have to?! It’s your child! You absolutely should be responsible for arranging any and all childcare.

To be fair, I think most first timers think "starting school" means "starting school" not "building up to starting school from 10 minutes over a period of up to a month".

I was lucky. I happened to pop in on my neighbour who has twins a year older than my DC, in September of their year R, and saw in her kitchen the terrifying timetable covering ad hoc care from her, her DH, his parents and his step son running for the month of September. She was very sorry to have given nursery notice in June the week before the school dropped this on her!

THERE IS NO CHILDCARE THIS WEEK

He is also WFH part of the week too

Because you haven’t arranged any!! The school is not childcare!

It is unfair.

As I said, my friend struggled with 4 other adults as well as herself to help. It was just the short hours hut the logistics of dropping off and picking up, lunches etc.

My single mum friend, whose ex is useless, had to take leave from the secondary school where she teaches maths to cover her daughter's staggered primary start. So her students had cover for two weeks. In some secondaries she would have been risking her job asking for that, but they didn't want to lose her.

It would be honest of schools to say in good time between April and June, "Our Reception arrangements are X. You have the right for your child to attend full time if you wish."

No the school holiday clubs do not run and the breakfast and afterschool cub does not start until the following week. Therefore childcare is WFH or relying on family. Why don’t you get that!

Would you have continued with nursery if you'd known, OP? My friend would but she'd already given notice and the places were snapped up, by the point the school revealed their arrangements.

Did you really not hear anything from the school before September though?

Something else people are often also not aware of is that wraparound sometimes doesn't take year R and that places are competitive so there may not be spaces.

You're lucky, at our school they don't go full time until week 4. In the first week they have a home visit and one morning in school. Then they split the class in half and each half does every other day until they all go in full time from week 4. It was a bloody nightmare.

No we used holiday club over the summer and AL

Most children have 2 parents. 2 parents between them will usually (there may be a slight shortfall as the statutory minimum given by the least good employers is only 28 days, but 30-35 days each for good employers) have enough to cover holidays with no overlap to spend time together as a family. To deal with any shortfall and create a little bit of overlap to be able to have time off together, each parent also has the right to request unpaid parental leave, to a total of 18 weeks per child across the whole lifetime of the child, and this is very useful in these kinds of difficult situations when you need childcare in weeks where clubs aren't running. It is really tough. It's not surprising to me that by the end of KS1 several of the mums who had worked full time during the nursery years had dropped to part time hours at least temporarily because it's so difficult to combine full time work with the demands of school. This wasn't an option for us financially but we did use the unpaid parental leave option occasionally.

(When I said whole lifetime I meant whole childhood! Apologies)

Maybe you could have taken this week as your own holiday from work then it wouldn't have been an issue.

Your attitude to the school isn't great.

This is your child's first week in school, that will only happen once for them so perhaps the onus was on you to prioritise that and also to make enquiries about things like wrap around care before now so it didn't come as such a shock

Ok, it always used to be like this is what I meant.
Things have changed but clearly some schools are still offering this because OP's school is.
Reception children are still very young and Reception is different to nursery, more children, fewer adults, more routines & generally very tiring.

The school is doing this from a place of care and experience surely, not laziness and just to be awkward. And definitely not just to annoy the OP!

Where's that, Scotland?

My grandson starts tomorrow. Half day Monday, no lunch, half day Tuesday with lunch, full days from then on.

Or annual leave? Then you use holiday clubs in the half term or Feb half term or easter etc.

If a staggered start was going to be an issue you should have picked a different school