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!

Exactly. Knowing the amount of info schools send out, this would have been made clear a long time ago.

My colleague's son starts this week and had some settling days last week which weren't full ones so he has had a staggered start but she must have known about this before the summer holidays because she has made arrangements to be around for him until he goes for full days.

It’s also worth noting that academies do not legally have to follow the same rules as local authority maintained schools in terms of the 190 days.

What I don’t get is your instance that the school provide your childcare.
There are other forms of childcare!
It is your responsibility to investigate, book and secure this. Ideally before the first week of term starts if that’s when you’re going to need it! 🤦🏻‍♀️

GET A BABYSITTER

As a reception teacher, the first week of term is absolute hell. We do half the class AM and the other half PM. To make the session equal lengths we are actually have longer contact hours and no non-contact time at all. It
is the hardest week of the year. I assume your child’s class is also being done in smaller groups? Other activities I’ve had to do in a first week:

Home visits for children new to the country or in new care placements
Being trained by teachers of the blind or deaf
Multiple 1:1 sessions for children who are finding the transition difficult (this adds loads of time!)
Going through EHCPs, which by the way don’t always get to us before the child!
Allergy plans for starting using the lunch hall

Reception is hands down the hardest year group I have ever taught. There is so much work, don’t worry your child’s teacher is unlikely to be bored!

If you mean the two week half term, it's quite common in London too.

Very common in both states and private schools around here.
Academy chains all seem to do it.

We also had this.
I wish they just got on with it. Our daughter was at the nursery next door and delaying the start of reception just dragged it out.
We also have 2 weeks in October, I like this though. They put all the inset days in to a week and add it on to the half term.

You can’t just get a ad hoc babysitter like that. Do you actually have children ?

We have childcare for term time but it does not run during the first settling in week.

My older DDs school started with two half days, optional so I didn’t take them up on it, and my younger DD (different school) started reception full time on Wednesday. If either school had had extended part time hours I would have exercised my right to have them in school full time.

i know school is different to nursery but both had been in nursery full time for a good while before starting. These extended weeks of part time hours are unnecessary

We have got wraparound but the after school does not start until next week

I'm sympathetic to the problem, but I notice you are avoiding questions about when the school told you of their start of term arrangements.

Our school is the same. And nursery - I remember few years ago they started 21st or 22nd September because my neighbours didn't have a childcare and I dropped their child to endless 30mins sessions. I don't think it helps them to settle, it was an absolute mess. My own child will go to school nursery this year and I don't even know the date of the first session, we're still waiting for home visits to be confirmed.

No, you have school-offered wraparound care for term time.
School is not childcare.
A parent, relative, babysitter, childminder, or alternative setting is childcare.

Amazed that people think they can just shift all “childcare” to school. Look after your own child!

My kids school is 2 weeks of half days - pretty standard for all schools in my area.
They would have given you notice. Agreed, it would be difficult if working without anyone to help.
You're lucky that your school provides wrap around childcare at all - many do not. But that won't be on, as it's part time to help them settle in. Wrap around is making them have a really long day immediately.

Our transition is really stupid. They’ve put the two classes into four groups and only have half in at a time, morning and afternoon. It’s not even actual half days, the afternoon slot is less than 2 hours! And that continues for 7 days (2 days last week and all this week). They’re rotating the groups around, so only ever with the same children (outside their own group) for 3 days max. My son made a little friend last week and now won’t see him again for a week!

Then on the 14th, they’re suddenly in a full 6.5 with all 60 children. Not sure where the transition is there!

No other schools around here do anything like this. At most they do two half days in the first week.

All children are entitled to a full time education. (DfE guidance, DfE attendance guidance, Admissions Code).

Staggered starts deny a child their right to a full time education.
Childcare is not the issue.

We planned for this by not giving notice at nursery til the second week of September. It did mean having to have someone available to collect from school and drop at nursery but it worked.

I think you'll be surprised when your child starts school at how many families find this quite easy to deal with. I work 4 days, it feels like pretty much everyone I know works 3 days+, yet an awful lot of people manage to get by with grandparents, friends, shift work, WFH etc. Where I am (middle of the road English town) it's incredibly unusual for primary children to be in wraparound care daily or even more than a couple of times a week because most people have sorted other drop-off and pick-up arrangements. It's very difficult if you have an inflexible job but you're probably overestimating how many people are in that position.

It's annoying, but given the children are not old enough to have to be in full time school legally, there is no problem with it happening.

Our primary school didn't allow Reception kids into the wraparound care until after Christmas if their 5th birthday happened in the first half of the school year or until after Easter if they were summer born. This was a sensible decision and having seen later what it was like, with enormous year5 and year6 kids taking up a lot of space and being very dominant, it's no place for a 4 year old who has only just started school.

I think the issue isn't schools but work places that lack flexibility. School holidays have been the same for decades.

In this instance the issue is childcare and calling teachers lazy because they haven’t made plans to look after their own child for the first week of term.

There is!

Read back. Loads of DfE guidance and admission codes say otherwise.

It's for the benefit of the teachers and that's it. It is lazy. The kids keep asking why they can't go to school every day, my son actually ends up being jealous of his 3yo sister who get to go back to nursery full time.
It's not a step up from nursery, it's the exact same hours and same daily schedule. Plenty of schools in the UK and rest of Europe manage to get kids full time from day 1.

I get that the teachers get less TAs than at nursery, but stop saying it's about the children.