Er excuse me, i have just been informed my child gets less education than yours cos of where i live

[nailpolish]

here children attend playgroup aged 3, preschool (for my dd's the preschool is actually in the primary school building) aged 4, then start primary school aged 5

i now understand in England children start school aged 4

i feel like my children will be missing out on a years education!

or am i talking shite

I love it when they read the football scores out on the tv. It is so funny they way they pronunce Forfar

Could you send them to Uni in Iceland expat - then it would be winter nearly all the time.

do you mean Douglas and Angus? on the East side?

LOL!

I do indeedy

i used to go out with someome from Douglas, lived in the houses you see on the other side of the sports centre

i cant even remember his name

its only 2 weeks to the tattie holidays, i better get the dd's some wellies and thick gloves

I did think that it was a long time to go between holidays - summer/half term - but I've learnt something today, tattie holidays

Down here in the big cities we only get a week at October and I would love 2 weeks as being a typical fair skinned Scot I would rather go on holidays away from midsummer

we dont do halfterms lucy

seb, it is pretty good, having a fortnight in october, means we can either go away easter, mid-june or october

I would use that time to go visit my family abroad b/c it's so f*cking hot there most of the year I'd rather go to hell.

it's a whole parallel universe this Scotland place isn't it?

tattie holidays
berry holidays
no half term

you'll be telling me next you all have an accent.

lol where do you live lucy?

Manchester - well my address is Cheshire acksherly, so I'm posh. not

ah, i like it round there, lucy

off to ramsbottom this weekend, night out in bolton, you lot do great pubs

i love an english pub on a sunday afternoon, these ones with the huge beer gardens, family friendly, massive plates grub

excuse my grammar, playing buckaroo at the same time

Also summer holidays could be divided up by areas, the Greenock Fair, the Glasgow Fair, the Paisley Fair depending on where you lived local businnes used to shut around the same time and you went away for the "the Fair".

English pubs are great, they have that smell that you only seem to get here.

ah yes cigarette smoke and stale beer.

lol seb

we have the Dundee fortnight here (although i dont live in Dundee i hasten to add ) schools do not go back until this is well and truly over

yes, i know lucy, but you have great beer gardens

and you are more family friendly

we dont have fag smoke anymore mind you

I think children here miss out in relation to those in Scotland, frankly.

They don't legally have to start school until they are 5. But most schools won't guarantee them a place unless they start in Reception at age 4. And once they start Reception, because they are at school, all the "not allowed to take them out of school during term time" stuff comes into play even though they don't legally have to have started school. So practically, they are forced to start at 4 whether or not the parents think they are ready, are forced to attend every day (hence more expensive family holidays etc.) and IMO don't get anything out of it that they wouldn't have got out of a good playgroup or nursery.

Then they get put through SATs (don't get me started on SATs).

Then they go into a public examination system that is IMO demonstrably inferior to the one in place in Scotland.

Absolutely none of this sounds to me like children in Scotland missing out.

I've never been able to understand why, when English governments seem compelled to tinker about ad nauseam with the education system, they never seem to consider moving towards the Scottish model that seems to work perfectly well.

trouble is round here we can only use them for about 2 months of the year, the rest we are all hiding under those huge umbrellas with the patio heaters - at least the beer is cold though.

nailpolish - have you noticed how everybody else is still talking education whereas we've gone to the pub?

Pubs in Scotland now have umberellas all year to keep the smokers dry and outside ashtrays

yes thats a good point lemonaid

everyone here is very comfortable and happy with the system, i just got a shock when i read that children were starting 'school' age 4 in England

we also dont have any problems (really) getting children into the school we choose

No, nor me lemonaid. I've been saying much the same thing on the secondary transfer thread. It's better in so many respects. And there is a kind of version of SATs, so they can still measure the success of schools, but the children barely know they're doing the exams because they do them when they're ready, not when the government says they must. he only way I knew ds had ever done any was if he said that he had a special worksheet to do.