Does your primary school have a STAGGERED START TIME for juniors and infants??

[drosophila]

Just wondering. Our school has the same start time for kids in Infants and Juniors so if you have a kid in yr 3 you have to leave them unsupervised in a playground while you stay with the younger one. It doesn't affect me but a friend will have a child in yr3 and yr1 and she is reluctant to leave her yr3 child alone. Practically I will keep an eye on her I'm sure but she raised a suggestion with the head that the start times should be staggered by 5 mins and he didn't seem keen.

Kids from our school have been known to leave and go to corner shop before school so her worry is not totally unjustified.

Anyone care to share how their school does it?

We don't have a staggered start time, but parents just drop and run anyway - all the children go through the school into the playground (the gate is locked) where there is a member of staff on duty for 15 minutes before the bell.

We do have a staggered leaving time though, better for parking, but pita if you've got one in infants and one in juniors.

We have separate infant and junior schools with start and end times staggered (jnrs start 5mins earlier/end 5mins later so that parents and cms can get from one to the other.

But as an aside, at the idea of anyone wanting to stay with a Yr 3 child - or the child wanting them to! There is no way DS1 (7, in yr 3) would allow me to come into the school grounds when I drop him off.

I often leave DD on the playground before the bell goes (she is 5 and in yr 1) - it's encouraged by our school after FS2. There is a member of staff from 10 mins before school start time. A bit shocked at schools where there is no-one on the playground and kids can just wander out...
HTH

Sorry that should have read there is a member of staff on the playground from 8.50 (8.45 for jnrs)

She is 7 and to my mind fairly sensible but her Mum has worries perhaps unjustified but I suspect the worries come from knowing kids leave the school and go to the shop. I'm sure that if there was someone on the gate she would be ok.

All it takes is for one kid to be hit crossing the road to the sweet shop and then the school will change their policy. I also just remembered that the same girl got her finger caught in one of those heavy fire doors at play time and had to have an operation on it. She was on her own and had to kick the door to release it. It turned out that there are protector things that you can get that prevent this and only after this happened did they install them. A stitch in time.....

DD's prep school has staggered finishing times but not start times.

End times:

PP1 - 3:25pm
PP2/3 - 3:30pm
P1-4 - 3:45pm

My children's primary school has a quarter hour stagger between Nursery/Reception and the rest of the school at the end of the day - starting times are the same.

That brings a different set of problems, as parents and younger children have to hang around waiting. I'd have preferred not to have staggered end times when I had children in both groups.

I would have thought there would be a stronger case for getting some supervision in the playground than for having staggered times.

(P.S - have you seen the Brockwell Park meet-up thread here

at ours juniors (well yr 3 up) start at 8.15 and infants (nursery - yr2) start at 8.45. However juniors can go in from 8 and infants from 8.15 (or you can drop them in the library of the junior section from 8 and a TA will take them over to infants at 8.15)

no lining up nonsense, what's the point of that?
they just go in when they get there, whether that is 8.05, 8.07, 8.13, whatever

yes, staggered by 5 minutes
850 for juniors
855 for infants