What does your child do between 8:45 and 9am at school?

[Newbie887]

Just had a parent consultation where we were told off for being “late” every day. Apparently my daughter is unable to complete the work they are mean to be doing between 8:45am and 9am, and is often upset because of this. She is 6 years old and in Y1.

The school day starts at 9am (or so I had assumed). Doors open at 8:45am for drop off and shut at 9am. They school has requested that children be dropped off at 8:45am in order to be ready to learn by 9am. I had assumed this meant coming in, sorting out bags and coats, and generally transitioning into the classroom.

My problem is I can’t get my daughter there any earlier than 8:50-9:00 due to having to drop my son off at his school. A lot of the other parents who have older children who have moved on from this infant school to their nearest primary have the same problem due to it being a rural area.

Is it unreasonable to expect learning to start at 9am rather than 8:45am? What do other peoples kids drop off / starting school schedules look like?

The schools I worked at had door open at 8:45 and everyone was expected to be sat down and ready to begin at 9 promptly. So what time you turned up depended whether your child was efficient or a chatter/ditherer.

TA closed the external doors closed at 9 and anyone arriving after that would have to go through the office and be registered separately. I believe they were marked as late.

For comparison purposes our school has gates open from 8.30, teachers come out and they start lining up in classes around 8.50 and the bell goes/they all walk in together at 8.55. If it's heavily raining then they open the doors from 8.45.

I think you have to be there for registration but I wouldn’t be getting wrap-around for the sake of 10 minutes. At ours the gates open at 8.30 and juniors are supposed to be in by 8.40 and infants 8.50. In practice, the gate closes at 8.50 and there are lots (including us) who are often on the dot of gate closing. I figure my kids are there until 6 for wrap around and I’d rather see them in the morning when I can. They are stricter about the 8.40 by year 6 to prep for secondary.

Registration at 8.35 with first lesson starting at 8.45 at ours.

Our drop off it 8.40 to 9am, since covid. Register and doors close at 9am and you're marked later after 9.

Dc do "morning task". Any random thing, according to dc1.

So your child is arriving just as learning starts, meaning she then has to take coat of go hang it up put bag away then get her books ready to start while everyone else has started.

We open our doors at 830 and we take the register at 840. I have a task ready for the children to do in those 10 minutes, we call them morning jobs. For my reception class as the moment we are focusing on letter formation. Unfortunately there are children who miss this opportunity everyday and they are usually the ones who could use those 10 minutes!

Thanks for all the replies. I met with the teacher and headteacher today who confirmed that school doesn’t officially start until 9am, but there are tasks set up for the children to do when they start coming in at 8:45am that are consolidation tasks from learning the day before. We have agreed on a compromise of my daughter bringing home the worksheets to do at home if she doesn’t get a chance to do them in the morning. They are usually a handwriting sentence or a phonics recap, these are the two areas she is weakest in so I think not having that recap each morning when most of the others do is setting her back. She is becoming reluctant to show the teacher her work or join in with phonics because she is self conscious about it; this coming from a child who was very confident in reception was when I started to get concerned.

school doesn’t officially start until 9am and she isn’t marked late until after then. I do find it a little unfair / frustrating that they can’t do a quick 15 mins of this consolidation work after 9am rather than before. It really isn’t fair on those with older siblings, it’s usually the same faces running up the hill at 8:55.

to those asking about logistics, we have considered everything we can think of! My partner works away from home tues, weds and Thurs so isn’t around then to help with drop offs at all. We’ve tried lift shares but for various reasons I can’t control they are unreliable and can only really used in one off situations, not every day. We have an appeal lodged for my
som to get a bus to school so hopefully that will go through.

Between 8:45 and 9:00 is register and taking the children's dinner orders. Then get ready for assembly.
If a child is persistently late it is flagged up as a safeguarding concern

Given your most recent post I would be pretty frustrated at the schools approach. Your daughter is not even late and yet they are accusing her of coming in late and now she's feeling left behind academically because other children are arriving at school 15 minutes early and getting extra support. They sound very uncaring to those with older siblings.

This can't be the first time this has come up. We have an infants /juniors situation but the schools are a five min walk away. They both open and close (20 min window) at same time but it's accepted parents may be late if they are held up. There is also the option to send elder child over alone as it does not involve roads.

Our gates open at 8.30 and yes there is an early morning task until 9am. Consolidation or the school use it for specific interventions for kids who are struggling.

The infant and junior schools here coordinate their start and finish times so that no-one has to be in two places at once.

I would be willing to bet that this is a 32.5 hours issue, that they thought they were fine, and then realised that a chunk of the children are missing 75mins of the total allocation per week.

I think it’s quite common to have morning work. For those who arrive at 8:45 15 mins is too long to be doing nothing for. It doesn’t take that long to hang up a coat and this is when problems start. Some will start to mess/be daft because there’s nothing to do and so will often be in trouble within the first 15 mins of the day. This gets the day off on the wrong foot, but if they have a settling activity to do straight away it helps them to be calm and focused.

You need clarification on when the actual school day starts. Ours started at 8:45 but you could arrive from 8:40 - we only had a 5 minute flex window not 15!

It's unreasonable to have learning expectations that are only achievable by those who arrive at the start of the flex window. That is stopping it from being a flex window. So the school need to clarify tgat either it is not a flex window or the learning targets for it are optional.

Usually morning work is optional. It’s recapping previous learning. It’s not new stuff.

Pretty normal now for schools to begin at 8:45ish IME.

Ours is gates open from 8:40 - which means on the playground ready to drop off. Doors open 8:50 and that's when school starts. Kids go in, put bag away and then do spellings or consolidation work until around 9am. Ours would be considered late if they are going in at 9am daily as they'll have missed over an hour of consolidation time across a week which is quite a lot really.

Which is all fine but irrelevant in this situation as the OPs school have confirmed the school start time is 9am.

She can't be late if school doesn't start until 9 just because they open the doors earlier and let in those who are early.

Our school has a soft start 840-855. Doors open 840. Pre-lockdown, kids used to play in the playground, decompress etc. Now it's straight in to sit down quietly and crack on with something. Register taken at 9. Does seem odd that consolidation doesn't start until after nine.

You need clarification on when the actual school day starts. Ours started at 8:45 but you could arrive from 8:40 - we only had a 5 minute flex window not 15!

More than she's had when she met with the teacher and head? Blimey.

@Newbie887 school doesn’t officially start until 9am and she isn’t marked late until after then.

The cut off time for "you are marked as late if you are not here by X" is usually at least 10 minutes after the official start to the school day. Are you sure you have understood correctly? If she is marked late if arriving at 9:01 then I would be surprised if the official school day starts later than 8:50.

Being marked late directly impacts OFSTED assessment grades. A school would be crazy to have no time elapsing between the official start of the school day and the registration cutoff.

From a child's pov, I don't think this is fair on your dd.

We had a start time of 9:05 at primary. We were often late, and it rarely was my fault. Not normally by more than 5 minutes, but it felt like everyone else was ready, while I was trying to rush though hanging my bag up, getting things out I needed, and trying to listen to the teacher.
I missed out on things. I remember once finding that something I'd been asked to do by a teacher, they'd assumed I was going to be off and gave it to another child. Other times I arrived to find they'd asked for volunteers and half the class was doing something I thought was fun and I'd be in the rest of them continuing working. Or it wasn't noticed that I hadn't got something until too late.
I missed out socially too, because sometimes the other girls had arranged things before school which I then wasn't aware of.

You can say 5 minutes late, but by the time your dc is in the classroom and ready to learn it's another 10 minutes, and then they're feeling hassled and not in the mood for learning.

It's one of the things that has left me with a never risk being late feeling. I'd rather be half an hour early than 5 minutes late.

When I worked in primary school, we opened the classroom's back door at 8:50 and started at 9:00. 10 mins for children to get settled in.

You are being perfectly reasonable- teacher here, the school day starts at 9am, the doors are open at ours from 8.50pm and the children arrive in waves. As long as they are in by 9am all is good- otherwise they come in the front office.
It's ridiculous that you are made to feel bad for this, especially for a perfectly valid reason of a sibling drop off. No one should be making you feel like you are in the wrong

Wow the rigid timetabling and insane schedules we’ve accepted for our tiny children is insane. It’s no wonder we have so many kids with anxiety and stress when the pressure is on from even before the school day officially starts, to ‘consolidate some learning’ or finish a worksheet. To the point that the OPs daughter is getting upset by not finishing it. My kids are still pre school age but threads like this (particularly the blind acceptance of everyone on the thread that this is normal and ok) makes me wish I had enough money to give up work and go full forest school/unschooling and just let them be free.