Tell me is this a normal school day?

[Finn77]

Hi All,
Just need a bit of perspective on this. My daughter is 9 and started back at school last week. I have always had reservations as to the quality of teaching at the school. This year she is not in a composite class, but shares two teachers over a week, sometimes three if there are meetings etc for teachers to attend.
I asked her to tell me a blow by blow account of what they did yesterday. I seems that they went swimming in the morning, but as two classes went, they had to wait for the second class to finish which meant that by the time they returned to the school it was lunch time. After lunch they got an a4 sheet with am and pm times on it and were asked to sort out the times as an exercise.
After that they played a game for 10 mins ( not an educational one) and then they had free play till home time.
Now, if this is a typical monday at school, I am concerned at how much of the academic year is wasted by the swimming lesson and the lack of actual learning taking place during the day.
Anyone have similar experiences?

Is this Yr 5? It's difficult to say because of the swimming, but I'd be concerned at the lack of actual learning taking place.

Swimming is a pain in the neck if you don't have a nearby pool. It's compulsory, the government expects that all children should be able to swim by the end of KS2.
So that's the cost of a coach or coaches, half an hour to the pool, 10 mins changing, 30 min lesson, 15+ minutes changing back, 30 mins coach. If you have to wait for anything else, that puts pressure on the time as well.
Yes, it can waste a morning for 30 mins in the water. The rest of the day there is no excuse, even if they're having a gentle start the work should be interesting and useful learning should be happening.
Check her actual timetable and see whether she's missed bits out of her narrative, monitor what's happening for a couple of weeks and then ask questions.

It's early days at the moment, maybe they are getting to know the other members of the class. My DD has been back at school for four days and has done very little real work, she seems to be spending most of the day playing human bingo. Last night's homework was to write five questions to ask her classmates. She is 9.3, but we are overseas.

Were they all doing that, or were children being pulled out individually/in groups for reading or other tasks? I only ask because there might have been some assessments taking place, and the other things were 'holding' activities. Not very good ones, admittedly, but not bad for a one off.

Agree that swimming can be a nightmare if you're not close to a pool. Your whole morning can be gone for a 20 minute lesson.

I would be a bit concerned - but I would ask again on a non swimming day.

I would also treat anything my child says about their school day with a healthy level of scepticism - you may find that she has left out a significant hour or so!

Agreed seeker! When my nephew was in Reception he told his mum every day for a whole year that all he did was play in the sand. She knew that wasn't true because he was taking home books and reading them, obviously learning, but he couldn't remember doing it at school!

Judging by the TES forum there seems to be a large number of schools/teachers planning on spending the first 2 weeks on getting to know you exercises with new classes so I imagine that's what is happening in your daughter's class.

One of my main criticisms of school as a whole, is the sheer inefficiency of time. So much faffing and waiting around.

BTW, this is positives home educators cite - that actually learning something is much quicker if you take out the faffing time.

I'd agree, that you need to check what happens on a non swimming day, and then if still worried take it higher.

Swimming is normally all year and can be a pain. I'm assuming smallish classes so cheaper to take two groups on one bus as have separate trips so spend half the time. I don't think there is any way round it really.

I think two weeks on getting to know you is excessive I plan to spend about 20 mins on the first day on expectations and rules then get down to work which tells me more about my new class IMHO

Swimming used to take up most of the morning last time I had a class doing it. The first class would get in off the yard before the bell went to get registered and walk to the pool, we'd set off about 9.30 (so not much time to do anything before apart from quick mental maths or similar), then by the time we got back and had a quick drink/visit to the loos break it was usually pushing towards 11.30 and so you end up with these dribs and drabs of slots you can't do much with (and ours was at the start of the week so harder to put things like spelling tests in to use the dead time). Means you have to teach your literacy and numeracy in the afternoon which I've never found works as well.

Basically yep - swimming can kill almost an entire morning or afternoon session depending on the slot the local pool allocates you since they basically run on a one school is getting ready while the previous lot are having their lesson continuous stream of kids system for the swimming lesson times at the local pools.

I hate swimming days :(

ask again on a non swimming day, and again in a week or so :)

and post back to tell us, because I'm nosey :o

if that is typical of the rest of the year then OMG - hopefully as others have said it is just settling in!

I'm presuming you are in Scotland if you went back last week. If so, you are lucky you are getting swimming in P5/P6 (whichever one your dd is in) as ds will only get them in P7.

The first couple of weeks do seem to be settling in weeks. Ds (9 - in P6) also has 2 different teachers over the week - plus different/additional teachers for mathemtatics and French. We'll see how it goes.

I'm surprised you got that much information out of your dd - ds only ever tells us he's done "stuff"

'it can waste a morning for 30 mins in the water'

I don't suppose you'd look at it that way if your child fell into a river and managed to swim to the bank though?

I'll be pleased if they still get swimming lessons at school when the DSs are that age.

Thanks all for the replies. It is interesting to hear varying perspectives on the matter. I ask her what she has done during the day at the moment to try to get her into the habit of recounting the days events. I had too many years of the stock answer 'nothing' and wanted to break the cycle. She now enjoys telling me how the day has gone!!!

I'll take the advice of waiting a couple of weeks and monitoring what is happening. Of course swimming is an improtant skill, but I don't want her leaving primary with very little reading or writing skills. She isn't the most academic person and therefore I fell it is important that she gets a good start in the basics. That said, extra curricular activities are very important and forging new friendships in the first few weeks is also part of a well rounded education. BTW I am in Scotland, thats why they are back at school already!

Thanks again for taking time to respond

I think Litchick hits the nail on the head when she says that the academic side of schooling can be achieved in quite a short period of time. I realised this when I got to know some home educators. It's quite shocking really.

It seems that a large part of being at school is developing social skills, understanding society, and learning to fit into a system. Done properly, this is a great asset for children.

I'd be a bit annoyed, though, if the only 'work' done in a whole day was one sheet on time/clocks.

Hello ihearthuckabees!

My kids school seems to have hit the ground running, DS2 (who is 9 in P6) had to write the traditional "what I did in my holidays" essay on day one.

However, I will say that I don't think even our excellent primary spends enough time practising basic skills and this is to the detriment of children (like my DS) who struggle with literacy.

What has made a difference to DS2 is that i realised that i would just have to knuckle down and do a bit of home schooling on top of what his school do, eg. I taught him joined up writing over the holidays and we completed "Toe by Toe" reading at home. We are finding it reasonably managable, especially over the holidays, and DS2 is quite pleased with the results so far.

There were far too many days spent on word searches and DVD's at the end of term though!

Hi wiggly - hope DS1 is getting on ok with secondary school!

DD (about to go into Yr3) has always had a printed timetable that shows her what times her lessons are and in which rooms (home room/IT/Art/Gym etc). I'd imagine most schools would have these - perhaps you can look at DD's to see if she is exaggerating?

Not really in primary, Butkin - I have one stuck to the wall that the kids use, but not many primary schools change rooms for subjects, and if they are in a different room it's because I've taken them there!

Our school used to have a library and a "noisy/quiet" room and a computer room. Now they are all classrooms :(.

Every inch of the school is used: the assembly hall is also the gym and the dining room (and as a result, one of ds' two gym sessions per week has to be timetabled "outside" - so becomes drama or art in the classroom if the weater is bad), the area between the classrooms is also used for structured play, storage and as the "library".