Are half day starts legal? Do they discriminate?

[esxgirl]

I have been told my 4yr old starting school in Sept will only be allowed to attend school for half days for the first 2 wks which is impossible to accommodate with full time work. How can they do this when they get full time funding? I think it indirectly discriminates against working families. He is used to much longer days at nursery, but despite appealing to the school, they will not budge. Any tips?

'I have something to compare it too' = refers to TickTock saying she hadn't

Do think nooka has a point re staggered intakes - thats another way of doing it, I suppose.

I once had a child move into my reception class from another county in May and he hadn't started full days in his old school

I had one summer born who did half days for a term and the other two (autumn babies) were on full days within 2 weeks.

The summer-born child was so much less exhausted than the autumn birthday children, he was so much more enthusiastic about his school work, too, because of not having the long days. If he's disadvantaged in any way it's from his emotional maturity, which extra hours in classroom wouldn't help. I personally would like all children to do half days until after Easter.

I know it's a faff for working parents, but let's face it, everything about having children is a faff for employed parents.

I'd be thinking about keeping them at nursery until Easter with that set up. If a summer born child isn't ready for school in September then the old system of sending them in January instead worked just fine. If they aren't ready until Easter then really that is a good rationale for delaying a year. Where I live now they start school a year later, and after a few years you cant tell the difference.

If you describe it as a faff that implies that the working parent is really just making a bit of a fuss about nothing. Getting childcare arrangements that work with school is hard enough without strange timetables, with them it may be nigh on impossible unless you live in an area with a lot of excess capacity, have very supportive family or use a nanny. When we moved from a nanny to a childminder there was only one person available that did pick ups from the children's school - if we hadn't liked her we would have been stuffed.

Our County makes it entirely age-related - the child does not do full days until the term in which they turn 5 - so if you have a summer born, they have to do two full terms of half days. There is zero flexibility. I have two winter born children - with DD1 I started her in January, because there was no childcare available for a half day child - no childminders or nurseries that would do midday pickup, just the assumption that there would be a parent at home . DD1 was fine with it, made friends and settled in really quickly (but had been in full time nursery since 6 months old).

With DD2 it was the same thing, but there was a nursery that was prepared to do a midday pickup - not DD's old nursery, so she had to live with 2 changes of setting. She was so completely ready for full time school that for 3 months I had to live with a furious little girl who could not understand why all her friends were allowed to have school dinners and stay on, but she could not. To add to it all, the nursery was crap. The school asked for permission to offer full time to younger children if they and the parents thought it would work, but the answer was no.

Schools need to be allowed to manage this themselves, and the needs of full time working parents need to be considered.

At our school they start full time from the first day which is great. It means I can take the week off work and take him and pick him up myself - good continuity. After the first week he will go to the after school club. However we are in Scotland so he will have turned five by the time he goes and he has been at the school breakfast club, nursery and wrap wround care for the last two years. He has spent 1/2 an hour in the P1 class with the teacher twice a week for the last 8 weeks. Children coming from other nurseries won't have that advantage.

Our school go full-time from Day One but we do have a large amount of double working parents and most children were in full-time childcare before they started school. I have done school nursery, lunchtime pick up and then private nursery which I did one day a week for a year and it was just very lucky I worked close by at the time.

I'd never heard of this until recently - when DD1 started school (1999) she went full time from day 1, but she didn't start till January as she was a Spring birthday. Nowadays they seem to get the kids in full time before Christmas, so they do this daft part-time thing particulary for the younger ones.

DD2's school (2008) split the intake into Autumn/Spring/Summer birthdays, then had each batch in for 1 week before they started full time. (So you'd have 1 week school, 2 weeks off, full time OR 1 week in, 1 week off, fulltime OR full time from the start). Worked better as if your children were in nursery you would have one week they wouldn't use, but at least there was no having to get childminders for a term as you only had hlaf days. Apparently they had to change this due to LEA rules about the number of hours - th new head came in and said that system was against the rules so they now do the half a term of half days thing.

Wow!, I've never thought anyone would complain about half day starts for younger reception kids. I've always heard people complain that reception starts too soon for these children. It has always been linked to how shattered children can get in their first year of school and I have only ever considered it from the view poitn of my shattered child.

Just shows a school cannot please everyone

(btw can i mention yet that a school is not, first and foremost, a babysitting service, or will this get me flamed?)

My DD2 starts school in September and will have 5 weeks of faffing about. She has been at nursery full time since she was 10 months old. To make it worse her nursery is in the town where I currently work, but her school is where we live, so I don't even have the option of taking her back to her old nursery for the other half of the day.

We are seeing the teacher on Tuesday to find out how this is supposed to work after which we'll have to start looking for nursery/CM near school. So instead of just going to school like her siblings did she's got to contend with a new school and a new nursery.

I'd hold her back until January but all her friends from nursery will have gone to school (elsewhere) and all the friendship groups at school will have formed in the first term, so I don't think that's fair to her.

Trying to cover the whole of September plus save some Leave for the 13 weeks school holidays is a nightmare.

No, they can't please everyone. And I think that applies to a lot of things!

Trouble is, one child/parent's 'faffing about' is another child/parent's 'gentle introduction' and what is good for one is NOT necessarily good for another.

I still think some flexibility, both ways, is helpful - our school will let overtired or unused to childcare children go home early, if necessary, as part of getting them used to school. Hard to find flexibility in the other direction, though - and the demands from parents are changing from mostly SAHM to mostly working parents. Quite rapidly, in our school.

when my son started we had half days until after christmas. it was a nitemare as my other son was already at school full time so by the time i picked 2nd son up and got home (don't drive) i had about 45 mins before going back to school with a half hr walk with a tired 4 year old. But how i look at it it is the first year this happens and you just have to accommodate your child first. Now the school has every one full time after a month.

Both of my DC were mornings only (and short mornings at that, 9 - 11.45) until the Easter of their Reception year, so 2 full terms of short days.
It had a huge impact on our decision to move house, to accommodate this (as DH and I both work).

However, I'm very much in the 'why rush them into school quite so young?' camp - wouldn't have wanted mine there fulltime at 4 years 3 weeks old.

That's a very good post Elibean!

"btw can i mention yet that a school is not, first and foremost, a babysitting service, or will this get me flamed?)"

No, it's not, but mothers (and it's usually mothers) who have school aged children and don;t want to get a job get called lazy. Can't have it both ways.

They can please everyone - at least our local school does! Up until legal school age (ie term after fifth birthday) parents can choose as much or as little school time as they feel will best suit them and their family situation. So some children start off doing 2 or 3 mornings, others do 5 mornings, some do some mornings, some full days and others do all day, every day. The only thing they ask is that you stick to the same arrangement for half a term at a time. It works brilliantly, teachers happy, parents happy and most importantly the children are happy.

Now that makes sense, Daisy - lovely example of flexibility.

MigratingCoconuts: why, thank you Funnily enough I thought the same about one of yours earlier, but damned if I can remember which thread its on

It does make sense and I can't work out why every primary school doesn't do it

stealth, sorry...I don't remember myself or anyone else saying that about stay at home mums and nor can I see how your comments have any bearing on this thread. maybe I'm just being a bit thick.

daisey, that does seem fair.

Our school is moving from staggered starts to all in one go from september. I'm bracing myself for one very tired little boy

it's changed now anyway, and parents can choose to send them full time from day one. If your school hasn't told you this and won't allow you to, you can contact your LEA and they will sort it out.

They probably don;t MC :o and I certainly wasn't implying you had said it. It's a bugbear of mine. The government recently talked about removing benefits from LPs when their youngest child reached 7 (I think...hazy on detail). That's fine, but they are then keen to tell us that school isn't childcare and we must be available at the drop of a hat to pick up children if the school needs to close / come in to hear children read etc...
There was a thread on here a little while back from a woman asking if her DH wbu for saying she should go back to work (had been a full time SAHM until then). Fine, but I can guess who would have to cover drop offs/pick ups/holidays/sickness/inset days. Lots of people came on the thread to say she was being unreasonable and lazy.

ok..that makes more sense and yes, I agree entirely. i guess some people can't afford not to work. For those who do stay at home, its a very important choice. I work full time but DH is a SAHD for our kids.

It works for us!

Don't schools have to deliver a certain number of days education per year, and doesn't this staggered start go against that? DS starts in September, and for the first week has just the 30 minute home visit, the second week is half days, and the third week half days plus lunch. He will be 5 before he starts, so this seems unnecessary to me. DD was also a September baby and started full time straight away with no problems. I can see how it would be useful for those that are younger, but this now seems excessive.