Reception year teacher on maternity leave - should we be worried?

[laurenceneville]

Our eldest son is due to start reception in September. The school has just told us his teacher is pregnant and (presumably) will be going on maternity leave from about Christmas until the end of the school year the following summer.
Given the importance of the reception year for children?s approach to learning and school, what effect do you expect a change of teacher (and the possibility of more than one teacher over the year) will have on pupils? development and outcomes?
Should we be looking for an alternative school?

you shouldn't move schools - as someone else has said, what if that teacher becomes pregnant?

They won't know what they're doing about her replacement yet. If she's going off at christmas then there's plently of time - no one is qualifying between now and then and you only have to give hald a term's notice if someone was leaving their job to go to your son's school. My guess is they've let you all know and they'll deal with it in september.

The teacher has told them very early if she's going in january (as did I - I told my head teacher when I was 8 weeks pregnant so they had as much time as possible to deal with it) and school have been very good at telling you now not in september. The chances are they will get a full cover if they can (much cheaper) and it will be fine. This won't be the last time in you're son's 14 years of education that this happens, and school will have dealt with it all before...!

Thanks for the reassurance (from those of you who've offered it). I've called the school and they said they would try to respond to my queries before the end of term. I'm sure I am being precious - but who wouldn't be? It's the first year of our first child going to school. We want it to be good.
hopenglory: why shouldn't parent want to know how a school handles a situation like maternity leave? Surely better to be interested than not? Just because I want to know what the policy is doesn't mean I don't trust the head.

I am sure everthing will be just fine! The teacher will have settled the kids by Christmas and they will be well established into a routine. I have seen P1 disrupted in my school twice now and the children are incredibly resiliant at this age, they will love having a new teacher!

Just from a teachers point of view - we do worry about what parents think and some can be incredibly insensitive. I recently had a friendly discussion with a parent helper recently and we were discussing honeymoons (mine was two years ago) She then proceeded to tell me that I better not get pregnant this year as I am teaching her daughter next year. I just chuckled but she was being serious! Too late because I will be due around Christmas and I am now dreading parent reaction! :(

cat64, as tenderheart points out the teacher has made the decision to tell the head and therefore the parents presumably because she knows it will give the school more time to prepare and therefore be better for the kids and make the parents less anxious. At a school, the implications of her "private life" are inevitably not just private.
Thanks everlong, it's hardly odd to ask questions about how processes work. It's not questioning people's authority to understand a process. I assume most of us don't accept everything in life that we are told and sometimes ask questions.

I think you are hugely overreacting. This will occur at other times in your dc's school lives. They probably won't advertise for a replacement until the Autumn now anyway but will arrange a handover. There is probably a TA dedicated to the class who will provide continuity.

Of course I mean teacher's point of view! Sleep deprived!

We've not been told about a replacement or even how they'll be selecting one

You will be told about the replacement when the school has appointed. Other than being told the recruitment process is happening, you're not going to get much more detail. The Governors / HT will sort out the recruitment process, advertise and appoint the best person/people for the job.

I suppose if you are really interested you could request an application pack when the advert comes out, but tbh, that would be quite a strange thing to do.

I have a feeling that you might need to adjust your expectations slightly as to how much information you are going to get from the school

The replacement may be better! Why would you imagine that a replacement teacher is no good?Teachers have lives-they get pregnant. I can't see the point of changing schools-what is to say the next teacher won't get pregnant. Even if you choose one past childbearing age she might have a car accident, need an operation, take early retirement half way through etc etc etc.

Most likely they will appoint a teacher they already know. Lots of wonderfully experienced teachers like short term contracts.

Just a bit of warning: If the post becomes available from January 2012, which is when I gather the original teacher's maternity leave starts, you may not get information in September. So there may be no point in asking who they've appointed. The process we would follow would be advertise at the start of the next school year (i.e. Sept), short-list and interview by early October, so if the candiates are already in a post they can hand their resignation in by end of October. We'd notify the parents once the appointment had been made.

My ds's reception teacher (at a private school) left at the end of the second term with a long term health problem. She was a wonderful reception teacher - caring, fun, absolutely loved the children and made learning so much fun that all the children thrived under her care.

When the school announced that she wasn't coming back all the parents were dismayed but her replacement was absolutely fantastic. She had previous taught year one, so she moved the children's reading along at an amazing pace, the children all took the grand total of one day (maybe two days for the more sensitive or loyal ones) to adjust and it was a huge success.

Children are very adaptable and good teachers will always bring out the best in them. It is wrong to assume that the replacement teacher will not be as good as the original one. You perhaps should not have chosen a school on the basis of one teacher teaching one year of your dc's education, but now you need to have faith in the Head to employ a suitable replacement.

The HT has just called me to explain the situation and the recrutiment process and that they will seek to find a full time replacement for the whole period the teacher is on maternity leave. I have complete confidence that they'll find the right person for the job.
Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and experiences - some were very helpful in providing reassurance. One observation though - there are some extraordinarily vitroilic and unnecessarily agressive posters here who jump to conclusions that are not made in the original post. Lighten up a bit.

at hugely anxious parent wanting to micro-manage school's decisions around a teacher's maternity leave asking everyone to 'lighten up a bit'............

Didn't mean that to sound snippy, but it did make me smile!