Seperate infant and junior school or combined?

[Daniellesmac]

What is everyones view on seperated primary schools?
As in one venue for infant and another for juniors.

I think I want my DD to be all in a school combined as she may feel more secure. As I haven't been through this before, wandered what everyones views were?

Hi. My 2 DC go to an all through primary. I don't have experience of separate infants and juniors. On a practical note we didn't have to apply for juniors and they are on the same site for drop off/pick up. It is a medium sized school with only one class per year so they know everyone. I think the consistency is great throughout the whole school. They love it.

DD is in an Infant school and from all schools we saw we felt the smaller world of an Infant is better for her.

She only turned 4 in July before starting and was a very shy little girl. We thought she would have been totally of whelmed in a large primary setting.

Our Infan/Junior set up is easy, both are legal entities but they work very well together, Year 2 spend always the last term once a week at the Juniors and both heads organise and cooperate lots of events. The Infant also uses the Junior IT room and the quite large sport field on a regular basis.

The Juniors start 15 min earlier and close 15 min later, plenty of time for parents with children in both school to be ready and on time.

We get our application filled out, ready to sign and our borough guarantees you a space in the attached Junior.

For us it was ideal, DD could get used to school in a small setting with all benefits of the Juniors next door.

Yeah some schools seperate reception Y1 and Y2 from the rest of the years. but then some go further and seperate reception from Y1 and Y2 as well.

I just think for all reasons one with all of them together could be better for her and more handy for me, but on the flip sides the seperate schools round me are also very good

But just so were all definelty on the same page i mean seperate as in completly different buildings or streets, not just seperate playgrounds and classrooms

My DC go to separate (and unrelated) infants and juniors. This is not by particular design but due to the school choices available!

I would say at infants level the school is smaller and more nurturing, plus the Y2 children get a chance to take on responsibilities (such as lunch time play leader) that they wouldn't get till much later in a combined school. Also (although 2 form entry) the children know everyone and most of the staff know all the chidren by name, whether they teach them or not.
Disadvantage I think is that they have fewer resources, particularly for the more able children, where you might borrow from higher up the school in a combined. For example, DD has exhausted the supply of chapter books available (that she is interested in) ? though I don?t see this as a particular problem as we have good access to a public library and she reads books from there.

Junior school has felt more focussed on older age group and from day 1 the expectation that children were ?more grown up? and had more responsibilities. But this may well be the same in a school that manages their infants/juniors separate. Resources are better targeted at the age group and there are more extra-curricular activities available (don?t have to focus across the age group).

The big plus for my DS is that he struggled to find his place at infants and a school move at 7 was a great chance for a new start for him. DD loves the infants so I don?t think she?ll see this benefit so much ? but I think it will be positive for her to meet new children and broaden her horizons ? she has very much been in the same friendship group since nursery (now in Y2) which I suspect would start to feel suffocating soon if they all stayed in the same school.

Although infants and juniors are not linked, they do run induction/joint activities and a large proportion of the infants move to the juniors. So in some ways, it?s a good compromise between an entirely new school (where I can understand there would be settling in time) and staying in the same school all the way up.

I worked in a large (3 form entry) separate infant and junior. They shared a school site, but were completely separate schools with different heads/staff and didn't share resources.

I didn't see much of the infant school, but it seemed more caring and allowed the Y2 to be the 'big ones' for a year. However, they then found it a real culture shock coming over to the juniors, where they were expected to be far more independent and responsible for their own equipment, etc. I wonder whether there is an element of Y2s in an infant school being more 'infanty', thus making the jump to juniors even more apparent...?

However, we have chosen a primary for DD, because we want the continuity of a whole-school primary, and, as she has a physical disability, this way we don't have to 'start again' in Y3...

DS1 is in a stand alone infant school, I really like it as it is small although I have felt this year that maybe a primary school would have been better for him personally for the education side. Socially I like the smaller school TBH.

Galena - Think this is one case of it being the individual schools that make the difference and not infant/junior or combined.
At DD's infants, in Y2 they work a lot on the children becoming more independent in preparation for the move to junior school - the majority then seem to take it in their stride.

Could well be, redsky , I don't have a huge knowledge of different schools, just the one I taught in. I guess you would just have to collate the anecdotal evidence and see which trend is more common.

Every school is different though, and what some do well, others do badly!

My dcs' Primary was/is in sep Infant / Junior schools. They are on the same site, but have separate HTs who don't get on.
I've taught in both separate, and 'through' Primary schools. Like RedSkyatNight says, I don't think it's a factor I'd choose a school over - it's something that can have advantages and can have disadvantages, but there are lots of factors that would influence my choice of schools, but that's "just the way they are", not something I'd choose to opt into, or out of.

In oversubscribed areas, there are two practical disadvantages: (1) your child might get a place in infants but be sent elsewhere for juniors, even if the schools share a site or are closely connected, and (2) depending on your family's age gap, you could lose sibling advantage and be more likely to find your children sent to different schools.

Ds is in Y2 in a separate infants, about to go to juniors. The schools are completely separate entities, about a 10 min walk away. Holidays and inset days are aligned, but there is no compulsion for that to continue is just by good will of schools.

Disadvantages: you have to go through the school application process in Y2 again and you are not guaranteed a place at juniors, although in practice I don't know anyone who didn't get in. I have a dd going into reception in sept so I will have another 2 years of drop off/ pick up in 2 different places and we had no sibling advantage getting dd into the infants, which could have been a real problem if we were out of catchment. The schools are run differently and have a very different feel so ds will have to get used to a very new setting. I do think the infans could do more to prepare them for juniors; for example, I am still actively encouraged to go right into the classroom with ds on drop off, but at juniors I will have to leave him in the playground.

Advantages: both my dc are late summer babies and I felt the infant setting was better for them, particularly when starting. The Y2s get to take on responsibility and be the oldest in the school. Both schools get to do more whole school activities which are suitable for all years. The schools are smaller, which I think has suited ds. He knows pretty much all the children in all years at infants and there is good interaction between the years.

Ultimately this was not a make or break thing for us and we chose the schools based on the schools themselves rather than the infant/junior split. All other schools round here are primary.

It's worth visiting the schools in your area, because you will get a feel for what is right for your child. I thought I would prefer a primary for dd until we did our visits (I had read that there can be a dip in attainment when they change schools). It did mean we visited what felt like quite a few schools - 2 primaries, 3 infants, and 2 juniors - but we are very happy with the choice we made. We went to visit the juniors so we could get a feel for what the transition might be like, and so we wouldn't choose an infants too far away from the juniors we preferred. I do think it is worth considering the progression through school, even if things change later. Our preferred juniors is quite a large school, but I think that could be useful as the move to secondary can be quite daunting moving from a cosy junior/primary school into a huge secondary. DD starts reception in September, so can't offer more insight than that, but hope it helps!

Mine went to separate infant and junior schools, on different sites about a mile apart.

Biggest advantage: the whole school is set up for the age group your child is in. This means that the junior school is a much more effective preparation for secondary school than a mixed JMI would be. For example, by Y6, they are used to having different teachers for different subjects and having different lessons in different classrooms.

Biggest disadvantage: the inconvenience of two different drop-offs and pick-ups a mile apart. Kept us fit though.

From what i've seen of both schools, the infants school near me is much more focused on the needs of the lower years and they are much more involved in the school as assemblies, school fayres and celebrations are all about them instead of being dominated by the bigger kids. I often find that teachers at the primaries consider the lower years less interesting so they often get ignored in newsletters and assemblies etc. As infants schools are usually smaller there is often a lot more opportunities for parents to get involved too. Bullying (often unintentional and seen as a game) of little ones by bigger ones is also a problem in some schools.
A disadvantage is picking and dropping if the juniors arent on the same site and you have more than one child.

Primary schools have some advantages in that they don't have the dip in attainment that infant -junior transitions can cause (or perceived attainment as some people accuse infants schools of grade inflation!)
Also children can learn to interact with older children and develop more independence from an earlier age. In smaller primaries children get to know the same staff throughout their time at school.