Inset Days - different days for "linked" Infant and Junior Schools

[AliPal]

Does anyone else have this problem. DD attends Junior School and my two DS's are at the Infant school of the same name - There are two headteachers but the schools are linked, (they share a site and the same name), however they make no effort to coincide their Inset days or early closure days for parent consultations.
This means potentially 10 days per year when I have to arrange ad hoc childcare or take time off. I'm not anti inset days and could cope with 5. I've arranged a meeting to discuss this with the Junior school head - what do other schools do?

The heads of the two schools meet and arrange them on the same day wherever possible (if they've booked a speaker or an event then sometimes they have to be on different days). You're right to go and see the head!

Thanks for that. I can understand that sometimes they can't concide for the reasons you state. But even so, if the school was a all through primary, they wouldn't have double the days would they?

I think it's just a case of they are really two different schools. Do they share the same board of governors or does each have its own board as well as its own head?

I agree it would be much more convenient for parents if they co-ordinated TD days, but it may not be possible for lots of reasons - at our primary school, many of the TD days involve booked speakers or linking up with other schools in the area.

I think you're taking the right steps though - discuss it with both heads and see what the reasons are. It may be that matters are out of their hands, but you may be lucky and find they could co-ordinate a little more.

I've never heard of schools closing early for parent consultations - seems very odd.

And just wait till one of yours gets to secondary school - I find not one of the TD days ever co-incides! I can't wait until my last child starts secondary school and we're all working to the same calendar again!

My children's schools are the same. They do generally align most of their inset days but I do know they don't break up the same day this summer. One on the Friday, one the following Monday. It's a pain too when one has non uniform day and the other doesn't (I did send my DS in non uniform when he should have been in uniform last term - got a bit confused!!).

I would write to both heads and ask if they could arrange for their inset days to align for the benefit of parents with children at both schools. Seems ridiculous not to.

Portonovo, they ARE separate schools each with their own board of governors. But presumably your Primary school only gets 5 days inset and the single Headteacher manages to accommodate the needs of all the staff at the school within those days.
I think the LEA fixes one of the inset days as the first day of the school year - is this right?

I think the trouble is that if they are totally separate schools, there is no obligation for the schools to co-ordinate at all, no matter how great that would be for parents.

Each school is obviously looking only at the training needs of that school and its teachers, which is really the way it should be. It might be that as a courtesy they could try to co-ordinate the occasional TD day, when that day isn't a matter of booking external speakers or linking up with other schools, but I think that might prove to be the exception.

But see where you get with your headteacher, there might be some scope for a little more co-ordination.

As far as a primary school managing to accommodate the needs of all staff in just 5 days, I think it's a case of needs must. I know our head would love to have more training days, and funnily enough to have some for only KS1 or only KS2, but 5 days is all she has to play with.

Yes, I agree with you. I can also see that there is no legal obligation for them to liaise. They are however making a deliberate decision to completely disregard the views of many parents who have children at the two schools.
The reason given at one of the governor meetings for the days not coordinating was "well, we like to have our days on the Mondays after half term and the Juniors like to have theirs on the Fridays" but of course that was omitted from the minutes and replaced with stuff about limited speakers etc..

The infant school linked to our junior does try to liaise with us, but I'm not sure they always co-incide - one that definitely doesn't is when the infant school closes to be used as a polling station in early May - it's usually the week before SATs & there's no way the junior school would close then.