Primary school place confirmed, what's next?

[katmarie]

We had to apply for our ds's primary place pandemic style, so have not been able to visit the school or meet any of the staff, ask any questions about the process etc, other than what is on the coincil website. We've had confirmation this morning of the school, which is our closest one and our first choice so no massive surprises there. But I'm wondering what happens next. Should I contact the school and ask for a visit? Or just wait for them to get in touch? I imagine they will be pretty busy this week. DS is moving from a private nursery so I want to know what we and the school will be able to do to help him settle in.

Also need to start thinking about buying uniform, I definitely cant afford to get it all in one go, so going to have to get a bit at a time I think. How many sets do people usually buy? And what size? I was thinking to size up so he will grow into it. I'm very new to all this, ds is our oldest. Argh so many questions!

@Oysterbabe

Spend the minimum possible amount on polo shirts. They're virtually single use and come home destroyed.

Single use? I've been sending DS to school in the same stained but clean white polo shirts all year. We can get the food stains out but the not the pen stains. If I threw away every polo shirt with a pen mark on it I'd be buying about 10 a month, such a waste.

I mean, single use is an exaggeration but we get through them. A couple of marks I can deal with but once they look too tatty they are binned.

Don't buy clothes yet, just put money aside. Hell just growth spurt on you.
Pep & Co at Poundland are good for grey / black school trousers, last my clumsy kid til he grows out of them and have the adjustable waist.
Most high Street stores like Asda etc will do plain jumpers in the correct colour if it doesn't need to be logo'd.
We have five tops but they don't have to be logo'd (we've got a very soft enforcement on uniform) so I have a couple of proper ones and the rest from M&S (stupid random colour) but again, lots of places sell the plain tops.
One set of PE kit, left at school Al lweek, washed weekends.

Marks and Spencer have a 20% off event in May/June and the trousers have an adjustable waist (but so do most of the supermarket ones) and the hems can be turned down - ideal for growth spurts. Sainsbury's polo shirts seem to fade less than Tesco ones in my experience with royal blue and bottle green but the blue Asda ones have been good so far.
Both schools specified sweatshirts with logo but I just buy one or two for mass/ school assembly days and a couple of plain ones for the rest of the week - same with the school that requires logoed poloshirts - which are under the sweatshirt anyway for most of the year.

Thank you all so much for the uniform tips, I'm really grateful! Know what you mean about growth spurts as well, I'll put the money aside and see where we are a bit closer to the time. (or stop feeding the kid. Is that allowed?) The boys and girls uniforms are basically the same which is nice, anything that does survive DS can go to DD when she starts as well.

My DS1 is in y2 and DS2 will be starting YR in September.
After accepting your offer things might go quiet for awhile. I wouldn’t contact them in the next couple of weeks unless you have an urgent question tbh. With DS1, we didn’t hear much from the school until closer to the half term. They had transition days and meet the teacher etc, this was before covid. The school will tell you what they are doing in regards to settling in and start dates.

Uniform wise, idk about girls stuff obviously but from my experience, the only thing worth spending a bit more money on is school trousers. Polo shirts fade and get stained all the same regardless of where they’re bought from IME. So I buy supermarket polo shirts and spend a bit more on trousers. I find the slightly pricier ones last longer (don’t wear through the knee so quickly) and are thicker/lined which is nice for winter. With DS1, unless they are really stained or damaged (one day he came home in Y1 with a huge hole in one?!) I go through the polo shirts at the end of each school year and bin/recycle the stained ones. Then buy new ones for September. So far I’ve managed to salvage 2 for DS2. 🤭 I do also buy the logo sweatshirts (optional here). 3 is a good number, they make a lot of mess in KS1. DS1 still has to wear PE kit for 2 days, so assuming it’s the same next year they’ll probably need 2 sets of PE kit, 3 polo shirts, 3 pairs of trousers, 3 sweatshirts. and maybe 2 pairs of shorts cos they don’t tend to get much wear. I do a wash more or less every day so that’s more than enough. I do whites once a week.

With the branded stuff you sometimes get early bird discounts and sometimes they are made to order so take awhile so do look into last order dates.

Buy school shoes with the rubber bit on the end otherwise they will scuff and wear very easily. I tend to wait until as close to September as possible. Our school encourages comfy black trainers which is great tbh.

One thing I would advise on getting sorted asap is wraparound care, if you need it. The waiting list for breakfast club is about 2 years here, after school club slightly less, so the children starting YR in September here won’t get a place for over a year unless their parents put their names down before. I put DS2 on the list about a year ago.

Fortunately we won't need wrap around care, dh will do drop off. I work from home, and my hours can be adjusted to fit, which is why I'm so pleased he's got our first choice. It's a 3 min walk from our house, so I can work right up to the bell almost, then take my break to go get him, and carry on working later, thank god. Counting down the days till I don't have to pay nursery fees for him now!

Even if the school say you must have uniformed jumpers etc it's worth checking with existing parents how strict they are on it. Dd2's school says this but probably 95% of people just have plain unbranded stuff with maybe one logo one for photos etc. Whereas at DD1's school there is no give and the school constantly moans about anything that doesn't have a logo on it.