Don't like the school

[Potaytoes5]

Hi there
I appreciate any advice. DC5 is currently in Reception at our local school. It's within walking distance and it didn't seem to bad, Ofsted is good. Heard mixed opinions from other parents but after visiting we thought it was OK. I also visited some other schools I liked better but they were all a car drive away.

I don't think it's great tbh. DC seems to like it well enough but there are constant issues. It's all small things but it's very frustrating to me as a parent. It's anything from them sending the wrong forms, messing up the lunch orders for several weeks in one go, miscommunicating date for parents' evening so half the parents didn't attend. The most frustrating event was cancelling the nativity as there were some cases of strep A in the year. Thing is, nothing else was done, school was still open as normal and all other years got to have their plays. They didn't even do one at school and record it for parents. Nothing. Just cancelled. I know it's a small thing but DC was heartbroken.

I also thought we'd get some sort of better communication with the teacher, to whom I spoke maybe twice. It feels a bit like I'm sending DC away each day to that mysterious building for most of the day and I don't even have a clue what's happening to them. We get updates online maybe once a month.

AIBU to be a bit disappointed or is this normal? I was hoping for a nice introduction to school and I'm left a bit deflated by the whole experience. We're hoping to move to the other side of town soon so I'm thinking about moving schools then, but I kind of wish we just tried to get DC to a different school in the first place.

Just to add I don't think this particular a big school issue. My children went to 3 form entry primaries and we didn't have this experience. Totally normal not to have a chat with the teacher everyday. But our school always does a "meet the teacher" event at the beginning of the year where you meet the form teachers for your year and they explain the curriculum. We get termly curriculum updates as well that go into more detail about what they are learning. And the Head does a weekly email which gives key info and also has a short update from every year about what they've been learning that week.

You can be better informed in a large school, it just sounds like yours focuses on other things.

I don't think this is a 'bigger school' issue either (my dc went to a 3 form entry).

I think this is much more about a shift in your expectations.
Just imagine if there were an expectation for the teacher to speak to you once a week. That would take 2.5 hours to get through the whole class. It would be completely unmanageable. That would be the same if it were 1 form, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 form entry.

I've taught in one form entry schools - they come with their own issues. Everything else being equal, I'd choose a larger school over a smaller one.

I don't know. Perhaps I expected too much regarding the parents evenings, I thought they would be more frequent than twice a year.
I spent about 10 minutes total talking to the teacher in 5 months.
I do however feel the communication is abysmal, there are several examples of my child missing out on activities as it wasn't communicated clearly /on time what is required, but when you query anything you're just met with passive aggressive response from the head of year.
It's not exactly how I imagined I suppose. Speaking to my friends they all have some issues with their schools, but none of them to that extent. I hope not all schools are like that.

Sounds quite like our school too! Problems with communications, then when comms are sent out there are quite often mistakes re dates/amounts to pay for trips etc. I would say this is pretty typical. If your child is happy going there, has made friends etc then I wouldn't worry too much.

I wouldn’t say that is normal.

My child is in reception too- we get a weekly school newsletter, and then a weekly update from the class teacher every Friday too. That has a few pictures usually too.

We get a newsletter but there's never anything specific for DC year. More about outings of other years for example. No updates weekly on what they learn, I would have loved that :/ yes I feel a bit deflated about the school even if my expectations weren't quite right.

It’s natural to want to know more about what they’re up to, but also worth remembering that in a lot of cases the time spent doing these updates on a class/child level is taken from somewhere else (either prep time or time with the children).

Again, I’d have loved to be told more about my child but really I think we’ve been overindulged with updates in nursery settings/when kids are looked after by family and our expectations on that are set unrealistically high. Not really knowing what they’re up to in detail is all part and parcel of them growing up I think.

In terms of school admin, I really do think schools need to get this sorted in the age of email/apps.

Mine is a 3 firm entry and events such as discos have always been open to all.

in reception we also had a tapestry app where things were uploaded and a weekly newsletter.

nativity is fine although concerning they felt it difficult to put on

i would say a certain amount normal but also definitely areas they could do better