Teacher visiting daughters nursery without telling us

[beehappy19]

My daughter attends a school nursery but unfortunately we didn’t get a school place for reception in September. When I picked my daughter up today the nursery told me that a teacher from her new school had been to visit her. I was a bit taken aback because I didn’t know anything about this visit and there was lots of other parents picking children up around me but is this normal not to be notified? And how does the school know where she attends nursery?
i think it’s nice the teacher visited her but I’ve not talked a lot to my daughter yet about moving school and I would have expected to be informed about a visit like this.

Our EYFS lead visited about 15 pre-schools/childminders-all at different times on different days over the last month.. We don’t have the email addresses of all of the parents yet as the admissions forms aren’t back. That would have been a huge additional headache for her to have to do outside of her normal full time role of actually teaching her current class.

Why haven't you told your d's where she is going to school? Why the wait? Seems very odd, most kids know when the school.places are allocated in April.

I’ve never heard of this. DD’s in reception and we had a home visit and a transition day.

@AnneLovesGilbert you might not have known if nursery didn’t tell you

They definitely don’t visit the nursery. Our village has a private nursery, a preschool and school nursery. It’s tiny, I know the nursery owners well and have friends with kids who are older and the same age. Kids coming to reception from nursery or preschool get a home visit, kids at the school nursery are already in the same class as reception as there’s two years per room.

Teachers visiting nurseries sounds fine, I’m not against it, but it’s not universal.

I've had visits as a childminder...I do tell parents though....maybe it was arranged through school office. Pretty normal to want to see the lo in familiar surroundings

Her new school will have known her current setting from your application, schools get this information from admissions.

They won't have just turned up, they will have arranged the visit with the nursery to check if it's a convenient time so if you're going to be annoyed at anyone for not telling you in advance about the visit be annoyed with them, not the school! Not that nursery have done anything wrong either by not telling you in advance imo. I'm assuming you haven't told them that you've been keeping it quiet to your daughter about where she's going to school in September? That's on you I'm afraid. They're not to know it was a 'secret'. It is the job of the nursery and new school to work together to help make the transition as smooth as possible for your daughter. They're doing that, as meeting the new teacher in a setting they're already comfortable in is part of that preparation.

You are doing her a disservice by choosing not to talk about it until now. You've lucky that, at her age, she probably won't have twigged that this teacher was only visiting her and not everyone. She needs to know where she's going though and the fact she'll make lots of new friends. Walk past the school together, talk about her going there. Surely she'll have some visits there before September? You were never going to get away with pretending she's going to the school attached to her nursery until September. Poor girl would be so confused if you left it that late to talk about it.

It's madness that you think schools have time to personally ring you, the parent, to arrange visiting your child at their nursery. For one, they wouldn't dream that someone is keeping it from their child that they're going to be attending their school!

It's a massive positive that this has happened, so you can now be open and honest with her.

Actually that would be a major data protection breach to send the same email to everyone. It would have to be separate emails to everyone, until the children are enrolled and the parents' email addresses are set up on the school's communication system which is capable of sending out the same email which all recipients receive individually. They absolutely could not send an email which enabled parents to see each others email addresses. GDPR would have a field day.

Besides, they probably have children attending from several different settings. Or they may need to visit a nursery a few times, to catch children who attend on different days. So it wouldn't just be one email.

At the end of the day, schools do not need to inform parents they they will be visiting their child at nursery. That is a communication I would expect to come from the nursery, if anyone.

@BoleynMemories13 you just send it to yourself and bcc everyone else. Quite normal way to ensure GDPR compliance.

Mistakes can so easily happen (especially if being sent by the teacher, who isn't necessarily as savvy with these things as the administrator in the office who is use to doing things like this every day). It would be a massive risk and not a responsibility I would want as a teacher.

We've all be there, sending an email "please see attachment" and clicking send before realising we haven't actually attached it. Something like that is easy to rectify. Now imagine typing out an email and clicking send before realising you've sent it so that everyone can see everyone else's email addresses. You can't undo that...

My eldest is 17 and this was normal back when she was in nursery? And the same for her two younger siblings. They’d have seen it as a non issue as most parents don’t take your weird approach to keeping secrets about their child changing schools. Why would you not forewarn your child that this will be their last term term with their current class, teacher and friends? Yes they may find it slightly upsetting, but goodbyes and changes are normal in life. You’re setting your child up for all sorts of issues by ‘hiding the truth’ (lying) because you don’t want to deal with a bit of upset. How is it your mindset that it’s better to upset her a bit later rather than now, when she has time to process the change with all her other classmates like normal children?

Honestly I would be surprised a teacher doesn't do this regularly. Surely all class emails etc. our schools have always managed it. 🤷‍♀️

And you can recall which will delete any messages not opened.

i would want to know about this too. She’s your child so you are right to want to be kept informed. Maybe you would like to ask what DD thinks about her or what they talked about.
Its strange that everyone thinks you shouldn’t want to discuss this with your DD yet you are massively failing as a parent because you haven’t told her what’s happening in September.

The shittest part of parenting is having to deal with the fact that everyone is better at it than you. Absolute strangers know your DD better.
For what it’s worth two of my children didn’t respond to long waits when they were little. We didn’t even mention birthdays until a week before. When they don’t understand the concept of time it can be unsettling to give them too much advance warning. Others need lots of time to adjust. I’m sure you know your own child. Speak to her when you feel it’s the right time. Definitely once you can be sure of where she’s going.

When did this start? My youngest child is 15 so obviously it's a while since he was at nursery. His nursery was about 17 miles away from the school (work place nursery) so a visit would have taken a couple of hours at least.

The nursery had a massive catchment; very few of the children leaving for school went to the same Primary.

I definitely would have wanted to know about it, so I could talk to my son on the day. He knew all about school and where he was going (in the village we live in) but didn't know the staff.

Why would you be surprised? It's not normal for teachers to be routinely emailing all of the parents. The odd individual email here and there, yes, but any correspondence to be sent to all is either done by the office, or on a platform such as Tapestry.

I personally am not overly tech savvy. I know basics, of course, but it's not essential to my job to know every trick in the book when it comes to sending emails etc. I'm not office staff. Some teachers will have more know how when it comes to these things, naturally, but I wouldn't automatically assume every teacher will know all there is to know about email etc. It's not a key part of the job.

Back to the topic in question, are you honestly saying you think a busy EFYS teacher/lead should be emailing all parents to inform them when they'll be visiting their child at nursery? It's totally unnecessary imo. As if they haven't got enough to do!

Yes, this

She won't have had a formal sit down with your dc and told them she was the new teacher. She might have read a story to the group or might just have talked to staff and observed from afar.

It really is standard practice, and no, parents won't know which day which teacher from which school is coming in.

All of our teachers are very tech savvy as there is a lot of tech used in our school, in part assistive supports.

Interactive white board, iPads etc. and my experience has been teachers communicating directly with parents. The messages from the office are all school messages and the class specific are from the teacher.

This doesn't appear to be detrimental to the teachers. I am simply sharing my experience as I am curious as to the different approaches. Ours is like this since 2008 so pre COVID.

It really is.
School staff go in to all types of Nurseries, whichever name they are called.
PVIs very much included, as that is where the overwhelming majority of dc are coming from.

Her new school will have known her current setting from your application, schools get this information from admissions.

They definitely don't in our LA, despite me trying to get this changed for about 12 years now.
It would make so much sense, and save schools so much time if there were a question on the form asking parents to say if their child is currently at a Nursery, and if so, which one.
Here, it is a jigsaw of Nurseries getting a list of schools, by asking the parents, then Nurseries trying to contact the schools, and schools phoning their regular feeder Nurseries, and hoping they don't miss too many, who might be coming in from elsewhere.
It is such a waste of everyone's time that could be put to better use.

i would want to know about this too. She’s your child so you are right to want to be kept informed. Maybe you would like to ask what DD thinks about her or what they talked about.

Potentially dd might not even have noticed they were in the Nursery, or spoken to her personally.
The teacher will have limited time to visit as many Nurseries as they can. They will focus any observations, or conversations with Nursery staff on the dc that will need to have enhanced transitions, or adjustments made once they are at school. It won't have been personal play time with each individual child.

I can assure you, lots of dc take no notice of visitors in the room, and other dc will chat to whoever enters the room, but won't be able to tell their parent about the person that evening.

Clearly all schools are different. Personally I'd hate to work somewhere where regular email contact with parents is expected. We talk to them in person on the door, we have an online platform to upload generic class specific messages. Anything beyond that is totally unnecessary and would become a role of office staff.

There's being 'tech savvy' in terms of knowing how to operate an interactive whiteboard and iPad etc, to expecting teaching staff to have the same ICT skills as the office staff. Totally unnecessary imo.

Again, back to the topic in hand, do you seriously think Reception teachers should be personally messaging new parents about nursery visits? At the end of the day, that's what this post is about. Whether you think teachers should all be tech savvy and whether you think this is something they should be doing are two totally different things.

Perfectly normal. Our son’s new teacher visited his nursery about 18 years ago now and spent over an hour with him.
We were delighted when we found out, he was the only child there going to her class. We thought it was above and beyond.