Home visits for children starting reception - why?

[corlan]

I've just received a letter telling me that 'In preparation for your child starting at school we would like to visit your child at home'.
I've never heard of these visits happening before. Are there any primary teachers that know what the thinking behind this is?
(To be honest I'm not too keen, maybe because I work in a secondary school and I know how judgemental about student's homes and families we can all be!!)

Mimi66 she is wrong you have the right to refuse if you want.

I'm a Reception teacher and spend the 1st week in September doing home visitis with my TA. The reasoning behind them is that the children get to meet us in a non-scary environment and the parents get to ask any questions before their child starts school.

We offer them to all parents - those whose children attended our nursery and those who have come from other settings. All parents have the right to decline, but none ever have.

The children and parents will have met us on on open afternoons, new parents' meetings and, if in our nursery they will know us from seeing us around school. However, the summer holiday is long and the children can forget who we are. Also, if you are new to the school it's a nice opportunity to have our sole attention to ask any questions - surely you know how manic it can be trying to talk to the teacher when everyone is dropping off/ picking up! I find the children love the visits, even those who don't speak to us whilst we are there, they will bring it up throughout the yr "remember when you came to my house and I showed you my dolls?"

I don't judge - I have been in so many houses now that I know every one is different and that the size of your TV has no bearing on your child's reading ability - though I do think it is common curtesy to turn the TV off if you have visitors!

acsec - you said exactly what I was going to say! I have had so many parents tell me important things on the home visit that they felt unable to tell me about during the visits to school. One very sad one was a mum who had to tell me that her husband was dying of cancer but it was very slow and they didn't want their 4 year old to know until he had to.

The children always remember the visit - at our Y6 leavers assembly there's always a few who talk about it as part of their memories and it's always positive. I've never had a parent refuse in 20 years of visiting - they see it as a positive thing - we visit during the first week of term before any of our YR's start and there's often something that they have thought of or something that has happened over the summer that they need to ask/tell us.

But I would also like to join the vote to please turn the TV off whenI visit!!

Would not the correct MN approach be for me to remove all our books and borrow a mahoosive tv so we look like we need lots of help?

As we moved into the area only a couple of months before DD started school, and she therefore didn't get the whole pre-school / school visits thing, it was a great opportunity for DD to meet her teacher and TA.

Interestingly, the teacher also brought a school water bottle, a copy of DD's name in school cursive for her to have a go at reading / writing and a child-friendly guide to Reception....and 2 'hand-hugger' pencils, a stack of paper and a box of colouring crayons. I thought it was a discreet and low-key way of making sure that every home had at least the basics of a 'kit to do homework with'.

Don't know what the teacher thought of us - we were in a temporary house with all of our belongings in a house elsewhere that hadn't sold yet. She was too polite to ask why our only furnishings were a table, 4 chairs, a bookcase and some stacking boxes of toys (and 3 beds upstairs, but she didn't see those), and played with DD on the floor of the otherwise empty house as if this was normal!

While I can see many positives of this scheme, and I know my DS would probably be excited by meeting his teacher, I feel it should be an opt in rather than an opt affair for the reasons below. Also, DS would be just as excited at visiting the teacher at school, if not more so, I think it is entirely dependant on the child and therefore should not be universal unless it is backed up by sound research.

I am with sparkle and bonsoir because I view this as a state intrusion into family affairs, and also because humans will always make judgements thus there is a hidden agenda, be it conscious or not. If it is not the purpose to judge a child on his background then the consequences of this having been rather disturbingly unconsidered by whoever invented this policy. I thought the value of school and uniforms etc was that children's learning should not judged by their parents / economic background / neighbourhood etc.
Talking to the parents is only half the picture, we are always analysing the context as well, one only need to think about how extensively people are subconsciously judged by their wardrobe choices.
Has anybody carried out social research into the impact that home visits have on teacher's assumptions about children in their class before assuming this is beneficial to children?? Does having the teacher in their home even benefit all children or should this be restricted to children where it is perceived that the child has specific problems with shyness etc? (In which case home visits should be opt in, not opt out).
Think of the problems with these fleeting impressions. What about the genuinely impoverished who spend vast amounts of time reading to their children etc but can't afford many toys or books because they have to pay the heating bill. Or conversely, what about those who are high earners but who live in a rented dump simply to afford the deposit for a dream home in an expensive part of the country. Teachers may assume they are impoverished and their children may need extra attention as I'm sure it isn't appropriate to blurt out what a wonderful salary you have or how many pieces of degree paper one might have without being a little narcissistic and hanging them all on the wall. So the judgement rests unchallenged. Or what about loving parents with awful social skills etc? Or parents that come from some kind of subculture and paint their house black through and through? It is a very superficial overview. I particular don't like the fact that this seems to be originating with government policy. I sense overtones of police state. Unless there are specific concerns all arms of the state should have no right to interfere in the family's privacy.
I may be wrong but I have never heard of a private school undertaking home visits without the request of the parent.
Also to those who say you can decline, the problem is that in declining you make yourself suspect of having something to hide!

Of course it is also to check on the home environment to see if the child/family needs extra support.

I don't see how, other than the above, they are useful. Not all schools and areas do this after all. I prefer open days, we've been to more than one of these, familiarises the child with the teacher and the environment they're going to be spending a lot of time in.

Zombie thread alert!