Starting secondary -the bits you don’t think about

[anna1969]

Having read the thread on starting secondary school there are a few vitals as a teacher of 30+ years that I think are missing!

1. the school canteen! My kids are both still in the secondary system and the biggest lure when they started was all the amazing snacks and foods available at break and lunch.

Set a budget for your child! My son especially trollied through his lunchtime allowance on all the goodies available at break that weren’t on offer at primary school. Pizza breads, pain au chocolat and MacDonalds style breakfast baps. Pack a back up snack pack-even if they are insistent they want school dinners. After the first year 7 only days they are quite often faced with long queues at the start of September at break especially where it might not leave them enough time to get to the toilet and refill water bottles. Most secondary schools also have designated toilets just for year 7 students and buddy systems in place. 2. They will be very tired-sensory overload of a new classroom, new routines, new subject and new teachers, new friends. Don’t plan too much in the early weeks and expect that at half term they will be exhausted. Help them get ready the night before, books PE kit etc. sign up for a locker asap! 3.Digital homework-not all schools have physical homework diaries anymore but online homework portals like firefly and Microsoft teams. Tasks are usually avaialable for parents to see what has been set and an online diary. Get used to checking in on the platform your school uses each day. Worried?! Talk to your child’s form tutor whenever you need to. Most schools are now encouraging home school contact unlike in the past. 4.Bugs! New school, new group of germs! Brace yourself for coughs and colds in The first term-the germ pool has just got bigger and with new bugs! Shove a pack of tissues and hand sanitizer in their school bag when they aren’t looking! 5.Rain. Your child will not wear their coat or will lose it and their rucksacks are not waterproof. Especially the well known sports brands. Shove a plastic bag in them so whatever is in rucksack doesn’t get soaked!

100% agree. I bought sticky labels for everything and they took them off!!

Also y6 parents don't assume all schools have ...

Buddy Systems
Toilets just for y7
Lockers
Homework online

Ours have non of these.

Also don't assume they'll have detentions for talking in the corridors or being in groups of more than 3. Check the behaviour policy!

Yeh also - have to be home within 30 mins?? how on earth is the school checking that?

Schools I worked in allowed students to talk in corridors tbh. And no one was a criminal. Those who broke the rules were sanctioned which seems reasonable.

@MrsDTucker no Smiggle??!! They are a bit ££ tbh. And a bit of a faff at the start of every lesson

Btw I suspect my post before was a bit sexist - I should add that DD was noted for not having a pencil case and just having pens in her blazer pocket as well - but actual pens, not the inner bit. She told me this week that she never had a ruler with her as she didn't underline the date apols to maths teachers @noblegiraffe for the lack of ruler.

Buy more than one tie and PE socks - these always seemed to disappear.

If your child is sporty - definitely buy more than one set of PE kit. Otherwise you'll spend your week trying to get the one set washed and dried in time for the next day.

Load up the Parentpay account with extra funds if you can. We were tapped up for requests for books, revision guides, theatre tickets, equipment and school trips from Day 1. 💸💸

How is that possible?The school where my son os going requested ruler, protractor, compass, crayons, eraser, highlighters, pencil HB, Pencil B, sharpener, scientific calculator.

My thing you might not think about is that moving around for lessons can actually be a good thing. DC with SEN, I was really worried for secondary with the multiple teachers and moving around. It's actually been great for these reasons:

1. Lessons have a clear beginning and end. It's not like primary where they bleed into each other and you don't know when you're going to move on. You know exactly the start and end time, a boon for kids who like clear boundaries and routines.
2. Built in movement breaks. You're up and moving every 46/60 mins.
3. If you don't like a teacher much, you only have them for that short period.

A couple of things to add:
I've found that some clothing items - running shoes, PE shorts and school style swimming costumes (1 piece and 98 percent plain black in this case) - are not too hard to source in late August but incredibly difficult to get the right sizes of, at short notice, at other times of the year when DC suddenly gets too big for them, even if shops say they stock them. Worth getting the next size at the time if you can.

In terms of keeping period products in the schoolbag just in case, I have rolled them up inside an innocuous pair of socks that basically doesn't leave the bag.

Wow! Our dc have lost more gumshields than I care to remember. Both of them 🙄. Probably because they both played rugby and hockey.

They seem to have a habit of tucking them into their socks when they’re not in their mouths, then forgetting about them when it’s time to get changed. Those that have made it home have often ended up going through the washing machine as a result of the sock tucking!

What's app because I said no to snap chat! Other children use snap. I don't like snap and how the messages disappear. I haven't let them join group class chats. They are allowed friend (small) group chats.

High schools are a hell of a lot bigger now. The high school my DS is moving to is twice the size of the school I went to in the 90s. His school doesn't even have a sixth form and mine did! Our time table was weekly. Not fortnightly with A and B weeks. We didn't get split into sets away from our form group until Year 8 and 9. Now they get split after October half term in Y7. There wasn't all the pre-pay lunch cards, online homework diaries there is now. There was no school logo uniform that had to be purchased from a shop in the arse crack of nowhere that is only open every Tuesday after the third full moon.

It's like saying well I used to work in an office 40 years ago when it was still paper based with typewriters, so i can work in an office now. The world has moved on and it's a different beast now.

I've got no idea, but DS blazer does have about 6 pockets in it and has endless stuff come out of it when I take it to be washed so I assume he fits it all in somehow.

Smiggle is not cool in high school so I would avoid for year 7 as it makes them stand out as year 7's. Most kids go for sports backpacks or the girls sometimes still have those giant handbags but I'm not keen as not easy to carry.

Oh and don't start me on 2 week bloody time tables, who ever decided that was a good idea. I can never remeber which week we are on and with two kids at different schools as one's at high school and one's at sixth-form college how the he'll do I know what week it is. 😳

I never thought that one day I will be envious of pockets in the blazer 😮😳😅 . Not the blazer itself but...the pockets. 6!!! 🤯Our has only two🫤One each side 🙁

He has Smiggle now in Y6 that he will not use anymore as it is babyish. I got him different one for secondary in the army style. 🪖💪 Our school requires whole list of items each day
In the school where he is heading only black coats, black 🎒 are allowed. Handbags are no no.

Blazer washing timescale

Nagging child to produce blazer...3 days
Extracting everything from pockets... 3 hours
Washing...1 hrs
Drying... (on the back of a chair)...30 minutes

Only a slight exaggeration...

Is it for all sets?🤨 Many kids have mastered time table in y2. Or I cannot imagine it in the place where kids had to pass 11+ to get in 🙉

@TheChipmunkSong it means a timetable that takes place over two weeks, not the two times table! So in Wee1 one you might have Science, Spanish and art on a Monday morning, but Week 2 its Maths, Music and PE

Ah got you 😅🤣🤣. My mistake!

Consider packed lunch if queues are long at lunch, or lunch times are short.

My DC gets packed lunch for secondary school as the queue is so lung at lunch, and lunchtime is so short (only 35 minutes) those who have school dinners typically spend their entire break queuing then wolfing food down and no time for a proper break.

DDs school does have a one week timetable, but it changes every term as some subjects rotate.

As a mother of a year 6 kid finding this very useful thanks all

Parents evenings. If its online booking, and they say booking opens at 6pm or whenever, set an alarm for two minutes before, log on and press refresh. Appointments can go very quickly for core subjects.

Abso-bloody -lutely 😉

Science prep rooms are a treasure trove and the technicians are a font of knowledge

I think many things are much easier now. I have two young adult DC and two DC in early secondary, things have changed since the older ones were there.
The younger two have time tables on an app always available, they don't have to guess after the holidays if it's week one or two.
They don't bring any books, everything is online and they can and do complete homework at school.
No money ever goes to school they have parent pay for everything including lost ties. For the older ones ties had to be bought from a shop that was barely open.
Ties are clip on so no bother about learning to tie them.

My tips are, have a box to put everything from the blazer pockets when it's washed,

If you can trust them to be sensible give them access to the parent pay account so they can pay for trips at lunchtime, I wondered why mine were never quick enough for first come first served trips until I realised their friends were paying for them at lunchtime not once they got home.

If the school is like ours and has rule requiring coats to be in bags and blazers not to be put in bags but your DC have a long walk to school maybe invest in a thin body warmer and a decent waterproof to go over the blazer and teach them how to roll them to put neatly in their bags.

If your DC likes playing football be prepared to wash their uniform daily. Mine are always either covered in mud or grass stains or both as unlike primary the field is available at break in all weathers.

If your child will be using public transport to get to school by themselves for the first time
1- have some trial runs in both directions.
2 - find out how to pay - cash/card/app, do they need a photo card? Do they need an app? If not, where do they but a season ticket from? Often a weekly/ monthly tickets are cheaper than paying every day and sometimes cheaper digitally.

Label everything. However uncool. DD's PE top cost £25. He is an airhead. It has been returned many times.