schools and holidays

inkie

Well, you are doing well being allowed 10 days authorised absences - DD2s school allows none.

bravobeastie

Crikey, my son starts reception class this year and he doesn't even turn 4 until July

flea72

if you dont take up the place offered by the school, then they can withdraw it, so come September, they dont have to accept your child into Y1.

most schools are fairly reasonable where holidays are concerned, but why book a long holiday, when you knew your child was due to start school. You have had notice of their school start date for over 1yr now, heck its prob 2yrs since you applied, so you were forewarned.

Personally i would have avoided rocking the boat so early into my childrens school life. its best to settle them in, before peeing off the management.

Flea

nickyhutch

Out of interest, if she doesn't start til 2009, does she then start in Reception class or Year 1?

silvercar

nickyhutch wrote: »

Out of interest, if she doesn't start til 2009, does she then start in Reception class or Year 1?

Generally children are meant to enter the appropriate year group for their age, so if you start a year late you would go straight to year 1.

If your child was clearly not progressing and all agreed it would be beneficial to drop back a year, children generally repeat year 2 and so join the juniors (year 3) a year late.

I say generally because all children, schools and local authorities are different.

Once you have dropped back a year it is harder educationally to move back up to an age appropriate year group. An issue has to be made at the end of year 5 to remain in primary school for year 6 and then another issue at secondary school application time to go to year 7.

Nenen

I'm a teacher (declaration of vested interest ) and while I agree that children in the UK start formal schooling far too early, at least we now have a specific play-based early years curriculum in the Foundation class. If you insisted your dd didn't start school for another year then she would probably go straight to Year 1 (depending to some extent upon the school and LEA) and start her school career with a much more formal and structured curriculum. Therefore, in your shoes, I'd either educate her at home yourself until she was at least 6 or 7 (the age most other countries start formal schooling) or start her in Foundation even though she will still be under 5. IMHO, starting her in Y1 at 5 is the worst of all worlds!

I won't comment on taking children out of school for holidays as I have very strong views on doing that which usually provokes argument and a lot of flack. I'm really not in the mood for that!

alwaysonthego_2

Thanks for the replies. I went into the school this morning and spoke to the office staff and explained my dilemma. They were really nice and told me not to worry at her age, and head's ethos is a trip abroad would be just as educational than being sat in a class room.

I got an holiday form and they said I would have to take the extra days as unathorised, but not to worry.

alwaysonthego_2

If I don't let her start this sep and wait till 2009 she would go to year one. My daughter attends pre-school now and I would keep her there. The teacher at the pre-school has QTS up to 8 years old. She has learnt how to write her name and the alphabet and numbers and she is doing well there.

Zziggi

flea72 wrote: »

if you dont take up the place offered by the school, then they can withdraw it, so come September, they dont have to accept your child into Y1.

this is incorrect. I looked into this and have been told that if you are given a school place and then the parent decides to only accept the place starting the term after the child turns 5, then that is the parents' perogative. The school CANNOT then withdraw the place. This was introduced (last year or year before) because schools were pressuring parents to send their child at the start of the school year when the legally didn't have to.

Incidentally, the school still receives the funding for that child for the whole school year even if the parent chooses only to send them after they turn five.

In the OPs case, i would have thought that a sensible Head who has had it pointed out politely by the parents that ttechnically' the child is not school age when the holiday occurs, would ignore the fact they were 2 days over.

Dick_here

Zziggi wrote: »

In the OPs case, i would have thought that a sensible Head who has had it pointed out politely by the parents that ttechnically' the child is not school age when the holiday occurs, would ignore the fact they were 2 days over.

But as someone pointed out earlier, either you're on the school register or you're not. If you are, then the school expects you to be there as they've got truancy targets etc to meet and this is clearly unauthorised absence.

If you decide to start school before age 5 - as most kids do these days - you don't just turn up as and when you want to because you legally don't have to be there, you've agreed to turn up every day.