School Update at Half Term 

My four year old twin girls are half way through their first term at full time school and of course this week is half term so I thought it would be a good time to give an update on R and M’s progress.

When the girls started it all looked great. There was a new teacher and it seemed that they would settle in and have a lovely relationship with their new teacher.

However, two weeks into the school year, everything was going to change. Their new teacher went on the sick and then within a few days we were emailed to say that their teacher was on long term sick. This was a nightmare. R had really struggled to settle and we had worked out why and spoken to her teacher, worked out a plan to combat this and she was beginning to love school and settle in really well. She was going in happy and most importantly coming out happy and chatting about her day.

This was also the start of what seemed like a stream of different teachers appearing on a daily basis, which was naturally quite unsettling for the children. We were told that a particular teacher would be in charge of the girls class. That seemed ok, but within days the girls were coming out of school telling us that a different teacher was almost daily was taking charge of the class. There is no question that this was having an unsettling effect on the girls, especially R.

The final nail in the coffin was when parents evening was cancelled for the girls class because their teacher was on long term sick leave. I do wonder what difference it would have made, had it been the current teacher taking parents evening. After all their teacher only taught them for two weeks so I do wonder what would she would be able to tell us about their progress anyway.

Last week we decided that we needed a meeting with the head teacher as we had some concerns over our twin daughter’s education and it would appear that many other parents were feeling the same.

We decided to take advantage of their open door policy because there were no updates about the situtation forthcoming.

My wife rang the school  to arrange a meeting and was informed that they would get back to her.

I will at this point cut a long story short, they didn’t ring back, even after my wife went into the school on the Thursday for an update. Finally last Friday my wife decided to camp out in the school reception until she saw someone. Eventually she was told the deputy head would be with her shortly.

So finally some we gained some information on the girls class. The teacher is a supply teacher who is going to be their teacher for the foreseeable future, which is all we really wanted – some consistency, so the girls would feel secure and settled, which I have felt has been missing for some weeks.

I am not in any way crictising the school. It is no-ones fault that the teacher has gone on long term sick and I genuinely hope she gets well soon, but I just feel that the school was very slow in re-assuring the parents. After all these children are just 4 years old and this is a huge moment in their lives. From a parental point of view knowing they are settled and happy is so important.

On a plus point both the girls had certificates and head teacher awards on the last day before half term which made them very happy!