The Mock Turtle

Yes, very much the same here.

I asked if G could stay back a year and was given an extremely firm no. C could go to secondary school now, she would waltz in and be right at home. But I can’t imagine G ever being ready!

He gets a small amount of extra support and will be having half an hour a week one-to-one help with reading. But none of that will make him a year older , I really feel like he needs another year, and more so than ever now.

But like I said, I do also know that while he’s my first, he won’t be the school’s first child who is immature and behind and hopefully they will be able to help him. Bleh, it’s all shit.

I felt wretched when the SAM went to high school, despite the fact I have worked in them for years. However I think that was naivety on my part as I hadn't really anticipated any problems. He was tiny and also quite young for his age - and it hasn't been plain sailing. I would say that it's important to be very assertive with the school about what your child needs right from the start. Secondary schools are big institutions with (often) patchy communication. Get the email addresses of everyone you think you might need to early on.

Thank you that’s useful. Our local secondary apparently has good SEN provision but I don’t know what that actually means or whether anyone (without an EHCP) can benefit from it. I need to find all this stuff out but I’d rather bury my head in the sand .

Has G got an EHCP, Squiz? A good SEN dept will support anyone with additional needs, not just the EHCP chaps.

Not yet, but I think we’re heading in that direction now.

He’s been at school part time during lockdown which has gone fairly badly , but in a way it helped the school understand his issues more as he wasn’t masking. They ended up having to have a TA sit with him and another (EHCP) boy away from the main class, and I had to go and pick him up a couple of times when he wasn’t coping and they didn’t have enough staff to manage him.
Sorry brain dump!

I'm terrified of C starting next year - he's the youngest in his year and immature for that - and all this time out of school has not helped his maturity levels one bit.

How are the new year sevens getting on?

I though George was handling it ok until Friday when he came home from school after his first full week and had a full on wobble. Mainly about missing his primary school, friends, the long days, detentions and homework. He ended up falling asleep at 5pm

Yesterday he was supposed to go to the first football club of the term, got his PE kit ready and then asked me if I knew where "pen" was because that was the location on the after school timetable. Obviously I had no idea but told him to either ask around in his form to see if anyone else was going, ask his form tutor or turn up to the PE block after school and ask. Which he did. A PE teacher told him where to get changed but he said all the kids were huge and hairy (the club was for years 7-9) so he got scared and left. He was sitting on the doorstep looking sorry for himself when Liv and I got home. He does seem to be worried about asking about things - he is having lunches he doesn't like because he doesn't know where the deli bar is. And he hasn't been to the toilet at school because he doesn't know where they are!!!!!

What? Aren't they giving them any sort of basic tour? Didn't he go with any primary friends? Poor George. I'm sure he'll get into it, but its a lot to get used to

We've got all this to come. This morning I booked into our first open tour I'm not ready for any of this.

Only a handful of kids from his primary school went to his school. In fact there weren't more than a handful from his primary go to any one secondary school - they're all scattered to different schools because there's not an obvious school for them to follow on to. Two of his very good friends are there though and a couple of other boys he likes and gets on well with. They've all been split up in different forms. They are being streamed in a couple of weeks (they had tests on their first day which was meant to be an induction with only Y7s in the school but wasn't in the end because of covid testing) so he might be in the same class as someone he knows then.

Oh wow, that's quite harsh, splitting them up!

We had similar last year Emma because there hadn't been any transition. Cube was terrified to ask how to get lunch or which toilets he was allowed to use etc. It was the second week when he finally broke down and I contacted the school. They had a member of staff give him a little private tour and admitted they'd overlooked a lot of detail as it would usually be dealt with by transition/induction. Would he be open to that happening? Do you think the school would do that?

Betty has had a pretty seamless transfer and already has made new friends. Mornings are a bit traumatic as some of her old primary school friends have long walks and haven't sorted the times out yet. We live halfway between them and the school so I often have children turning up at my door at 7:30 when they don't need to leave until 8:10.

On Friday just after 4pm her maths teacher totally trolled me. He rang and very soberly said he wanted to talk to me about her (she'd come home in a foul mood!) but then proceeded to tell me she was an utter joy to teach and he couldn't finish the week without telling me how brilliant she was.

Oh, poor G. That place must seem awfully big.

Covid has definitely made these things harder.

The same thing (kids from the same primary school being split up) happened at the school my colleague’s daughter went to. I guess there’s a reason for it? But her school offered a week of summer school which they seemed to use mostly as an induction so she did have some familiar faces in her form when she started in September.

I’m glad Betty’s settled in well. Having an older sibling in the year above must be reassuring.

A has been up and down. He had a good first day on Weds when it was just Y7 but he was overwhelmed on Thurs when everyone was back. It didn’t help that he got flattened by a Y9 playing football at lunchtime, got lost on the way to a lesson and PE was cancelled for an extra assembly. Things seem to have improved since, I’m trying to talk him through ways to cope if something goes wrong but I can’t anticipate everything.

We had very similar emmap - F didn’t know a single person from his primary amongst the 300 other year 7s and it has definitely been a learning curve when it comes to having the courage to ask stuff. It’s still a bit of an issue now but that’s due to laziness rather than confidence, I think It’s still really early days, it takes a long time to truly get into the swing of high school. If it helps, F has way too much confidence now and swaggers around like he owns the place

It’s really hard, especially if they go from a tiny primary to a huge secondary. But I think it’s excellent for their self esteem once they conquer the challenge.

Poor G, that sounds really tough. Hopefully when they are streamed he can start seeing the same people and get to know them better.

A's had a really good start so far - I've been really impressed with how quickly they've settled them in. She's made a couple of friends and says her class is all really nice. We had a parents information evening as well (with wine!) and the other parents seem really nice as well. She's very tired though (and noticably vile to her siblings when she gets home) and we've been warned to expect the 3-week crash after their first week of homework!

I did have a panicked text this morning saying that they'd been messaged on Teams this morning (at 06:28!) to bring their swimming kit in instead of their hockey stuff which she'd missed, but 'everyone' turned out to be 2 or 3 peope who'd actually seen it, so no harm done.

I'm glad A is settling in well too. A couple of friends is great and wine at the parents evening! That's private education for you George has made two new friends in his form but has said they don't get a lot of time to talk between lessons. Has A not had any homework yet? George had homework set from day 1! (well before as he had summer homework) and it's meant to take about an hour a day. It's been set for every lesson, including PE! He's had 2 lots of voluntary homework set for house competitions too. The school day is much longer too - 8:30-4:30 so I'm not surprised he was exhausted on Friday.

My A has had homework but it’s mostly been covering books so far. Guidelines for Y7 (once they get going) are 2 pieces of homework per night taking up to 30 minutes each.

Great news on friends! 8:30-4:30 is a long day though - do they get a really long lunch? A is 8:25 - 3:45 which feels about right.

They don't have homework for the first two weeks, then it sounds similar - 20 mins per subject per week, which works out as about an hour a night.