Communication with school...should parents be informed of split level class?

shoveon

Hi All,

My daughter started primary school this year. At the outset there was no meeting to welcome/introduce parents to the school and how it operates. We were simply handed a booklet to read at the open day for the kids. (The booklet turned out to be full of inaccuracies - starting day changed, collection time changed without us being informed!)

At the open day the kids were simply allowed to roam around the classroom. It seemed incredibly poorly organised...We left no wiser as to who the teachers were or what to expect. No one made themselves known to us as a member of staff of any kind at all! It was all very confusing and as this is our first child to start school we really did not know what to expect. We decided to just accept it for what it was at the time as the expectation was that they do this every year, we guessed they must know what they were doing!

Now we are on the 6th week of term and we had been hearing some confusing stories from our daughter...we finally figured out that she must be in a class with both junior and senior infant children. When we enquired at the gate if she is in a split class (half junior infants, half senior infants) we were told that she is. This is the very first that we heard of it!!! Is this lack of what I would consider to be basic communication with parents to be expected?

I'm not sure if I am looking for reassurance or what I am after but wondered if the above would be considered a usual experience for primary school? Has anyone on here experienced something similar?

I really don't want to be the crazy ranting parent, but it just doesn't feel right to me and I'm not quite sure what to do about it :-/

Sorry for the long post...any thoughts/advice greatly appreciated!!

pwurple

Communication sounds like it is generally lacking here, and as a fellow parent, I know the feeling!

My daughter started as well this year, and it's only this week I figured out that tracksuit day is monday. It was never communicated to us, and the other children in the class have older siblings, so already knew what the story is.

I made a list of things we didn't know, and knocked on the school secretaries door one day after dropping her in, to figure it out. I got the school calendar, the vaccination dates, information about school trips, any upcoming bills etc. I had a question about homework (Homework notebook had 'Do Soundbag', I had no clue what that even was), so I asked the teacher one day after school. Problem solved.

Oh, and I joined the parents association and go to the meetings to try to get the heads up there on what's going on in general with the school.

I think you do have to take the initiative a bit, get stuck in there. Not much in life arrives on a plate without asking.


As for split classes, that's something I asked about when enrolling the child. How many teachers, how many classes, how many in a class etc. Mine is in a split class also.

shoveon

Hi pwurple,

Thanks for the response. At least I know I am not alone!

We managed to get talking to the teacher today which has cleared up some of our queries. Although she was surprised that we hadn't been informed of the split class also. I don't have an issue with my daughter being in a split class, it was purely that not being made aware of it led to a lot of confusion at home. I feel we should have been told.

I have taken your advice and contacted the Parents Association on facebook (only guise in which I have come across them) and look forward to getting involved, if they'll have me!

Hopefully communications will improve as the year progresses and things settle down.

byhookorbycrook

Open Day isn't that common in primary schools. We hold a meeting for new parents at night and pas on the info there. The children can come in one afternoon to see their room and get a feel for the place. is there a school website?Is it possible notes came home and got lost in the black hole that is the junior infant school bag?

shoveon

No parents meeting, definitely no notes in bag and no further info on the website I'm afraid. Hopefully things will improve. If not we may have to look at our options...too many years ahead to be as out of the loop and dissatisfied as we are right now!

afkasurfjunkie

How many teachers in the school? If the principal is a teaching principal it's practically a given that there will be split classes at some stage. In fact if all senior infants are in with the juniors that's not a split class situation, but a multi class situation and common all over the country.

shoveon

Hi afkasurfjunkie. As previously stated I have no problem with my child being in a split class. My difficulty lies with the lack of communication. We had a hard time making sense of some of the stories coming home as we were unaware of the split nature of the class. I feel we should have been told.

The principal does not also teach. As far as we can make out split classes occur throughout the school years with no pupil spending two years in a row in a split class. ...split class is not the problem though.

byhookorbycrook

Shoveon, without asking you to give too much away, what size is the school?

shoveon

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

Shoveon, without asking you to give too much away, what size is the school?

byhoojorbycrook, the school has roughly 350 pupils. But truly neither the size of school nor split level classes are the issue. Communication is my concern.

afkasurfjunkie

A lot of schools now use text a parent. Do they have your correct mobile number? It does seem fairly slack for a school of that size to be poor on the communication side of things.

shoveon

I have received texts on other matters from the school. So they have my correct number.

byhookorbycrook

The reason I was asking about school size was to see if every class was in a multi-grade situation. It strikes me as unusual not to communicate to parents that the infants are in multi-grade in that case. Is there another class of infants too?

shoveon

yes. There is an additional junior infants class it is not a split class.

byhookorbycrook

In that case, I'd be inclined to bring this issue to the school (nicely) and let them know how you feel about the lack of info. It may have been a genuine oversight, but no harm to let them know.

shoveon

Thanks byhookorbycrook.
We spoke with the teacher about the problems as we see it and hope that things will improve. Fingers crossed!