A new year stumbles into being

Obviously, Daughter is back at school now. Less obviously - not actually today. She was sick in the middle of the night, probably due to scarfing a huge bag of Tesco rip-off Skips while we weren't really paying attention. Oops. Husband took the day off work; I got to work longer than usual to make up for last week's flexitime disaster. The disaster being:

Monday - Get up at 6.30. Roads are so icy anything above 8mph is lethal. Get into work at 8.45.
Tuesday - Get up at 6.30. Faff about. Car needs de-icing. Get into work at 8.45.
Wednesday - Day off to wait for new PC.
Thursday - Get up at 6.45 due to motivational failure. Get into work at 8.45.
Friday - Get up at 7.15 because Daughter has come into bed with me after bad dream, and doesn't need to be woken at 6.30. Get into work at ... 8.45.

What do I DO in the mornings?

I also forgot to make Daughter her packed lunch on Wednesday, I remembered just as Husband was taking her to school, so I'm doing REALLY well so far.

I finally have an idea of the timetable at school - PE Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday; literacy Monday and Tuesday, numeracy Wednesday and Thursday, creative stuff and finishing things off on Friday. Oh, and show-and-tell that's now called something else on a Thursday. And library on a Thursday. Despite this when Husband asked Daughter last Thursday if she'd done any numbers, she said 'no' (definitely no, not the usual 'don't know' or 'can't remember'). Mind you a lot of the numeracy stuff they seem to do at this age is about shapes, patterns, sizes etc - not explicitly numbers, so that may explain it.

I will learn more shortly, as I have an appointment with numeracy governor hat on to see the teacher responsible for numeracy ('maths with Miss S', the post-it says) so will find out about new-fangled maths teaching.

Speechless

I'm struggling to express how stupid it is that the local authority can allow an admissions appeal, pushing class size over 30, then with the next breath come down on the school for having an oversize class. And that the suggested solution, should it not be possible to even up classes within the year, is to put a child in a different year group, but continue to teach them as the year they're supposed to be in. As in put a child who will turn 6 within the academic year (ie Year 1 age) into a class of rising 7s (Year 2 age) but continue to teach them to the Year 1 syllabus. *boggle*

Same local authority that has been paying supply teachers working in one school out of another school's budget - endemically, across the region - and is incapable of putting this right.

Well, I guess the former thing is a widespread stupidity of the system, rather than just our local authority, but still. On what planet is it better to take a child out of their peer group and put them in a completely different group, singling them out by teaching a different syllabus to them because they're younger, that to have a class of 31?

Yes, had another governors' meeting. Didn't get to talk numeracy to the relavant teacher as she was going home sick. I asked how to get in touch with her in future, and was told I would need to find her after school. Ho hum. I guess that's the way to do it. But I'm a bit of a control freak; I like to arrange things with people. Plus hanging around after school doesn't go down well with the Daughter. I had to ask her teacher after school today if a letter had made it into school last week (it was sent on the same day as dinner money which apparently *didn't*, hm) and after about 15 seconds' conversation with her was told 'we could have been home by now, mummy'. Monkey.

Anyway, Daughter is coming on leaps and bounds, and is starting to read. Yay! Very exciting. We now have word strips coming home - the first three are duplicates of the first three in the phonics book I've got, but #4 starts with 'pub'. I think it's a ringer. The second word is 'gun' - it's the non-PC word strip.