Getting the kids back to school is a wonderful thing when it comes to routine, food consumption and of course their overall educational advancement. Loads of things about it suck though.
It’s that time again. September is a huge month of change, more so than January for me, as kids of all ages re-emerge from their tech and halcyon days of trampolining/TikTok video making to stick on a tie and go learn something new.
Loads of parents/carers and guardians will already be on countdown to the moment the school gates open, but for me personally, it’s a 50/50 split. Part of me wants to live somewhere remote(ish) and homeschool/travel the world and enrich my kids minds in a totally different way. But then part of me realised how important their friendships are to their overall well-being and man, who wants to spend 24/7 with their mum. That said, if I won the lottery we’d be travelling for a year and they’d bloody well like it!
I loved school as a kid and teen. I cried the day I left senior school. It was the stability I craved as a military kid who moved around. Leaving felt like the safety net had been pulled from underneath me as the enormity of the responsibility I now felt hit home. As an adult, I’m firmly in the camp of ‘oh I’d go back in a heartbeat’ and relive the care free days of English coursework and sunny days spent on the athletics track.
There’s so much more I hate about school as a parent.
1. School Uniform Shopping
The quality of school jumpers and cardigans is shit. The queues (which start at 7am because only two shops in the whole borough stocks your school) are shit. Take a ticket and wait to slowly die on pastel cushion covered benches at Clarks, shit. £50 for a pair of shoes my darling son will have scuffed to death before October half term, also shit. Someone I follow on Twitter piped up the other day calling to ban school logos on jumpers/cardigans. I get it. Supermarket plain block colour jumper/cardigans are great quality and cost a fraction of the cost. Why’s that not a thing?
2. Pointless Paperwork
Our primary school sends home SO much paperwork that is 100% unnecessary when we have a school to parents texting facility which works fine. I mean sheet after sheet of local education authority notices, changes to the start and finish times due to Covid, fundraising, lost property, it never ends and it’s rarely helpful. Stop killing the planet sending out and update on the safari park day out – just text it!
3. Missing My Gang
My three haven’t started back yet and I’m already missing 10pm games of Mario Uno at the kitchen table. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy a G&T and solitude on a Wednesday night when they’re in bed by 8:30pm, but kitchen discos, film nights, late laundry sort outs and marathon Insta reel viewings is just as fun. No really. Boo to education taking them away from pairing socks and running about with undies on their heads, twerking to Mr World Wide!
4. Reading Books
I love to read, as do my kids. We’ve battered all the Chip & Biff, Famous Five, Jacqueline Wilson, Michael Morpurgo, JK Rowling, Julia Donaldson, Charlie & Lola, Elmer, Roald Dahl and Flower Fairies collections time and time again. it’s not a struggle to get them to read. They’re now onto murder mysteries which is awesome because listening to them talk about the plot and characters and who they think ‘summit’ is the best. School reading books are woeful. My ten year old has brought home the same Wonder Woman comic book like three times in one half-term. They’re not varied enough. Not exciting enough, not enticing enough. I’m starting a petition to make Rick Mayal’s live reading of George’s Marvellous Medicine, mandatory for all primary school kids. Where is the drama? The fun? The challenging dialogue?
5. Losing Stuff That Costs Money
Rewinding back to school uniform here. How do kids lose so many items of closing in such a short space of time? A school jumper, with a name printed clearly on the label, that they take off and out on the back of their chair or in their (also clearly labelled) tray until the end of school, can vanish into thin air without anyone having any idea of how it happened or where the jumper has gone. What do you mean you’ve come home without any PE shorts? You were just wearing them? Why is there a detention slip in your bag about a missing tie? How do they do it? This whole situation causes me so much stress, every academic year.
That’s it. I’m not asking too much, am I? Text important stuff, don’t lose stuff, stop making school uniform inexplicably expensive, invest in top tier reading material and maybe give them a few more days off so we can pair socks and twerk to PitBull tracks as a family. Thank you.
Kate Reilly James 