Parentalk Guide to Primary School

Primary school is an adventure for parents and children. From saying goodbye at the school gate to the challenges of homework, this is the essential guide to all that lies ahead.

Wendy Bray sets out to show that primary school need not be a scary place for parents, both by looking at how to make the most of your child’s time in primary school, and by answering those questions you’ve always wanted to put your hand up to ask.

Read an excerpt…

Most of us have at least one abiding memory of our Primary School. For many it’s the smell! A mix of floor polish, disinfectant and overcooked cabbage. It fills our memories in the same way that it filled the school hall during Assembly, as we sat cross legged in a stiff school shirt and shiny new shoes. Our eyes were fixed alternately on ‘the big boys’ and the teacher bashing out ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, on a tuneless piano.

For some of us, those memories will be painful or humiliating and will have etched the pattern from which our whole school career took its shape. We may have begun to believe, from those early days, that school really wasn’t our scene. Others will have nothing but the sunny days locked away in the vaults of memory, and just the sound of children’s voices in the playground as we pass will unlock them. For most, the memories will be a mix of rough and smooth, pride and embarrassment, fear and fun.

Those days can seem at one moment like a million years ago and at another like last Thursday. But when my own children started school those memories lined up together and did a forward flip across the years, in transformation. Suddenly, it was my child who was hanging up their coat in the cloakroom and doing PE in the hall, and - because you’re reading this book - it’s likely that it’s now your child or grandchild, or someone you take care of, who is about to do the same.

‘Will it have changed much?’ You wonder as you contemplate that day when you’ll watch your ‘baby’ disappear through its doors for the first time. ‘Is there anything I can do to make it easier for them than it was for me?’

This book is to let you know that it has, and there is. So view it book as a travel guide. It will accompany you on that journey through the Primary School - from your perspective as well as the children’s - because this is your Big Adventure too.