School Years
Term-time absence, and what a missed school day actually costs
The rules differ wildly by country and the cost is not spread evenly across the calendar. Both are worth knowing before anything is…
School Years
Homework, friendships, teachers and the logistics of term time.
21 articles · updated August 11, 2026 · page 2 of 2
School Years
Everything your child takes to school will be lost at least once
Loss is not carelessness; it is arithmetic. Dozens of small items move between two buildings twice a day, and a proportion will not…
School Years
The packed lunch is a five-minute decision you make two hundred times
The difficulty is not making one lunch. It is making the same decision every evening for years, which is why a fixed rotation beats…
School Years
School trips: the form, the money and the child who does not want to go
A trip arrives as a letter with a deadline and a request for money. The parts that cause trouble are the ones the letter does not…
School Years
Wraparound care is the invisible half of the school day
The school day is shorter than the working day, and the gap is filled by arrangements nobody explains. Sorting them out is a term’s…
School Years
The class group chat is two things at once, and one of them is useful
It is the fastest way to find out that tomorrow is a non-uniform day, and the fastest way to acquire an opinion about a teacher you…
School Years
Term dates arrive in pieces, and the year has to be assembled by you
No single document tells you when your household will need cover. It is spread across term dates, training days, trips and events…
School Years
Moving a child to a new school is a social problem before an academic one
The lessons will be fine within a few weeks. What takes longer is arriving somewhere every friendship group was formed two years…
School Years
School reports are written in a register, and it can be read
A report is written to be accurate, defensible and readable by a hundred families. Knowing what it is constrained to do tells you…