I expect this is a common problem for peris. Teaching room and class from which most of kids are drawn, are at opposite ends of school. Kids only have a 20 mins time slot in pairs. Children A and B, who are only Y2 age, are sent to fetch children C and D, also from Y2. Child A stops to have a chat and Child B stops to read something on the corridor. Child C is in the middle of a painting and Child B has lost her music book and money. Result: nearly 20 mins of lesson gone, and children X and Y are squeezed into 10 mins before hometime. Kids are too young to time-manage themselves, and class teacher is too busy. Any suggestions or do I just have to put up with the situation as it is?

Mine get a sticker if they arrive on time.

Year 2 love stickers!

I had a similar experience with a few primary 7s last year! Not exactly take forever, but certainly a long corridor. Actually the first two were always late somehow, like it took 15 minutes to come in, jackets off, ask out for their lesson.

I felt like asking the teacher to just send people at their scheduled time instead of waiting for the last ones back but didn't know if I could do that.

I have had a similar problem with a recorder club I run at a primary school, but although it loses me a bit of time, I schedule the sessions with a 5 minute gap between them. That way I can collect them from the classrooms, check everyone has a recorder and their music, and walk them to the hall in an orderly fashion, recorders firmly down by their sides, not being blown at high volume for all the school to hear.

Primary teachers are usually too busy to remember it's time for someone's music lesson, or may choose not to remember if they are in the middle of something they see as more important than music (such as maths!). If I turn up to collect them, I've got a much better chance of getting them all on time.

I allow mine to be 5 minutes late and then I go and fetch them. It means more work for me, but at least I get some exercise!

You are allowed just to wait for primary children?

As a Volunteer Reading Helper I have to collect and return children personally and make sure that the teacher has seen the returning child too.

Lessons are at lunch time so the children are all over the place, mostly in the playground. It's OK if they come at the end of morning lessons, because that's a sort of cut off point, and if they come at 1 o'clock directly after their lunch (2 lunch sittings), but the ones at 1.20 find it hard to estimate, and get so engrossed in playing with their friends that they often forget. Head of music tries to put the "sensible and reliable" ones on at 1.20, but that doesn't always work.

The other problem is that they often can't tell the time! I have one lunchtime group who are usually too early. I've been training them to wait quietly in the corridor "until the big hand gets to the 7". I have planned it so that the most sensible and enthusiastic ones come at that time, I got tired of hunting across a huge field for them.

I had a similar problem with some year 2 children who are scheduled to start their lesson during the lunch break. After a couple of weeks of trying to track them down, the school arranged for the MDSA to blow the whistle and get all of the children to stop what they're doing - they then call for the children to go to their music lesson.

I find that it improves as the year progresses. I've had a lot of changed around times this year which has confused everyone (me too - I've not altered my file - usually have them in order of lesson throughout the week) so I suppose it'll take a bit longer to settle this year. But there's always one ......

Not just a problem for peris. As a parent I used to object to the fact that my daughter (who was then in yr 2) ended up with a 10 minute lesson rather than a 20 minute one. By the time the boy who had his lesson before had put his violin away, come to find my daughter, and she had made her way to the hall, got out her violin and had it tuned - half of the lesson had gone. The peri taught only 2 children in the school and then had to rush off to another school, so there was no option to extend the 20 minutes.

After a term of that, I bought her a digital watch, which she wore only on violin lesson days. I set the alarm for 5 minutes before her lesson was due to start, and when it went off she just walked out of her class and went to her lesson (class teacher had agreed to this in advance).

If you have a long series of lessons, put your most reliable group as group 2, who hopefully will arrive at the right time by themselves. Then fetch group 1 yourself, and when you send them off, ask them to bring back group 3 while you are teaching group 2. Then the group 2s fetch group 4, the group 3s fetch group 5, etc. etc. If they do take less than 20 minutes to arrive they can wait outside the door. Works well once you've got it going.

What do you do whilst waiting for them to arrive and is there any reason you couldn't go to get them yourself?

I'd say your best bet is to subtly make the parents aware that they're paying for lessons that the kids miss part of. The class teachers will respond much better if the Head has been approached by a few miffed parents and it's the Head who asks them to make sure they send the kids to their lessons on time. It surely can't be hard for a class teacher to have a list on her desk of who's got to where and when, and say 'Off you go' a few minutes before the time.

You have to know where to find them, bearing in mind they may be moving between classrooms, ability groupings, PE, assembly and the IT suite. Also they can arrive while you are out looking for them, conclude you are not there and return from whence they came. Another 5 minutes lost!

If the children who are being sent know where they are it can't be that complicated. I suggest walking with the previous pupils to collect the next two. This would prevent them wasting time on the way. Since they don't set off untill called they won't arrive while you are not there.

What a good idea!!!!
My own kids don't have lessons in school so that they don't miss out on lesson time!!!

I teach in a pretty small school, and I often go to fetch the next pupil whilst the previous pupil is packing away... then there is no wasted lesson time. No-one forgots etc .
I do sometimes finish a lesson and ask that pupil to get the next BEFORE they pack away, then they come back and pack away whilst the next puil gets the instrument out.

Unfortunately, they often forget if the next pupil is in the same class as them, as they get back, sit down and carry on with their work!!! It only works in a small primary and getting a pupil in a different class!!!!

What an optimist! I assume you aren't a classroom teacher.

That's what I would have wanted to happen, particularly at one school where the classroom was a long way from the teaching room. I never bothered in the end though.

It seems reasonable enough to be able to look at a few times on a bit of paper?

An observation, which comes from knowing where some of our members are from.

It seems to me that those of us who come from N. I. have a higher regard for our education system - and, yes, are more optimistic and black-and-white in our expectations. I would expect a classroom teacher to send a child out on time. Just as I would expect the child to do as he was told and go straight to where he was told to go. I wonder if we're more demanding in N.I.? And I wonder if we have more respect for teachers here too, whilst at the same time not suffering fools gladly? To 'expect' is to assume competency. If one is held in high regard, then one tends to want to live up to expectations - because 'that's just the way it is'. It shouldn't occur to the teacher NOT to send the child for its lesson.

I fully sympathise with the poster and others in this thread, I used to go into High Schools and talk to pupils about their experinces of vocational training.

I had to smile though thinking back to my youngest and Primary Recorder lessons. The Recorderlesson was over Lunch as it is with some of you, the problem was the Teacher arriving late. My daughter and her group would sit outside the office waiting for her to arrive to make the point. Sometimes she didn't turn up at all and never let school know, she was less reliable than the children

You don't teach my boys then. They must hear their headteacher asking them to walk not run most days. They certainly hear it from me.

Well, I've taught as a peri in schools for several years now, and in my experience it's extremely rare for teachers to remember when students' lessons are. Having said that I certainly don't regard any of those teachers as 'fools' or 'incompentent'. I certainly couldn't cope with the pressures and multi-tasking expected of classroom teachers these days.

I have the same problem with students years 7 - 11. Except half the time they have forgotten they had a lesson. After which I forget they ever asked for lessons and give their time to a different student. Life is hard sometimes.

In Primary school it was always the teacher who told me when to go to violin lessons, and in Grammar school you just remembered yourself...even if the teacher got cross at you for missing French lol!

At the school I worked in it was difficult as all the rooms were quite far apart, and I didn't always know which classroom to find them in! I stuck up timetables on noticeboards but even then it was unusual not to have at least one or two a week forgetting to turn up.

I've worked in 2 primary schools in the past where they had a phone extension in each classroom. It transforms your life as a peri! - you can ask 1 pupil to ring 5 mins before the end of the lesson to ask for the next lot. Any parents out there who find you are regularly payng for 10 minute lessons - it might be worth lobbying your schools to consider installing this. (Still doesn't solve the lunchtime problems though!)