Over 6 hours of sport

[poppydoppy]

A week at prep school.....too much? What do you think? Academic lessons are 45 mins.

[Lonecatwithkitten]

7.5 hours at DD's prep school and rising over the next year.
I have no problem with it at all. Is it possible to have too much exercise?

[claraschu]

I think it could be really good, if done well (fun, challenging without being off-putting to non-sporty types, good coaches who aren't overly pushy).
Most kids don't run around enough.

[poppydoppy]

I dont have a problem with sport but it seems to be taking over the academic subjects. By the time theyve moved from class to class and settled down they only have 30 mins teaching time.

[cricketballs]

I'd be questioning why it takes 15 mins to move from one class to another and settle down

[poppydoppy]

By settling down I meant by the time they get around to working after the teachers explained what to do etc

[trinity0097]

Ours have 5 hours a week (1 hr on Mon, Tues, Fri and 2 on a Wed).

I would imagine if the kids at your prep school are like ours they are just getting to grips with their timetable and at the start of term it takes longer to get the hang of where to go, where to sit in class etc... We used to have 35min lessons and only 5min was lost to getting going/packing up after about the first week.

[Lonecatwithkitten]

Surely explaining what they need to do is part of teaching time is it not. How long is school day?

[poppydoppy]

We had all double lessons last year 1 hour 10 mins so its a bit of a shock this year only having 45, Ive noticed a big difference in the amount of work being done in class.

[LIZS]

Normal ime.

[rabbitstew]

Well, 45 minutes of academic lessons a week sounds a bit light. Surely the amount of actual sport done is reduced considerably by the amount of time getting changed into your sports things, getting changed back, putting away equipment, etc, resulting in 6 hours a week of sport actually being worth about one hour a day max?... If that's the only exercise a child gets during the week, that sound like a healthy amount of exercise. If said child also does active after school clubs and/or takes 45 minutes to walk to school in the morning and another 45 minutes home, it's a tad excessive!...

[RussiansOnTheSpree]

If I was paying for my kids' education I would not be at all happy with over 6 hours of compulsory sport a week.

[wearingatinhat]

6 hours does sound a little heavy - at ours it is more like 4. I would be worried if they are not getting at least an hour of both literacy and maths a day.

[goinggetstough]

IMO The total amount of sport is not the problem. It surely depends on how many hours are devoted in total to academics and what their lesson hours are. My DD had a similar amount of sport but school lessons started at 8.15 and on one day there was a later lesson after sport ( 5 - 6pm).
It would be interesting to ask the school why they cut the academic lessons down from 1 hr 10 to 45 mins. They must have had a reason....

[ihearsounds]

Sounds like what one of my dd's did. But it wasn't all sport. There was also the practicals involved, which included lots of written work. The time also included travel to and from sports centre for some of the sports, and of course time to change and shower. So in reality, it was less.

[valiumredhead]

Ds does that much at his academy school.

[mumofthemonsters808]

Agree with Russians comment

[RussiansOnTheSpree]

I just wouldn't want my kids to be spending that much of their school week on sport. And if I was paying for it, I'd be even more annoyed. Well, I wouldn't be paying for it, they'd go to a different school.

[IndridCold]

It depends on the length of the school day. DS was doing one and a quarter hours of sport for 4 days a week (on the fifth day they did another activity like cooking or gardening) but the school day ended at 5pm, so they still had lessons from 9 am until 3.15.

I found that him having a run around at the end of the day made him less grumpy at home time, even though it was later.

[RussiansOnTheSpree]

But I still wouldn't want them to be spending that much time doing sport in the school week. It would be at the expense of music and drama and dance. And AFAIC there;s no contest as to which would be the better use of their time.

[rabbitstew]

Doesn't dance count as sport?

[Remotecontrolduck]

That's a ridiculous amount, have plenty of optional extra curriculars available yes, but how can there be time for anything else? Like the performing arts. Or academic subjects like Maths and History?

There's only so many hours in a school day!

[RussiansOnTheSpree]

rabbit I bet it doesn't in the OP's case.

[rabbitstew]

It would certainly be ds1's worst nightmare, but then he has a connective tissue disorder, so that much serious, compulsory sport in a week could actually be quite harmful. What does the school do for children for whom some sports could be dangerous? Make them sit it out, or provide a choice of appropriate sports during the 6-hours of compulsory sport time??? Ds1, for example, would be medically advised never to get anywhere near a rugby pitch, unless he wants to break his hypermobile little neck!