Schools should close early on a Friday

The McCrone agreement had nothing to do with Friday afternoons. We had Friday afternoons off way back in the early 1990s and the McCrone agreed came in after that. The school hours were 35 hours per week before the agreement and are still that now. What changes was that staff were given prep time during the day(which is not really noticeable in a secondary school and often covered by assemblies and “specialist” teachers in primary)

I was in totally agreement with you until I saw your comment about TAs. I am a TA here and so far this week, I have been dragged out of my class and have taught Year 1 alone and on Friday I will teach Year 6 alone.

TAs do not plan? In our school we each have a RWI group which we have to manage and a lot of interventions. We have to plan these in our own time as no one gives us the recognition that we are doing these things.

I am glad I am not your TA.

It's already a thing in Scotland. Maybe a review should be done (perhaps it already has beeen) of the benefits to teachers, pupils and parents as well as the negatives.

My kids start school at 8.45am and finish at 3.05pm , on Fridays they finish at 12.20. I work part time and am self employed so have avoided working on Fridays but if I must dh will take his non working day then. Lots of parents I know either work part time (so not on a Friday), or rely on grandparents, other family members or childcare to cover the gap. Parents with older children often wfh on that day.

Mine don't do any sports or activities on Fridays. By time they get home and have lunch there isnt long before 3pm anyway.I find it pointless and would prefer they were in school.

What if you don't work a Friday? How does that work out?

No, I completely disagree with this. I find the school day to be long enough already for primary school children. They won't learn anything extra in an extended day, they'll just be more tired.

Our primary does this, it's great! My DC never have school Wednesday or Friday afternoons.

Ex supply teacher here. I worked in a school that did an early finish on a Friday.

Pros, for the school they only had to pay me a half day on the Friday.

Cons, everyone knew which kids were on free school meals as the canteen made up a packed lunch for them to take home. I don't know it the canteen staff were paid less for the Friday.

It's useful if you have Muslim and/or Jewish children as they can go to a mosque or get home before the start of Shabbos. If you are in an area with a large Muslim population then you will find mosques running classes for children on Friday afternoon.

I'm fairly sure McDonalds made more money that day.

I'm sure for some parents it wasn't ideal. Having attempted to teach a 3-5pm class on a Friday afternoon I much preferred the earlier finish.

It was an interesting school, breakfast was compulsory and free for staff and students. You didn't have to eat, but you did have to take your class to the canteen.

Water, tea and coffee were all free and available at all times but you couldn't take the hot drinks away from the canteen.

Just to add to the great explanation from @wellington77 Sometimes things change fast in the subject you arte teaching. One of mine was, Health and Social Care.

So there is often new legislation, guidelines or something happens and is in the news that is relevant to something you are teaching eg a few years ago there was a Panorama programme about abuse in care homes, the students are learning about safeguarding so something like that might be included last minute.

It can also depend on the cohort, I love teaching equality and diversity. In Birmingham I would often have a class where I was the only white person and most of the class were multilingual.

That's an absolute gift because we can start with making a spider diagram of the diversity in the class.

The same subject when I taught on the Welsh border the class was entirely white, all English speaking but had done welsh as a second language at school.

We ended up doing a spider diagram of 'equality and diversity for the zombie apocalypse'.

Fair point. Thanks for explaining. Perhaps it could be a fortnightly or monthly thing so it's not all at once. Kids could look forward to their short week and some parents with flexible busses could plan to make the most of those Fridays. I used to work in a job that demanded long hours but gave me every third Friday off and I used to really maximise that time.

Aah thank you!

I think the standard working week for all professions should be amended and Friday afternoons should officially become a part of the weekend.

@Whatjemimadid All teachers on PPA at the same time (especially in large schools) wouldn't work.

Coincidentally, I was missing this idea to myself as a parent the other day.

At our school, teachers get an afternoon off to plan and a TA teaches the class. Every week. All classes

I thought maybe all planning could be done Friday afternoon with a Friday afternoon club .. fetch your kids if you like. Many will!

Kids are burnt out so the wind down would help TAs coverings fun or art or drama or other lovely creative subjects or something would be better than them teaching another day as happens here

@Frangipanyoul8r PPA is Planning, Preparation and Assessment time. Often covered by support staff such as teaching assistants.

I would be so against this. The number of teaching hours children get has already reduced over the decades.

What is PPA? What does it stand for? Why does everyone know this?

No problem 😊

needed to delete this message but mn’s would let me , so ignore!!

Mildly worse

@wellington77 You've written such an accurate account, thank you.

Our highschool finishes at 1230 on a Friday

Hi, teacher here, some lessons we reuse, but I can give you some reasons for having to plan the same lesson again. 1) the first time you did it, it was rubbish because you had so many other lessons to plan you had to do a bodge job of it. It takes a few years to get 5/6 lessons for every day for however many weeks of the year. If you’ve managed to produce perfect lessons in your first year for every day and week I bow down to you! 2) the lovely government likes to change schemes of work which means changing lessons. Eg I teach History- the GCSE curriculum completely changed in 2016, that’s two years worth of lessons I needed to replan again. 3) expectations from management/ ofsted seems to change every year!- a few years ago differentiation was the big thing- three separate resources for three separate abilities, now it’s all about teaching from the top, so every one does the same lesson (sort of) but with different access points. More change! 4) the more you learn as a teacher the more you realise that a lesson you taught in the past was actually rubbish and you want to improve it or maybe just make it less boring.,I’ve been teaching 12 years I still lesson plan every day to make new resources. If you were ever at school and given a video or textbook lesson - most likely that’s because the teacher hasn’t planned a solid lesson yet for that sub topic. It’s why websites like TES and twinkl ( lesson resource websites) are a god send for new and old teachers when you need to fill a gap which until you can make a great lesson. Imagine having to make 5/6 presentations a day for 30 odd weeks- impossible.

@Hellodarknessmyfriend I work a 0.8 contract. And thus don’t work Fridays .

@MumonabikeE5 Guessing you're not a working parent?

It's a different bunch of 30 children each time - they all have different needs, abilities, and personalities to the class the year before. Lessons/topics are tweaked and updated all the time.