Teacher lunch hour!

30 minutes is fine. It’s all that NHS staff are entitled to (unpaid) if they manage to take a break at all. How much should you get if it’s unpaid?

The problem is, you can argue that teachers actually have a great deal all you like, but it's irrelevant whether or not you're right. The fact is that not enough people want to try and it and - and this is the biggest problem - a huge percentage of the ones who do try it, having done all that training then leave within a few years. You're not going to solve the teacher retention crisis by telling teachers that they should be very satisfied with what they've got.

And how long with they last in the job? 😕

And how many of the 13 weeks of the school holidays are you putting in 43 hours a week?

I don't think anyone is suggesting it's easy being a teacher but it really isn't a bad deal (unless you consider the normal UK work ethic a bad deal in need of review, which is an entirely separate and reasonable debate).

Pay is directly comparable to nhs pay bands 5 & 6.

I left after 26 years and work from home as a tutor. Much less pay but I’m not micromanaged to the minute.

We should learn from the French. They prioritise a proper lunch break and a proper lunch - with civilised interaction with colleagues, off the premises quite often.

I think it helps productivity, employee satisfaction, morale, etc etc. But what do I know?

I think all this 24/7 presenteeism etc came from the US.

Not advocating slacking in any way - but it's a case of 'work smarter, not harder or longer' sometimes.

I remember the sour faced dinner ladies at our school who dished out the food and supervised in the playground.

Actually, most of them were lovely apart from one who still wore her hair in a snood like scarf, like it was still the 1940’s. 😂😂

If people vote for Reform, it’s only going to get ten times worse as they have no clue and no experience!

My kids school has playground monitors and lunch monitors. I thought that was the norm to be honest. Yanbu at all.

'Teacher' and 'lunch hour' - mutually exclusive IMO.

Something's gone wrong in the world of work if no one is taking a lunch break - from stressed out front line workers, to people like me doing bullshit jobs in offices. I do take a lunch break as there is nothing I do that can’t wait. I hate fake urgency at work.

@Periperi2025Since having my own children I have massively cut my working hours at school to drop them off/pick them up from childcare. I get to school at 8 and leave at 4. I have 15 minutes for lunch because I’ve always got work to do.
7 hrs 45 minutes.

we have a weekly meeting
1 hr
I do some work a few evenings and/or weekends averaging an extra 4hrs across the week (sometimes more when it’s report time or there is extra work I need to do for my subject lead role (that you get no choice over doing)).
4 hrs
An average week is just under 43 hrs a week.

This is why they’re having to bribe graduates with £31k to train to be teachers. What with rising behavioural challenges, no budget, a thousand and one teaching initiatives and entitled parents, how anyone stays in the profession is a miracle.

At DH's (secondary) school they get both a free lunch and paid (I think £16 an hour) for lunchtime duties - I had always thought that this was standard/legally required. I shall be more grateful the next time I'm eating the takeaway that we joke we buy with his 'lunch money' each month!

The school he works at is a more generous employer than most schools in various ways. Leaving aside the obvious benefits of having generally happy staff, I honestly think the money that it costs probably saves itself by the fact they do so little recruitment compared to other schools of the same size - they have an incredibly low staff turnover.

You are correct. I began teaching in 1981 and we did refuse to supervise lunchtimes - our unions advised us to leave the building.

It was then agreed that teachers cannot be required to do lunch duties. Heads and deputise on different conditions of service.

YABU to refer misleadingly to a 'lunch hour'. I don't know a single school, primary or secondary, with a full hour for lunch, especially since the 32.5 hour minimum week expectation was brought in. In some secondary schools it is as short as 35 minutes.

That's a proper Headteacher! Mine was NOT like that.

She would sit in her office all morning (and could be heard chatting and gossiping to the office staff) then, 5 mins before assembly at 10 am, when she was supposed to take the lead, would send a little notey round to the teachers asking them if they could possibly lead assembly for the whole school since she was 'a bit tied up with something'.

Translation: I've wasted the whole morning now and need to crack on...would you mind getting up in front of 400 kids and making a complete monkey of yourself, with 4 and a half mins to think of a subject for the assembly? Oh, and then I'll criticise you for it afterwards.

Thanks!

No way. I took great pleasure in replying at the bottom of her note: I'm sorry, Hildegarde, but I can't do that at such short notice. I would have been happy to do so if asked even yesterday.

It's the intensity!

Other things you can't do as a teacher:

• take 2 mins to stare out of the window while thinking about a task or problem.
• say 'please bear with me while I....'. Good luck with that with a class of kids! 😀
• swear or say anything even remotely 'adult' when under pressure
• sit down
• wear nice clothes
• feel valued by, well, anyone really!

When I worked in primary my headteacher used to supervise lunch break herself with the lunchtime supervisors. She then took her break when we were all back in class. She was awesome and it was a happy school.

As part of the School Teachers Pay and Conditions Document, lunch supervision does not fall under directed time so teaching staff cannot be forced to do it. Voluntary arrangements can be made such as offering a free lunch to those who do lunchtime supervision. Teaching staff on the leadership pay scale are exempt from the directed hours limit so can be expected to supervise pupils' lunch time.

That doesn't mean that teachers don't work during their "lunch break" as most teaching staff will use the time for marking/preparation etc that falls under the 'reasonable additional hours’ to fulfil their professional responsibilities' part of their contract, although they are not obligated to use lunch time for that. All teachers are entitled to a lunch break of a 'reasonable length'. Academies do not have to adhere to the STPCD, although the ones that I have worked for have done.

I work in a small primary school and due to budget cuts and the number of high-needs children requiring 1:1 supervision, lunch times can be very challenging. I have often stepped in when we have been short-staffed but after a while it starts to become an expectation rather than an occasional helping hand. It can be galling when the members of staff at my school who are on the leadership pay scale and therefore should be the ones to help out with lunch supervision then sit in their offices with the door shut.

This isn’t an ‘employer’ problem, it’s a problem of teachers not standing up for themselves and allowing themselves to be walked all over!
The STPCD is very precise about what teachers can and cannot be expected to do. As a teacher of 30+ years, I’ve learned how to ensure I am treated fairly and within the employment laws / STPCD regulations. It’s not difficult.
Teachers can be expected to do some supervision over lunch time as long as it’s part of their directed time and they still receive the minimum legal requirement of 30 minutes break. So if the children get 60 minutes lunch break, a teacher can be allocated 30 minutes for their own break and 30 minutes from their directed hours allocation of 1265 hours over 195 days. In our school we have 1 hour per week of our directed time allocated to an after school club - some teachers prefer to do 2 lunchtime clubs instead and that’s ok.

In my experience (40 years secondary teaching,Union Rep for 20 years), SLT/ Headteachers are dreadful for setting up systems which rely on classroom teachers covering outside their directed time. Frequently they set up rotas of "duties" with no thought as to whether this means staff have access to food/ drinks/toilets in reasonable time.
( Possibly because they do not teach as many lessons and can view their own non contact time more flexibly)
They also seem totally ignorant of Employment Law such as Working Hours Regulations 1996
Most teachers work more than 6 hours a day so regardless of whether the school is under the more generous Burgundy Book conditions or some other Academy Chain terms and conditions, no teacher should have a day where they don't have an uninterrupted break of at least 20 mins( and this must be during the day,not at the begining or end)
So, if as a teacher your lunch break and your mid morning break are both being taken on the same day and you have no other non contact time that day then this is an illegal breech of employment law.
The trouble with schools is that there is an atmosphere that if managers can get one person to " volunteer" for an extra duty or supervision, it can be used as a lever to tell other people they " have " to do it.
A good on-site union rep should negotiate a directed time budget every year and issue it to staff. If you are a small school, with no on-site Rep the rules still apply, you can still be a member of a union and you can call in a Regional Rep over working conditions if you need to.
Employers can't say they won't comply with the Regulations just because they " don't believe in Unions". That applies to other industries too.

So what your are saying is you can only eat at a regular and normal meal time, the horror! You do realise shift workers have massively higher rates of diabetes and cancer because they can't eat at regular times.