Or is 30 minutes too short for school lunch?

Thats a long day but it must help parents getting to work too.

The UK is reported to have lowest happiness/ satisfaction with life rates in Europe.

Phones take the brunt of the blame. But I can't help feel thats only a small part of it. There has to be a bigger picture. But anything else will cost money to fix.
Lack of investment, lack of quality jobs for people, and the resulting lack of hope.

And you've added to my list lack of play time. Lack of freedom. I'm amazed from this thread that some secondaries don't allow pupils to leave school at lunchtime.

8:30-16:00/17:00 depending on their timetable. There are sometimes gaps in the timetable too which isn't ideal but at least means they can get some homework done.

That sounds like bliss for staff too giving them time to do stuff.
What time does school start and finish in France?
The UK is generally 9.00-3.00

100% agree with this.

Why have we become so scared of our children becoming bored? If they are getting into trouble then that's a separate issue to do with their behaviour. At my son's school in France they have a two hour lunch break as standard. The children are handed over to the lunchtime staff at 12 until 13:55 so the teachers also get a proper break. They go to the canteen in waves and when they aren't in the canteen they are either in the playground (with supervision), library or free time area playing board games, chess etc. Some children eat at home but otherwise they have to get almost 900 students fed in that time. It's the same format in primary school too. My son is 11 and plays tag and hide and seek with his friends or they chat or he reads. Once a week he has choir during the lunch break. Honestly, school isn't just about teaching them to pass exams, it's an education in socialising, eating together and how to conduct yourself through life. The lunch break up an important part of that and the lunchtime staff are really important people to help them learn these skills by correcting manners, resolving playground conflict but otherwise they just leave them to it and let them get a bit bored so they develop some independence and cultivate their own interests.

Yes thats what I mean, how would it work for teachers taking different year groups?

I think timetabling a secondary school must be a complete nightmare at the best of times without adding in different year groups having different breaks and making sure the teachers also get breaks.

That depends how the school does things. I know where my niece works she has certain years she works with (currently Y10: and Y11) so technically the teachers would have lunch at the same time as the children but I don't know what happens if they work with different years with different breaks.

1 hour 45 mins at my child's school (plus a 20/30 min morning break) I get 30 mins at work if I am lucky!

I went to school in the 80s. We had a 90 minute lunch break, which was great. We did sports and other clubs at lunchtime, and did homework in the library. The school day started at about 8.20, and we left at about 3.45. Sometimes we did other clubs after school.

My children barely have time to buy lunch as they only get 30 minutes, and lunches aren’t staggered so the queues are huge.

I like the 30 minute idea. We had 1 hour 10 mins when I was at secondary school. It was far too long. Always fights.

Lots of schools probably find staggering lunch breaks quiet a hard thing to do keeping in mind the teachers need a break too.

Its easy to say half the school get lunch at 12 the other half at 1 but how do you make sure teachers also get time for lunch?

Timetables for a school seem like a dark art to me in the first place making it more complicated sounds like a nightmare

But a lot of them don’t have adequate facilities. So surely it’s easier to give 10 mins extra at lunch than build extra canteens and toilet blocks?

That’s a slight different issue to the length of the lunch break. You are absolutely right that’s not OK (assuming not faffing around and taking ages)

30 minutes should be enough to do those things if school has adequate facilities and staggers lunches properly. If they don’t and people don’t have time to eat then they need to look again.

There is keeping them busy and stressing them out.
Some kids must need down time.

Society wonders why so many young people have MH issues and anxiety yet.
They moan about them being fat and no exercise.
Yet we encourage short lunch breaks little time to que and eat never mind walk a bit further to the nearest Greggs.
Little time to socialise and even less time to do any clubs or anything.

But we'll just blame mobile phones for everything.
Someone needs to look at the big picture

Some of them don’t have time to queue for food, eat it and also queue for the toilet. They have to choose between eating and peeing. How is that healthy?

If large numbers of children are allowed to get bored thy get into trouble. Far better to keep things moving and keep them busy.

Yes, 30 minutes is much too short, in my opinion.

I used to work in school admin and had my lunches in the school dining room. I was shocked by how little time the pupils and teachers had to eat their lunches. It was a particularly short time on match days when the teams were playing away matches. The sports teachers and the school teams had barely 10 "minutes to wolf down a lunch, before rushing out to the school minibuses to travel to the match venue. I remember thinking they would all get terrible indigestion.

When I was at school, in the 1960s and 1970s, we used to have a long lunch break of about 1.5 hours. That allowed time to eat a meal and then go outside to play or socialise afterwards.

It seems to be if s school is doing well, they can keep the shorter hours. If its struggling they had to extend.

Its a bit strange... why not have minimum contact lesson time?

didn’t even have a clue there were set hours.

There weren't. There still aren't really-it's still not been made mandatory, I don't think, but it was DUE to be, so lots of schools changed ready for it.

Why less time for staff? I’ve never ever known this. Staff aren’t supposed to do duty apart from morning break by the way.

Every school I’ve ever worked in has one hour lunch for children and half an hour for staff

My daughter’s primary school had to change their time last year because they weren’t open enough. I didn’t even have a clue there were set hours.

There is also a cost. How much do schools save by 30min less heating and lightning a day?

The shorter lunch period has led to the earlier finishes which is what the government have been complaining about over the last few years and insisting the school day should be 32.5 hours (which sometimes it wasn't with a shorter lunch/earlier finish).

I’m 51. Back when I went to secondary School (late 80s) we started at 8.20, had two 20 minute breaks during the day and school finished at 2:20pm. It’s not a new thing.

its partly about behaviour management and making sure the kids are occupied so they don’t start causing trouble.