Term-Time Absence/Ad Hoc School Closure?

It may not be Inset but it is a planned closure. No-one is "missing school" that day.
This ^^
It'll be in the school calendar.

I'm not sure what it has to so with a parent want to take their child out for a few days during term time though.

Weird. The school I work at and the school my kids go to bothbhve 2 hour afternoons so 2.5 hours really isn't that crazy

@Jamiller. It may not be Inset but it is a planned closure. No-one is "missing school" that day.

Our open days are always followed by an inset day. (2 per year)
We only have 1 hour lesson after lunch (but have a late long from 1.10-2.25) followed by form, so last lesson is 2.34-3.35.
Assume they set up after that - I think Open days start at 6.30ish..

And we don't close before open evening and there is only a fairly short gap, meaning almost staff are there from 7:30 to gone 8pm which is a long old day if you've been teaching back to back then running tours or open classrooms.

An individual child missing time is different to a whole school closure. This is a fairly petty argument.

The school is responsible for ensuring your child achieves. You taking them out may decrease their chance of success. Therefore, schools will discourage your child missing lessons. If the school is planning a closure, your child isn't missing any lessons (or content). Yes you've only asked for 2 days and your child might have good attendance, but there needs to be consistency.

We have 2.5 hours in the afternoon. Not too popular with the staff I think but we get by. Don’t close early before the open evening though I like the idea!

Schools are required to provide 190 days

It’s worth noting that this does not apply to academies.

Schools are required to provide 190 days (380 sessions) of education. Teachers are paid to work a further 5 for INSET.
The half day closure will be included in that. They will have planned for it and they will probably do the same next year.

It's an entirely separate thing to missing school for events or holidays. You are wrong to get irritable about it. But fwiw take your daughter and don't fret about the unauthorised thing for a one off for something important to your family.

Actually, that is another good point. The school wants many pupils to be present, feeling refreshed and positive. By closing early, they can go home, relax, do homework, whatever. Then come back to school for another 3 hours ready to feel bright and cheerful to the families visiting.
The children wouldn't get enough turn round time either if there was only an hour or two's break.

Half my Y11s are out on Monday on a trip. Because I know they’re on a trip I can plan a lesson that doesn’t involve teaching new content as they’d miss it.

However if only 1 of my Y11s was out because they were on holiday, I would be teaching the new content and they’d miss out.

Our school has 3 half days a year: Open Evening, Christmas and end of Summer term. They close at 1:15 which is the start of lunch. The pupils miss precisely 1 lesson each time.

Open evening is a massive deal. Classrooms are rearranged, displays & activities put out, science experiments arranged. Signposting. parking. Staff are then on duty from about 5pm-9pm. Enough parents and children visiting to fill the hall for talks twice over.

OP. When the staff do their lesson planning for the term/year, they know which of their classes will be hit by open evening, so they plan accordingly. Other times lessons are hit due to random public holidays, or sports day. But it is OK because it is planned in and the whole class is absent. When your child individually isn't there they miss out on whatever was covered, eg demo lesson for food tech, explaining trigonometry, discussing why anti semitism grew in 1930s Germany. These things will not be covered again in the same way. That is why you taking your child out, if very different from the school planning in advance to be closed.

Wow I don't know may schools that have a 2.5 hour afternoon! That would kill me.

YABU though OP it's hardly going to ruin your child's education - but it would be ruined if there were not enough future pupils and the budget was drastically cut

When you went to the open evening for the school, presumably you liked what you saw. Would you have felt the same if the school hadn’t been cleaned, the hall set up with chairs for the head’s speech, the science labs had no practicals set up, the food tech had no food, drama had no examples of acting, no games being played, no maths games.....and so on. It takes ages to set up and clear away. The school has to be ready for the following day, books must be marked, lessons planned, resources sourced. And there are always parents who come at 4 o’clock or 5 o’clock because they can’t come later and parents who arrive at 7.45 because they can’t come earlier.

It’s not a double standard at all. Yours is the double standard for insisting that your child is missing a lesson, whilst removing the child for what is essentially a holiday.

Blimey what kind of hell school has 2 and a half hours of lessons after lunch?

When you say half a day what do you mean? Most schools where I am send the pupils
Home at lunchtime and they therefore miss one hour of lessons. Open evenings here tend to run from 4-7.

It’s likely one hour. They will likely have to set and mark work for that time.
The alternative is exhausted, hungry staff who are desperate for a wee. A school that needs hoovering and bins emptied and without useful displays and info out for prospective parents.
It’s for the good of the school.

I wish we shut early for opening evening. Trying to get all the various practicals set up and ready for hundreds of kids to do take hours. We don't have time to eat, it doesn't finish til 9, then you have to wait for everyone to leave and then pack away all those practicals. Completely exhausting.

My kids' schools always shut early and open late the next day. My ds's sixth form college shuts for 3 days for their two open evenings!

School rules can seem a bit one rule for them, one for us. You'll learn to negotiate them I'm sure.

It’s not double standards, because when a single child misses school they miss lessons that have been taught. When the school is closed, no lessons are taught and the teachers can adjust their Scheme of
Learning to ensure everyone still covers everything.

Schools need to attract new students each year. Their funding depends on impressing students and parents. Having an hour to set up so teachers aren’t exhausted and the school a bit of a mess? No big deal.

So, gallic, if school finishes at 3:30 and open evening starts at 6 (so you have to be in position before then as parents rock up early) you expect teachers to teach a full day’s lessons, then set up for open evening (which takes more than an hour even if you’re not “presenting the school in a false light”), have a briefing, grab a sandwich, then do open evening (which is bloody intense) for a couple of hours?

No, it’s not ridiculous to give teachers time to set up properly and have a break before it kicks off.