Straw poll. Have and schools in your area gone part time due to budget?

[StrumpersPlunkett]

And where are you?
I am in Cambridge and a few schools around the one where I work have closed for a half day each week.
Is this happening across the country?

Thanks

No but the variety of subject offered has been reduced especially at A level - class sizes are on the up and newly qualified teachers are on the increase too.

No, not early closure as yet but a few schools have closed down completely or are consulting on closure.

Some have federated to share a Headteacher (3 or 4 schools sharing); some federated schools are putting classes together across more than one school (secondary and primary) losing teachers and paying to move children between the two.
These are maintained schools that are fighting to survive and federation is their only option. More financially viable schools have the option to become an academy, academy trusts don't want small schools with deficit budgets.

A local academy has closed its sixth form and is transporting pupils daily to another school 35 minutes away.
Another school in a Catholic academy trust expects a monthly parental contribution by direct debit another has asked every parent to purchase their child an iPad.

Two small secondary schools have a combined debt of over a million pounds with no surplus government money to address this.

Schools are having to cut staff. The local authority is also cutting staff who are employed to support improvement in schools as the budget from central government has been cut.

One in three of our schools have a deficit budget, set to rise to one in two by 2020.

This isn't just about a few glue sticks this is an education system in crisis.

This isn't just about a few glue sticks this is an education system in crisis. Absolutely but we keep voting in a tory gov who prefer to keep taxes low than support public services.

Yes. Northamptonshire five local schools are cutting half an hour from the end of the day. Means secondary will end at the same time as primary and will cause traffic chaos.

West coast Scotland, ds's school has always finished 3:35 mon-wed and 2:45 thu-fri. 15min morning interval and 40mins for lunch. A slightly shorter day towards the end of the week works well for ds.

Haven't heard of any plans for shorter days yet.

This isn't just about a few glue sticks this is an education system in crisis

I recognise that. It was me who mentioned glue sticks in the first place because that sort of small outward thing is what is most noticeable to parents where I am, but I'm sure that the staff within the schools notice a lot more but it is hidden from parents.

Most primaries here finish at 2pm for the first three years anyway, so there is really nowhere to go if they want to shorten the day. Lunchtime is only half an hour, about 15 mins to eat and 15 mins to play, and breaktime is 10 minutes.

Our schools definitely are in crisis and in NI we don't even have a government. That's how much our elected representatives care about the education system. It makes my blood boil.

DC's high school closes at 2pm one day a week, the primary is normal hours at the moment.

nationalanthem

This isn't just about a few glue sticks this is an education system in crisis. Absolutely but we keep voting in a tory gov who prefer to keep taxes low than support public services

Couldn't agree more!

However, previously when funding affected schools and their staff ( pay/terms) no one ever listened or supported us. ( response was always 'too many holidays) now I feel that tide is turning. This is affecting parents and children, quality of education, distance to schools, local communities. Parents are starting to,listen, starting to feel the impact and just may start to voice their dis- satisfaction.

I'm not in the U.K. my primary aged DC have school
Monday 815-1145, 1330-1505 for the younger, 1600 for the eldest.
Tues & Thursday 815-1145, 1330-1505 both
Wed & Fri 815-1145 both
Next year youngest will the same as eldest this year and eldest will start at 720 twice a week.

Children go home for lunch.
After school club, lunch and before school club is only open on Mon, Tues and Thurs and you have to sign up in April for the following school year. No changes until the next school year.

Legally, the teachers are allowed to set a max. of 30 minutes of homework a week (45 for eldest next year) and it can't be set over the weekend, bank holidays, holidays or inset days.

We only have to provide folders, although every now and again they send out a request for specific craft things like buttons, egg boxes or yoghurt pots.

Our school use an online payment system and that can be set up to ask for donations for things like science activities etc. That works well and only the finance department know who donates.

We haven’t seen reduced days yet, but for the current school year our school has had three classes reduced to two overfull mixed year classes. It has had an effect on the children - not all bad for those in the lower year in each class, some of whom can benefit from the higher level work, crap for brighter kids in the higher year group in each class who aren’t getting taught to their level for a full school day. We’ve yet to be told if they plan to teach each year separately again come September.

Cambridgeshire has amongst the worst funding and was the worst for years. Legacy issues are catching up with us.

Anyone got a real idea of how to fix it?
The candidates who say that will raise taxes rarely get into power.
The candidates who say they will cut taxes entice people who want a little more in their pockets.

What level of tax increase will solve the massive chasm in our public services?

There is no centre ground for people to come together on - the main political parties are pandering to the extremes, maybe the Lib Dems under Jo Swinson call pull it back - seems unlikely. As I said earlier our school are cutting back on subjects offers, replacing senior staff with NQTs and cutting back on TAs all this is happening on the QT, stiff upper lip and all that - most parents are not consciously aware of it - publicly they are happily feeling smug that their kids attend a outstanding comp with amazing results but privately they are paying out thousands to private tutors because the teachers are not enough - Maths (the Maths dept really struggle to recruit good teachers) alone at our school 50% of the kids are being tutored...the teacher asked for a show of hands - so they are still getting excellent results. The local facebook group is awash with pleas for tutors.

That is so right
A primary I know (not the one where I work) had 80% of the yr 6’s with a sats tutor.
The results look great for the school but the teaching is shocking.

Its not really to do with tax.
Austerity is an ideology not an economic policy. It's never been seen to work, it shrinks economies and causes more inequality, which in itself causes more problems.
The torys are on a complete bender of small state ideology (think tea party in the states), that's partly what Brexit is about.
We need to decide if we want a properly educated population or not , and then fund education accordingly. It's not difficult.

The sats factories will change though as Ofsted have rigged how bad it is.
Having just gone through Ofsted last week with my Gov hat on, they were really hot on a broad based curriculum.

However, previously when funding affected schools and their staff ( pay/terms) no one ever listened or supported us. ( response was always 'too many holidays) now I feel that tide is turning.

It was a massive issue during the last general election, some say it was key in losing Theresa May her majority. Then after the election, very little happened. Brexit dominated, a lot of the Department for Education were seconded to No-Deal Brexit planning (Damian Hinds was only ever on TV talking about Brexit).
And on MN, threads about school funding that had been getting hundreds of posts started to get hardly any.

South Cambridgeshire represent :-/

We haven't gone to a shorter day...yet. But it's definitely coming. We absolutely aren't prepared to cut experienced teaching staff and will do everything to avoid that. There's more places than pupils so if you are a small school that isn't filled by your catchment pupils you need to attract extra pupils.

Asking parents for money is pointless. It might pay for a few glue sticks but we need salary level funding, which we can't get from parents, and we can't reply on parental donations as a funding stream to pay for salaries.

They have worked a 4.5 days week in Edinburgh for some time (decades?) now and it works there

Decades. I'm mid-40s and it was happening in schools from at least 1984.

It's important to point out that certainly in Edinburgh we were not losing any classroom time as pupils. Rather than starting at 9, we started at 8.40. Finished at 3.20 rather than 3. 40 minutes extra a day over 4 days, plus 20 minutes extra on a Friday meant we'd built up enough time to finish at lunchtime on a Friday.

These changes were nothing to do with cutting costs back in the 80s. The law

Also if we were two or three miles away in Herts or Essex we'd be hundreds of pounds a pupil per year better off.

Agree Jaffa Cake - sadly having an SG postcode doesn't mean SG funding

We could save quite a bit of money and stress by getting rid of GCSEs and just having one set of final exams when the kids are 18 - afterall that is school leaving age now. The final exams could include vocational subjects and different levels of learning.

I'm in Belgium and the school where I am have a half day on Wednesday. You also provide all the exercise books and paper etc required by your child, all the way through school....and some of the text or work books as well I think.

There is no May half term, and school finishes for the summer on 30th June, restarts 01 September.

I'm 29, from Edinburgh, and schools always had an early finish on a Friday. The primary schools finished at 12:30 and secondary at 12pm, so I was able to pick up my younger brother on my way home as he got out later than me.

We finished later on the other days though - almost 4pm.