Govt extending school day by a few minutes in ignorance of how schools work

[noblegiraffe]

The government have decided to mandate a minimum 32.5 hour week for schools - the equivalent of being open from 8:45 to 3:15

This is not a specified teaching time, but opening time. Schools who are under will have to find ways to tack extra time onto the teaching day, perhaps by making lunchtime longer or adding an extra break. A school that has, for example, 20 minutes form time, 5 hours of lessons, 20 minutes of break and 40 minutes of lunch is not open long enough. One that has the same arrangement but 50 minutes lunch is fine.

Why? Fuck knows. What they have once again completely failed to do is consult schools about why their opening hours are as they are. Schools in my area, for example, have finely co-ordinated finishing times to avoid massive congestion. Schools who are under would have to consider opening earlier which will mess up buses, and screw those with childcare commitments. It's going to be logistically challenging to arrange, but of course, it won't be the DfE doing it.

schoolsweek.co.uk/schools-asked-to-offer-32-5-hour-week-by-2023-and-ofsted-will-check/

5% of state schools will be a much bigger number than 17% of independent schools...

It actually shows you how restrictive the intake is for private school teachers!

(ex state school teacher who is an oxbridge graduate..)

Ahhhhh...but helps the new guy justify his job and pay if he brings in boll* that isn't going to make a blind bit of difference to Jonny's grasp of the curriculum....crack down on parents sabotaging their own entitled and spoilt kids development by the insistence Johnny be spoon fed everything because you can't possibly expect him to think for himself let alone start a sentence with a capital letter and finish it with a full stop even though he is nearly 10 and apparently 'ready' for secondary school and certainly not without a fleet of backstabbing emails to all and sundry in the hope you can get rid of said teacher who dare ask for such nonsense while simultaneously blaming said teacher when Johnny falls short.A teacher....Me?..Couldn't say....as you were....

@TizerorFizz That doesn't say the Oxbridge grads are better teachers .

Unless you think that independent schools and grammar schools intakes are in any way comparable?

Oxbridge draws a higher % of students from private education than would be representative of the total number among available students.

People stick with what they know, chickens come home to roost, it stands to reason that private school alumni would end up teaching at private schools. Doesn't mean they're better or that the schools are better, it's just a perpetuation of all the old, bad divisions. It's good to see there are exceptions.

@OutlookStalking

5% of state schools will be a much bigger number than 17% of independent schools...

Back of an envelope: 13,000 teaching in independents, 25,600 in state schools.

So roughly two thirds of Oxbridge graduates who are teachers, teach in state schools.

Why the obsession with Oxbridge teachers? I’m an oxbridge grad who once worked as a teacher (in my twenties), in a private school. I wouldn’t have had a clue how to teach effectively in a large classroom, although thinking about it quite a few expensive boarding schools were willing to employ me. I had the advantage of going to a state school for half my education as well.

I’d have more of an idea now but that’s because I have spent years working with a far wider range of people and needs. I also have a much better understanding now of the issues some children are dealing with and the benefit of my own children who aren’t goody two shoes swots like me and have never been remotely motivated by academic work.

This pretence by the government that the bootcamp academies it so favours are in any way comparable to a private school is just laughable. I am so pleased my pretty-well-behaved-at-school- children are just about at the end of their education (just one with one year left to go). God knows what a horror show school is now for anyone who struggles to regulate.