3 or 4 day school week

[Juil]

I saw in the papers discussion of schools potentially having to cut their weeks to 3 or 4 days because of funding problems. I'm just wondering how this could work, how they could possibly deliver the curriculum?

I'm also wondering what happens if a school just can't safely staff the number of pupils on its budget? Can it cut its pupil numbers? Or just close?

www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/school-energy-costs-pay-increase-shorter-week-b2145109.html?amp

Some are already having a four and a half day week so that all the staff can have their PPA on the same afternoon.

I imagine the timetables will be adjusted so that the days are longer with less breaks.

Already a thread here: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4611841-schools-3-day-a-week

Feel free to join in

Another thread on this already but its just scaremongering. Kida hope schools do threaten it though to encourage decent or at least adequate government funding. Hell even 'just scraping the barrel' funding would be better than what schools are dealing with atm.

Thanks @Amrapaali

I thought schools had to cover so many annualised hours. I can see after school clubs like sport and drama being closed. Many schools have already lost those. I can see schools having to fall back on older out of favour teaching methods that are less labour intensive for some lessons. I can also see some t/a's loosing their jobs as budgets won't stretch to them. In secondary as more experienced teachers leave or retire they will be replaced by NQT's or those with 1 year experience as much cheaper and on fixed term 1 year contract so they can get another new recruit the following year to keep cost down. Many schools including my son's secondary just did not get cover in if staff off for long term like an operation with 12 week recovery time. They just put a t/a in front of them and work sheets or YouTube lesson. I don't think schools would get away with closing schools 2 days a week though as parents need to work.

If things got this bad, ‘covering the curriculum’ won’t really be the priority here-this is desperate stuff. Fingers crossed the government realise how bad things are and either release significantly more money into schools or allow them to run deficit budgets. Strike action is coming anyway in the autumn so they will be very aware of the issues.

I can see schools having to fall back on older out of favour teaching methods that are less labour intensive for some lessons.

Can you give an example of what you mean by this? I'm just interesting in how energy could be saved via different teaching styles?

I would assume that means the students are talked at and they take notes. Instead of engaged with, if the students don't understand that is their problem.
Not good teaching standards

@TheThreeHeadedBeast do you mean if a class is taught by a TA or cover supervisor?

I'm just not sure about the link being made between more old fashioned methods and saving money?

I would assume that means the students are talked at and they take notes. Instead of engaged with

I don’t get the ‘money saving’ element here either. Either a teacher teachers by ‘chalk and talk’ or uses a more discussion-based lesson style, it’s still one teacher: 30 kids.

It’s not chalk and talk though.

Its an interactive whiteboard probably with a PowerPoint from a computer and a projector. Maybe some photocopied worksheets. All needing electricity.

Much cheaper to have chalk and a blackboard.

I was thinking, if you talk at the students, there is no engagement and so can have 60, 70 or more in a class at a time

I can’t see this working except perhaps with much older children.

60 Year 1 children for much longer than an assembly would be carnage!

Presumably he needs to cut the legal no of teaching hours and up class sizes in order to do much like this.

But you can't fit 60 or 70 students into a classroom?

TA numbers will almost certainly be cut. Then Ofsted will complain that children who are falling behind don't have any catch-up interventions.

The real problem is that things that can be cut have already been cut over the past decade of underfunding, plus things that shouldn’t be cut.

Now we’re at the point of having to cut things you’d think couldn’t be cut.

everything is going to have to be cut if more funding isn’t announced. Librarians, counselling, extra curriculars, revision classes, subjects with a small take up, quality cover, catch up interventions, experienced staff, office staff, TAs, building projects, equipment, cpd ……

plus there is a crisis looming for recruitment of support staff and the teachers pay increase was both unaffordable and too low meaning teacher retention (which is already tough) is going to get worse.

cutting money from schools hits the poorest the hardest, its no good cutting taxes to give people their own money if you cripple public services like education.

Completely agree with @noblegiraffe

We don’t have any TAs left to cut-the only ones we have are funded by EHC Plan funding and allocated to specific children.

In my school, I’m guessing it will be senco time or bullying out older teachers to get cheaper ECTs. If the ECT salary is going up though, that’s not even the saving it used to be.

Before we reduce teaching hours we will make more support staff redundant (we already made all our midday supervisors and some TAs redundant as well as not replacing the cleaning staff, two TAs and two teachers we lost through retirement / moving). We already have some classes taught by non qualified teachers (higher level TAs) and we would probably be looking at mixing some year groups so instead of R, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 (7 classes) we could maybe mix it to make just five classes….. My (paid) hours will probably be cut even more. More and more work done on individual whiteboards and less and less in (expensive) exercise books. Less and less resources for the children to use.

basically, the teachers pay rise (which is NOT a bad thing in itself) is actually a cut in the childrens education.

I'm just wondering how this could work,
I don't live in the UK and my Dc effectively have a 4 day week as they have every Wed and Friday afternoon free. Each school can set their own hours though, so many do a 4.5 day week but start later in the day. Within our school, each class has different hours e.g. Yr 1 has fewer lessons than Yr 6. There's no lunch provision and Dc are expected to go home for lunch so there's a long lunch break of 12-1345.

Wow, well I just saw #teachertwitter was trending so I had a look, and it’s full of US teachers posting frantically trying to get people to buy classroom equipment from their Amazon wish lists for them.

Like this thread twitter.com/bagm1012/status/1559147669439873024?s=21&t=YPnTlOvm8-SkcMw35yL7Jg

Perhaps that’s where we’re headed, teachers having to beg.

Wouldn’t be enoughm unless we could put a senco and a head of english on the list

I teach in Wales so things may be different but I had no idea this was even an idea! Must be just an England thing as it has not been mooted in Wales ( I know education is devolved obviously.)