Last day of term

[tazmaniandevil]

Why on earth does school have to close at 13:45 on the last day of term? What is the purpose of this? Confused!!!!

Doctordonna- if we get into 'my area is worse funded than yours' then the government achieves what it set out to do- weaken and breakdown national support of our children's education and future. The picture Lallypop paints is replicated across London schools.
We are stronger together.

@Maireadplastic you completely misunderstood my post. I don't, as it happens, work in a deprived costal area. It is a fact that there are in a worse state than London schools and struggle to recruit. I actually think all funding should be raised to London levels rather than removed from London schools but never mind.

Okay. Sorry.

I just wish the local secondaries and Primaries would co-ordinate together a bit more. Would really help out alot of single working parents if they finished on the same day so that older teenage siblings can watch the younger ones for a few hours in the afternoon.

We'd have to coordinate with every primary in the county and the prep schools. Not going to happen. Although I would love to break up as early as the preps.

I just wish the local secondaries and Primaries would co-ordinate together a bit more. Would really help out alot of single working parents if they finished on the same day so that older teenage siblings can watch the younger ones for a few hours in the afternoon.

And yet many parents want us to stagger our ends of term/starts of term, so that they can save money on holidays. We really can't win

The emphasis here is LOCAL schools co-ordinating. The suggestion of staggering the holidays would be regional, like in France and other european countries where the holidays are different dates based on REGION.

In my case the schools are right next to each other, but the primary breaks up the day before the secondary - which breaks up at lunchtime. Would have just been useful it they co-ordinated to finish on the same day thats all.

It's really not the school's job to ensure that their pupils can babysit their siblings.

Requesting sunshine you are joking right? I honestly took it as a joke.

Our finished lunch time on 6 July ( we are already back from summer holiday!).

I agree that ending at lunch time is pretty difficult where you work full time as I always have done. They never make it easy.

requestingsunshine

Overall, the main problem with ensuring all schools, Primary and Secondary, in the same REGION, finish on the same day at the same time, is that roads and areas become gridlocked, older children from different schools congregate and in some cases fight or cause problems for High Streets/residents etc.

It is usually worked through with the council and LOCAL schools to ensure that this doesn't happen, for safety reasons and to minimise anti-social behaviour.

I'm afraid sibling childminding services are not top of the priority list.

As far as I'm aware all Scottish councils finish on the same date, within that council I mean. So the primaries and secondaries always close on the same day, though region to region it varies.

I'm sure being a teacher is very stressful. So are many other jobs! But we don't get 6 weeks holiday.

I actually have 12 weeks holiday, have usually left work by 4:30 and I get paid almost double the average wage. Teaching is great, you should join us.

I colour in all day and have more time off than I actually am in work, get paid for playing with happy, well-behaved children, and sometimes I leave work before I actually arrive.

Mittens I am not talking about teachers, all I hear all the time about teachers is "we don't have any control over what happens at school, it is not up to us about term time holidays etc etc" and I'll agree with that I don't I don't disbelieve it.... so why is asking a question about a specific thing in a school that apparently has nothing to do with teachers that they have no control over being taken so personally by teachers. Surely the school makes a decision I don't know why we are even talking about teachers

You've been told quite a few times that there isn't one generic reason, every school will have their own reason. Ask your school.

tazmaniandevil
Because people from the very start of the thread that schools will have their own reasons but here are a wide range of reasons.
You've come back and suggested that you want the 'real' reason and other posters have done the usual why should teachers finish early it's so inconvenient for my childcare/Given they have 6 weeks off I'm not sure why they need another 2 hours as well as other goady comments chatting utter bollocks about our contracts.

You then came back and said you knew this would happen to the thread. As if it's a surprise at all.

People have answered your question multiple times.

This seems to have been done for years- I think it has become a tradition, perhaps to reduce bad behaviour on the last day of term.

YANBU to object to it.

I think only my child's school should finish early so I can miss all the madness on the buses

I also think secondary should finish a bit later than primary to give the little children a chance to get on the buses before the older kids it is really awful. :(

It's a bloody half-day, OP! We all look after our kids that half day or else pay someone to do it. Including the teacher and head teacher parents.

@tazmaniandevil, I'm simply guessing why your post clearly wound up some of the teachers on mumsnet. (I'm not a teacher and I'm a SAHM so I have no axe to grind here. It makes no difference to me personally what time of day school finishes.)

I think teachers get defensive because they are the ones that hear the complaints from parents about what time school will finish, as they are the ones that the parents see every day. And they are probably sick of seeing posts about teachers' long holidays.

Also, threads develop in ways that the OP hasn't intended, it's what tends to happen when a lot of people have something to say.

Hi Taz

My school actually broke up two weeks ago. I'm into my third week of holiday here, and feeling very relaxed. I've done no school work at all, and have put an 'out of office' notification on my work email. I'm not looking forward to this weekend though, as everywhere will be overrun with bloody kids from then on.

My school owns you body and soul during term time, but the holidays are great.

Have a lovely summer!

My son's school broke up at midday last Tuesday, so by midnight we were in Mallorca :-)

Try working in a call centre and getting shouted and sworn at by every customer. Not very good wage, shit holidays then winge about all the holidays you take as you need them. Sorry no sympathy here with teachers holidays needed or otherwise.

Try working in a call centre and getting shouted and sworn at by every customer.

I did, now I'm a teacher.

Sometimes I long for the days when I could just walk away from the job at the end of the day. Not having to work from home late into the evening. Spend my weekends shopping for school stuff. Not spending my own money on the stuff I need to do my job.
I'm not complaining, I know how utterly soul destroying call centre work is, I'm just saying that the grass isn't always greener.