Local schools shutting at lunchtime on Friday? And what do I do about childcare?

[WhiteWavingCat]

Is this common?

Seems the schools here are starting between 5 and 10 minutes earlier. Then the primary schools have cut lunch by 5 minutes and have no lunch break on Friday to then close at 1pm on Fridays. High School has cut morning break completely and lengthened lunchtime by 5 minutes (gone from 40 mins to 45 mins) but is still shutting at 1pm on Friday with no lunch break.
All bar one of these schools (6 in total) are academies, the none academy is religious and run by a local religious group.

Is this normal? And am IBU to think it’s ridiculous? Not just because it saves costs (I assume no meals on Fridays saves £££s) but the missed education. And what about the families who rely on Free School Meals? What happens to those children on Fridays?

Also we live in a town with several rural villages around who bus the children to schools in our town, surely the very young children (8 years and younger) can’t be left alone?

This actually worries me as I am single parent and my DD starts school in September. Her school only runs After School Club on Tuesday and Wednesday as it is, and my working days are Wednesday – Friday, I cannot change this as it works around her dad. But what the hell do I do with her on Fridays when I have no help? Her dad has her EOW Sat morn – Sun teatime but works 2-10pm Fridays, she’s currently at Nursery until 4.30pm Friday but they have all their spaces filled from September (which is understandable) and don’t run an after school club. Her dad will be having her Thursdays after school and her gps on her dads side will have her if she's ill and neither of us can but they're emergencies only.

My work cannot change my hours as I’ve had to change them this year once already. What the hell do I do? I have family nearby but they’re not reliable so I am literally stuck with giving up work or trying to find a job that will let me leave early Fridays which I don't want to do as I love my job and it saves my sanity at times

@fedup21: what was the role in this case? I have no idea about this example, but I do think there are probably some school roles done by teachers that could be done perfectly well by appropriately qualified/experienced support staff. After all, it's not that long ago that all exam invigilation was done by teachers.

The cutting hours example is also interesting (in the link posted by @Piggywaspushed. I'd have thought 25 hours a week of teaching time at secondary is about normal (it's what I had in the 70s), so pointing out to a school that they could save money if they reduced from over 31 hours a week to something nearer 25 doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Similarly, paying all school administration staff to work 52 weeks a year doesn't sound very sensible. Some roles need to be done all year round, but not all.

I'm not suggesting that many schools are not struggling financially, but I also think some need to think more carefully about how they spend their budgets. There was a thread recently about waste in the NHS and I think schools are similar.

I have a friend who is a primary school business manager and who has some real horror stories about the waste she found when she started in her role. She initially faced a lot of resistance from the teachers who made comments about her not understanding that you couldn't run a school like a business (she had previously worked in the private sector not related to education). Nevertheless, they came round when they they realised that eliminating the waste resulted in increased budgets for educational resources.

Similarly, paying all school administration staff to work 52 weeks a year doesn't sound very sensible. Some roles need to be done all year round, but not all.

If you don’t pay admin staff not to work all year round, their pay may drop so low that they cannot sustain working there. Same with TAs whose hours have been cut from 27 hours to 20 (oh, we don’t need you to work from 8.30-3.30 now etc). Hiring kitchen staff to work just for a couple of hours in the middle of the day is also proving impossible at the moment. People need a certain number of hours to qualify for UC top ups and that just isn’t enough. Our head is often to be seen serving dinners this year.

I also find the 'school isn't childcare' mantra so beloved on MN deeply tiresome. No, it's not, but it would be good if schools could stop functioning as though it's still the 1950s and there's always a parent at home.

School and work are a very very unhappy marriage. No wonder there are so many unemployed and under-employed parents.

Both of these are the case regardless of funding.

People will obviously have different circumstances, but most people I know who work in admin or TA roles in schools are women with school age children who do not want to work during school holidays.

But the 'business hours' model is one actually boasted about by the Tory government's beloved academies and free schools, ironically. And I do happen to know that cutting hours by creative use of PPA in primaries was also recommended in that report.

The 52 week contract thing recognises that a) people like their pay spread across 12 months , rather crucially and b) many admin staff (eg exams officers and data managers) do some of their most crucial work outside of term time.

Piggy, I agree that some admin staff do lots of important work out of school terms, but some don't, eg receptionists. I'm not suggesting it should be one size fits all.

On the pay point, I used to work term time only when my children were young and had the option of getting paid for what I did each month, or getting 12 equal payments. You will not be surprised to hear that I chose the latter. Perhaps schools don't offer that choice but if they dont, there's no reason in principle why they couldn't.

I think we are also forgetting about small rural schools, some as tiny as 20 - 30 pupils. The 'receptionist' is also the business manager, TA, first aider, H&S officer, sometimes TA and often the midday supervisor. Not all of their work stops in the school holidays.

In addition, these jobs are combined because rural schools struggle to find staff; not worth traveling for 7 hours a week TA job or similar hours for the MSA. A local school advertised for a TA ( 8 hours per week) and didn't have a single applicant.

Budgets will just never stack up in small schools. Even with shared HT's there is only so much that can be cut. A 30 place school may have two teachers and a shared HT. Income through pupil numbers is never going to match the outgoings, no matter how much cost cutting is in place. The only other change would be one class, age range 4-11, but given the huge requirements of OFSTED quality of education, leadership by subject leaders across the whole curriculum, breadth and depth, progress, etc it is going to struggle.

I used to work term time only when my children were young and had the option of getting paid for what I did each month, or getting 12 equal payments. You will not be surprised to hear that I chose the latter. Perhaps schools don't offer that choice but if they dont, there's no reason in principle why they couldn't

When I first started working in schools we were offered the choice of being paid each month in term time or spread equally. I just took mine spread equally, but several staff took it term time, especially those that were single parents. During the summer they could claim other benefits as they were unpaid, and often in support roles you were only 90% guaranteed to be going back after the summer depending on budgets.

LA’s then stopped that choice and decided you could only have it spread over 12 months as it was “easier”. Coincidentally it meant people weren’t entitled to extra housing benefit and the likes in the summer as they had an income so saved the same LA’s money (tax credits weren’t affected as they were annual but any benefit that took a monthly income was taken out of reach of the person even though their income wasn’t for that month).

Perhaps the Department for Ed could be finding out why academy chain CEOs etc need such enormous salaries.

Academy chains are right at the top of the list of England’s most gender-unequal employers - basically because the men, at the business-management-end, cream off hundreds of thousands for themselves. Then everyone wonders how to trim the hours of teachers and support staff....it’s a school, not a business. Duh.

I agree. But it is the d of E who want the academy chains and want them run by 'business brains' who will not take on this responsibility without fat cat salaries. It's a clear move up for a head who is sharp elbowed and motivated by power and pay, rather than education and vocation. Never trust a head/exec principal/whatever in a Jag!

Notably, it's school, business managers who are cited in the article as pinpointing where they think savings could be made and often on MN school business managers - and some governors- come across as knowing very little about the job of work of teaching and even (astonishingly to me) seem rather anti-Teacher!

If "school isn't childcare" why are women expected to work full time once their youngest child starts school?