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

Ffs the teachers aren't going home early!! And they also have to find childcare themselves if this is the scenario at their children's schools

Well according to some on the thread they should suck it up or switch to one of the many Mon - Thu part time jobs or have their husbands / grandparents / friends just collect their kids.

Whole system is a mess and anyone trying to sort it is in for a hard fight.

THis has been the norm in most of scotland for decades.

I loved it when my kids were young.

Children who qualify for free school meals are given a packed lunch by the school to eat in school or take home.

An inadequate maintained school is supposed to be taken out of LA control, not left in its control.

and academised. Perfect government solution to improving outcomes for children.....

Except of course academy trusts want to cherry pick and only work with successful schools. Academy trusts delay taking on schools through the due diligence process. Academy trusts then decide the school isn't financially stable enough ( and unable to continue massive salaries to its CEO) and guess what throughout the two years taken to collect the information and once the academy trust has decided to walk away...the LA continues to maintain the school.

Of course the next step will be, after the 'cherry picking', LA maintained schools underperform against academies...

Interestingly, it is my understanding in Finnish schools (where their educational system seems to be revered in this country) the Primary school equivalent finishes after lunch (they provide compulsory free school meal) and after about age 8 there is no after school care so the children have to make their way home on their own and wait until their parents get home (as the majority of parents work) ie latch key kids

Could you team up with another mum/mums? So she could take your child on a Friday, you either pay to reciprocate another time? Obviously ensure the arrangement is reliable though!

Where I live, all state schools have a half day on a Friday and close at lunchtime. When my DCs( now in their 20s) were at primary school, the children who were entitled to free school meals were given a packed lunch to take home with them.

We've had to start doing this in the school where I teach. We are not getting off early, our PPA time (less than 2 hours) now takes place on a Friday afternoon instead of at another time. As the children have gone home, we don't need cover. So the PPA cover teachers have been made redundant.

In order to ensure the children don't miss out on any teaching time, our head has reduced lunchtime by 15 minutes and moved the morning start time by 15 minutes. So we're actually teaching longer.

But obviously the public see it as our fault as usual. This kind of thing really gets me down.

And yeah, if my dd's school started doing this I'd be as stuck as the rest of you. But some people seem to think I'd deserve it.

Also, our school budget is available for anyone to look at. We have all looked at it, along with our union reps. There is no money. There is no way the head would be able to lie about this. (And why would he? He doesn't want this situation any more than the rest of us!)

Wellmet I assumed it must mean the teachers have to actually teach for longer, as I couldn’t work out how the children didn’t miss out on teaching time.

I am a school governor, there really is very little spare cash, in our school anyway.

There is another thread running about the gender pay gap. This is a perfect example of why. Here we have a mum worried about how she’s going to manage the implications of a reduction in hours. For most working parents, schools are an important part of childcare. Not everyone is going to find a 9.30-2.40 job Monday- Thursday. And if they do, the chances of it being high earning are pretty slim. If the change is sudden, there won’t be the capacity for childcare provision straightaway and lots of people will be totally screwed if they can’t change their hours.

Must be dreadful for teachers only having 13 weeks holiday a year and finishing at 3.30 every day. That must allow them a little time for planning and preparation. And these poor educated academics can only think of swear words to use if they don’t agree.

I do think we need better wrap-around childcare, more flexibility in the workplace and more fathers willing to reduce hours to pick up their kids as well as mothers!!

As a working mother I always found the attitude in school was that mothers were only working in order to selfishly buy themselves fancy handbags. My family always relied on me as the breadwinner. Now I am divorced I am so glad I kept my job going, used childcare and did not pack in my income source to be around at 3.30 every day.

@User8888888 exactly. In the end childcare responsibilities always fall on the mother by default. No wonder there’s a pay gap. Ruth Kelly had the right idea about wrap-around care. I remember teachers being furious at the idea.

We've had this for years, so not just a Tory thing. Not a fan as I don't think adding an extra five minutes here and there compensated for loosing an afternoon's teaching, but in terms of childcare, a lot of parents work 4 days/compressed hours, and childcare providers of out of school childcare adjusted. DC go to afterschool club, just a much longer session on Fridays!

There are over a thousand students at my childrens primary not enough childminders to cope with that sort of demand

I can see that it is tricky for working parents

"no shit! bet you're a teacher! Tricky is a fucking understatement - on what planet are you if you think parents can just change their working hours to suit the schools deciding to shut at lunchtime!"

You think teachers don't have their own children and childcare to facilitate too? I too would have struggled with this when my two were younger.

Notbeingrobbed, when does your teacher training start? It's such a cushy profession and you're so intelligent, I can't imagine you'd do anything else!

NotBeingRobbed

Must be dreadful for teachers only having 13 weeks holiday a year and finishing at 3.30 every day

If you think this is the truth, you're deluded.
If you're saying it to get a rise out of the teachers here, you're an ass clown.

NotBeingRobbed, "Must be dreadful for teachers only having 13 weeks holiday a year and finishing at 3.30 every day."

You are showing your ignorance there, I'm afraid. Any teacher leaving at 3.30 every day, would soon be facing competency procedures. The children leave the premises at 3.30; the teaching staff then begin the other half of their job, and if they're lucky enough to leave by 5.30, will almost certainly be taking work home to do there as well.

Oh, and the holidays are unpaid. But yes, you carry on spreading your ill-informed shit.

User8888888 - childcare issues are affect male and female parents. School hours do not cause the gender pay gap, society does. And getting a mainly female workforce to work longer and longer hours looking after other people's children for considerably less pay than they could earn in more exploitative careers does not improve the situation. It just creates a society where it doesn't pay to care about anyone other than yourself.

Look at of schools also need to be put money aside to replace fixtures and fittings. My kids primary is having to replace the toilets with their plumbing and everything that goes with that over the summer, as they are basically falling apart.

The holidays are not unpaid! Teachers are paid a monthly salary all year round. Yes, I could be a teacher and certainly have the qualifications to begin teacher training but this is not my vocation.

I remember teachers being furious at the idea.

The only reason teachers might have been "furious" would have been if the idea was suggesting that they staffed the plan. But once it became clear that it was to be staffed by other people, why would teachers have cared?

Must be dreadful for teachers only having 13 weeks holiday a year and finishing at 3.30 every day.

Yes, i must point that out to my teacher friends, who are often in school at 8, never home before 6 and still marking and preparing lessons at 9 or 10 in the evening. My friend who is a deputy head gave up a whole weekend the other year, when the company they'd booked for a residential activity week went bust and the only other one that could accommodate the school was 150 miles away. She had to go and do a risk assessment, because it was somewhere they'd never used before.

She was always still at school for the first few days of the summer holidays, and had to go in for a couple of days, at least, before the start of each term. Half-terms were always spent on marking, admin and prep, they could never go away for half-term.

I wish people would stop trying to perpetuate this myth that teaching f/t is practically a p/t job.

NotBeingRobbed ohdear! Do you not understand that being salaried across 12 months does not mean you are paid for that full 12 months?
Perhaps you should have paid more attention at school.

I don't think it's fair to blame the teachers for this. If anything it's teachers that seem to have the worst trouble with childcare especially when their kids have different school holidays.

Must be dreadful for teachers only having 13 weeks holiday a year and finishing at 3.30 every day. That must allow them a little time for planning and preparation

Teachers are entitled to 10% of teaching time to plan, prepare and assess. Whether this is done on a Wednesday afternoon and the children are taught by someone else or on a Friday afternoon and the school is closed, the teachers will still be entitled to that time.