School will be closed at lunchtime one day a week from Sept

[Ilovecranberries]

The school (primary) had just informed the parents that they will be closing at lunchtime on one day a week from September to facilitate "planning".
I don't even know what to say. AIBU to think it is ridiculous? I am a single working parent, not sure how I am supposed to work around this. Extra childcare for these 3.5 hours at the local childminders rates will be £56 a week (two children here). Or two grand a year post tax. I probably will be told I am BU (I probably am), just very anxious right now.

Vanilla and your contribution is so good? Yeh right.

Also lastly why since teachers would be impacted too is their empathy so low.

It’s that kind of attitude

@MarshaBradyo

And pondering how closed education is - which means people make sub optimal decisions. You can see it littered throughout.

So you favour the stereotype of teachers never having been outside of education.

So those teachers with children will need to pay for childcare on Friday afternoons I suppose as it is no defence to action against you for not turning up to work just because you have childcare issues.

@MarshaBradyo

No people learn through threads don’t they? And my realisation is tg teachers with these views expressed here don’t make decisions.

I hope that Heads are better but not convinced they are. Given Birmingham etc

Follows timing of thread perfectly.

Still confused why someone thinks a female Head would be better when actually female education posters are just as bad at understanding realities.

But I don't think it is just teachers expressing these ideas. If anything it's the childless people, or those who have forgotten what it's like to worry about childcare who are often the harshest of judges in these situations. With the exception of a few horrible battle-axe teachers that I've worked with, most teachers I know would definitely be fighting the corner of the children because they see firsthand the misery and poverty that many children live in and wouldn't want that to affect these children (or any further children) any more than necessary. You can't judge a whole profession based on a few attitudes on here.

But the fact remains that school funding and the lack of money coming in is heavily contributing to this situation and its only going to get worse.

So you favour the stereotype of teachers never having been outside of education

Nope on the flip side I welcome people who have been outside education and am so relieved to have one as school HT atm.

But this thread has a lot of comments that sound like a closed system. The lack of understanding that removing education hours for children negatively impacts on their family opportunity and therefore their opportunity. And this widens the gap.

Xenia there isn't enough affordable childcare - that's actually the whole point of this thread!

No one has said anything about not turning up to work because of childcare issues. On the contrary, people are talking about how they can continue working while they can't rely on schools being open their usual times, with wraparound care being even more unlikely.

It's a childcare problem that the govt is doing nothing to address. Not about people not turning up to work.

MarshaBradyo education hours in state schools are mandated by the government.

Who are also mandating covid precautions.

All schools are doing is what they're directed to, within the confines of years of inadequate funding.

MarshaBradyo

I think that the "closed" system is prevalent no matter whether you are in education or outside of education.

The key is to have a balance of both in education and be willing enough to find that balance.

@BuffaloCauliflower

It’s not “planning” as you put so incredulously, it’s PPA time that all teachers are legally required to have each week to prepare everything for the next week, which takes a lot of time believe it or not. The half day a week per teacher is usually covered by TAs and support staff but as these TAs aren’t allowed to cross bubbles they have no other way of doing this except to close for that time. They’re not doing it to piss you off and I think many schools will have to use this tactic.

Good explanation, @BuffaloCauliflower

Fripp something is driving these posts, not sure what, but even a teacher who knows it would be difficult for them in same situation will tell the op to sort it out.

It’s not so much when posters acknowledge it’s not the best for students to do this, as it’s not. It’s the trite dismissal of the impact it brings that so many express that is poor.

I’m happier if we can get away from that

Retired secondary SENCo here – have been following since the inception of the thread.
The OP @ilovecranberries came on here to ask, “AIBU to think it is ridiculous?”
Yes – it is absolutely ridiculous and should not be happening.

BUT –
If all of the playing fields were sold off years ago
If all but a couple of your TAs have been made redundant
If you have already ‘managed out’ all of your experienced (upper payscale) teachers and replace them with NQTs
If your class sizes are above 30 already
If your stationary budget is no more (yes – we do buy it ourselves)
If you have lost the revenue from room hire due to the shutdown of yoga classes, adult education, Brownie groups…
If you can’t run the annual summer (fund-raising) fete
If the Government in power has said, “You will be open for all children full time and they need to be taught in bubbles but we won’t be giving you any extra cash”

Where does the Head Teacher find the money for PPA cover?

@rosegoldwatcher

Retired secondary SENCo here – have been following since the inception of the thread. The OP *@ilovecranberries* came on here to ask, “AIBU to think it is ridiculous?” Yes – it is absolutely ridiculous and should not be happening.

BUT –
If all of the playing fields were sold off years ago
If all but a couple of your TAs have been made redundant
If you have already ‘managed out’ all of your experienced (upper payscale) teachers and replace them with NQTs
If your class sizes are above 30 already
If your stationary budget is no more (yes – we do buy it ourselves)
If you have lost the revenue from room hire due to the shutdown of yoga classes, adult education, Brownie groups…
If you can’t run the annual summer (fund-raising) fete
If the Government in power has said, “You will be open for all children full time and they need to be taught in bubbles but we won’t be giving you any extra cash”

Where does the Head Teacher find the money for PPA cover?

Yes...this is the reality of the situation. Schools are being pulled on all sides and trying to do the best for the children and the staff...but something has to give. It's really sad and worrying and frustrating. And it feels like people outside of education aren't really understanding the pure scale of the issue. In my last year of teaching the children were using pencils less than two inches long because the school couldn't afford any more. The children couldn't write properly due to how short they were. We had no art equipment. I couldn't teach them practically about circuits because we had one bulb that barely lit, a single wire and a few completely run down batteries. The laptops were so ancient that they would take my entire lunch break to start up and load onto each child's account...and that was on a good day. I'd often have to have 3 or 4 to a computer which resulted in constant upsets.

The lack of funding is so huge and so serious, and I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall when I'm discussing it in real life. People don't want to hear about it and are not bothered about it until they are directly affected, but even then they're not blaming the right people because it's easier to complain to (and about) their child's school rather than looking at the bigger picture.

@rosegoldwatcher

Retired secondary SENCo here – have been following since the inception of the thread. The OP *@ilovecranberries* came on here to ask, “AIBU to think it is ridiculous?” Yes – it is absolutely ridiculous and should not be happening.

BUT –
If all of the playing fields were sold off years ago
If all but a couple of your TAs have been made redundant
If you have already ‘managed out’ all of your experienced (upper payscale) teachers and replace them with NQTs
If your class sizes are above 30 already
If your stationary budget is no more (yes – we do buy it ourselves)
If you have lost the revenue from room hire due to the shutdown of yoga classes, adult education, Brownie groups…
If you can’t run the annual summer (fund-raising) fete
If the Government in power has said, “You will be open for all children full time and they need to be taught in bubbles but we won’t be giving you any extra cash”

Where does the Head Teacher find the money for PPA cover?

You sound like you’re taking about my school?!

All our budgets are completely stationary, especially the stationery one .

You’re right though-there simply is no give.

Doh! I thought that I had learnt the mnemonic for stationary/stationery! (The stationer sells stationery.)

Sorry - my bad!

our primary did this. It is in essence a money saving tool. Our school offered an after school club for working parents which wasn't too expensive certainly much less than £56 but agree it is crap esp for lone parents.

Well said @VanillaFrais I'm finding this more and more. A lot of people are just not interested in anything that doesn't directly affect them and that's how governments get away with it. Hardly anyone cares about libraries being closed down because they can afford to buy their own books, they don't care that kids can't do their school work through lack of a laptop /broadband because they have their own. The list goes on....

Most schools here have early close on a Friday.

Where does the Head Teacher find the money for PPA cover?

Supply budget not spent since March?

"88% of supply teachers obtain work via employment agencies and umbrella companies. Last year alone these private companies raked in some £727million of taxpayers’ money from schools.Yet our evidence indicates that as little as 31% of that income was paid to supply teachers. In our education system this looks like profiteering on an industrial scale."

"Some teachers have simply been told there is no work for them or have had their employment assignments terminated with little or no notice. Others have been furloughed under the Government’s CJRS but with 80% of basic salary calculated using the National Minimum Wage, further exposing the disparity between the pay of supply teachers and others."

www.nasuwt.org.uk/article-listing/we-must-fix-our-broken-labour-markets.html

Our schools budget runs from the school year, so will be starting with a new budget in September. If they use the supply teacher budget for covering PPA what happens when they need a supply teacher for cover for something else?

One head who closed a school on Friday afternoon was quoted in a newspaper article I read that it saved the school £35,000 in one year. I don't know how big the school but that's an enormous amount. That's a good teacher or a couple of TAs with some to spare.

If you were to phrase the question in terms of having a choice between reshuffling the week (with plenty of notice and childcare options available) and having children taught art in a group of 120 in the school hall (real example which one head said he was doing to keep the school open on a Friday afternoon and within budget) then closing on a Friday afternoon starts to look like the sensible option.

It makes me wonder how those schools will be coping with even bigger economic pressures due to covid.

In terms of the school isn't childcare argument, my son's (female) head has explicitly throughout lockdown stressed that the school wasn't just about education, it was about its social responsibility in terms if the wider community and how it served the interests of its children and their parents by being a support network and signposting to other sources of help. Part of school is its social work aspect which goes remarkably unrecognised even now, even though we've had it stated that schools were open for key workers and vulnerable children.

Whilst a long weekend might be great for some families it's not so great for those who have problems at home.

Supply budget not spent since March?

You mean a budget that's heavily propped up by school funding raising which are very often scheduled during the warmer summer months?

Or the fact that many schools had burnt up their supply teacher budget pre closure because so many teachers were off sick (the last couple of weeks before the schools shut, schools couldn't get supply teachers for love nor money which lead to a few having part or full closures before the schools closed).

Why are you so convinced that reports of schools being that cash strapped are lies, exaggeration or other wise works of fiction?

Why is it so unbelievable?

You mean budget that was reallocated to things like trying to help students without assess to online learning?

"Closing early every Friday has IMPROVED education at my school, says head teacher."

"Michelle Gay, head at Osborne Primary in Erdington [Birmingham] was one of the first in the city to reduce opening hours to save money."

"The school has been closing at 1pm every Friday since September 2017."

"Eighteen months on she says she has "no regrets" about the decision as it has had a positive impact on pupils and staff - and even parents."

"Now the teachers and teaching assistants meet together on Friday afternoon to share the week’s experiences, to highlight issues and challenges, to discuss individual pupils who need extra support, and plan together, which gives the children a really positive experience."

There is a link to the school in the article.

How embarrassing - the head teacher was interviewed for the Birmingham Mail in February 2019 - Ofsted visited 3 weeks later and rated the school 'inadequate' (previously rated 'good').

◼Until recently, leaders’ monitoring has focused too much on compliance with school policies and procedures, rather than gauging the impact of teaching on pupils’ learning and progress.As a result, some aspects of self evaluation are inaccurate and overgenerous.
◼Many teachers do not have high enough expectations of what pupils can achieve.Pupils are not adequately challenged.
◼The quality of teaching is weak.
◼Children make slow progress in the early years because of weak teaching and limited provision.

One head who closed a school on Friday afternoon was quoted in a newspaper article I read that it saved the school £35,000 in one year.

That's the same school I've just posted about.

@BuffaloCauliflower

It’s not “planning” as you put so incredulously, it’s PPA time that all teachers are legally required to have each week to prepare everything for the next week, which takes a lot of time believe it or not. The half day a week per teacher is usually covered by TAs and support staff but as these TAs aren’t allowed to cross bubbles they have no other way of doing this except to close for that time. They’re not doing it to piss you off and I think many schools will have to use this tactic.

I'm a Primary School Teacher & BuffaloCauliflower is spot on! ⬆️ Schools are continuing to do the absolute best they can for their children in impossibly difficult circumstances with often conflicting/unclear advice & no budget whatsoever!! Yet still the complaints come...