Genuinely interested to know the extent to which schools let KS1kids watch TV. Am not talking about educational programmes, this is watching “fun” stuff during the lunch hour (eg the Pink Panther) while the kids are meant to be eating lunch.
This seems to have started last September when kids came back and were in class bubbles. To start with I had a bit of sympathy for the school as the bubbles meant the class had to be supervised at lunch by their TA, and the TAs and teachers got less of a break than in normal times, but here we are 8 months later and it now seems to be embedded in the school day.
It’s causing a problem for my Y1 daughter as on a few occasions she’s hardly eaten any of her packed lunch apparently because she’s watching TV. It seems whoever is supervising lunchtime makes no effort to check whether kids are eating which appalled a TA friend of mine who says she always checks). Most days my kids have school lunch so we have no idea whether they eat it or not.
A number of parents have raised this, in particular to check what the official TV policy is but as usual with the SLT we get vague answers/ generally fobbed off (“TV isn’t shown every day”- not true - “when it is shown it’s only our on after the kids have finished eating” - again, not true). Am wondering how much of a fuss to try to kick up about it, apart from anything it’s very poor to get kids into the habit of watching TV while eating and there are loads of studies on the negative affects this has.
But maybe I’m out of touch and this is just what infant schools do these days 🤷♀️. I do hope not…
(As a PS one of my friends had a child in the school nursery and she says she had to sign something as a condition of him attending to say that she consented to him watching PG rated films!)