Schools 3 day a week?

[Sunflowerkeep]

Is this for real or just media again? Is it seriously being considered?

My guess is that it will be needed. School budgets are wafer thin, and it is illegal for academics to run at a loss. If they can’t afford to heat buildings for five days a week, or pay staff five days a week, I can see absolutely this will be put on the table.

we’re fucked, basically.

I think it’s just the papers whipping up a storm.

I’ve worked in a school with a deficit budget for nearly a decade. We’ve never got enough money, but this has never been discussed as an option.

The government simply won’t allow it-they’ll be forced to fund us properly. Legally kids need 190 days of education and I can’t see parents being happy with online teaching.

It's bollox for media attention 🙄

I've been waiting for a thread on this.

I've just left a state secondary school office staff.

Our budget was hanging by a thread and it's been in deficit for several years. The school is joining a MAT this summer and I'm not sure how they square the budget issues.

They cut staff and subjects two years ago, I'm not sure how they can cut anything else but hours.

I doubt it but not being funny, schools who were paying 30k ish in bills who are now looking at 120-160k where is it coming from?

Staff pay rises which are some of the lowest across the board and teaching is one of the lowest paid graduate jobs (so they are needed) aren’t funded.

There is no money.

I’d be extremely surprised if this happened. It’s government playing brinkmanship again, they will eventually provide some support but at the last possible and most unhelpful moment (cf their behaviour over the public transport support during the pandemic).

It won't happen. What needs to happen instead is schools should be more efficient. At my school the heating is often on when it's warm outside. You can't access some radiators to turn them off. Half the time the heating is on and the windows are open! Other classrooms in the older parts of the building are freezing cold and need better insulation. There are a number of things that could be done before actually closing the schools.

First I'd heard of it was in the Daily Mail, so I think it's media whipping up a negative opinion of education again.

The problem is there:
*teacher's pay rises announced after the year's budgets had been worked out (we worked it out to the last pound, as always) with no extra funding provided to schools
*rise in energy prices means schools are doubly fucked.

BUT:
*children in state schools should have 190 days education
*teachers contracts are what they are - they can't just be reduced to 0.6 on a whim. So no money would be saved on wages - I guess it would be a return to remote learning, and there's no appetite for that from anybody.

But all people will see is the headline, no matter how little evidence there is for this being on the table anywhere

or pay staff five days a week

Well, that bit won't change - you can't just cut contracted hours like that. Staff are by far the biggest proportion of school budgets, so even if days are "cut" it would just be a move to online learning (which was disasterous last time, but hey).

But I agree with PP above that this will never come to fruition. For a start, what happens if schools or even counties were to choose their own days and they didn't match up with their staff's children? Childcare providers couldn't pick up the slack, even if there was enough capacity staff-wise (which we know there isn't) as each child would need their own individual laptops to follow their online lessons.

So no, it won't happen, because it practically just can't.

Maybe they're trying to force the issue with the government who seem to be wilfully ignorant of the impact of continuing cuts on cuts on cuts in an environment where all costs are going up.

They've got away with it up to now because inflation has been very low and schools etc have managed - just.

But now that pay is being increased by ever so slightly more than zero and utility bills have gone up so much, it's now the straw that breaks the camel's back and budget deficits are too big to cope with.

The press know 3 day a week schools will be politically unpopular. But how else are schools meant to balance the books if they can't afford to put the heating on. The numbers just don't add up without a sufficient increase in funding.

It's like we're back in the 1970s with the 3 day week, rolling power cuts and the winter of discontent, but the big change for schools will be that far more mothers are in work than they were 40/50 years ago, so they can't just close schools half the time, without seriously impacting everyone's lives.

Selfishly, I have a daughter who this would really work for, and work part time so would actually be ok with this. I think 32.5 hours in school is a long week for most children, and there are some things that could be done better at home - especially work requiring immersive concentration like A2 level art, reading or writing.

However if (and it's an if the size of Jupiter) this ever happened it would simply serve to widen inequality and would require wholesale radical shake up of society's norms.

This will never happen. It is more likely that the (current) government will just continue to run schools into the ground until they all become academies.

It will never be allowed.

We know school are more than just education they have the double role of providing childcare.

Every area of society has staff shortage so forcing parents back into the house to look after children will be a disaster.

I really hope this does not happen. Also the suggestion of remote learning just means as a teacher my bills would increase even more which I can't see going down well either.

I’m guessing all the advice about keeping rooms ventilated to reduce the spread of Covid will be quietly reversed in an attempt to keep fuel bills from going even further out of control than they are. Staff (and child) illness will rise further. There’s no funding available for supply (or available supply teachers) and any internal cover staff will have been laid off in a failed attempt to balance the budget without adequate funding.
I don’t think schools will be planning (and certainly not hoping) for 3 days a week, but I’ll be entirely unsurprised if it becomes simply impossible to keep some schools open, fully staffed and adequately heated for five days a week through the worst of the winter.
There was no money before accounting for the (uncapped) fuel costs and the unfunded pay rises.

Academies are schools? Many of them outstanding.

Anyone like me who is cynical that if the media portray the worst case scenario we'll all shut up about the how bad things currently are?

I've only seen the daily fail reporting this so yeah it's just media bollocks thats never going to actually happen.

I'm a teacher and think this is scaremongering. However, our primary school funding situation is dire. Our utility bills are expected to increase by the cost of over 1 FT experienced teacher (we are classed as a business so no price cap). Schools are having to fund increases in pay to staff out of their existing budgets - we know our staff need these these rises, we lost staff this summer as they cannot afford to live in London. We have reduced our TA support, most are now supporting SEN children. We've had to let go specialist music, language and PE teachers.
There is nothing left to cut, except perhaps hours!

Exactly. The government will have to either address the energy costs or fund schools properly.

They’ve just extended the minimum hours for school days so I call bullshit.

What's the solution then?

Staff pay is being increased (by not enough but that's a separate issue) and utility bills are going to skyrocket (non domestic properties don't have the protection of the price cap so probably by a bigger percentage than the already enormous increase in household bills) and they can't run at a deficit, so what happens when they run out of money?

Genuine question.

@Insomniac2507 and how do you think schools will manage to turn run down inefficient buildings into energy efficient places without investment?

Schools are already all forced into becoming academies (the new Schools Bill saw to that - there is no way out now). The issue is that MATs siphon any money off schools and line their own pockets and fancy offices with it (ours have spent a very large sum this year moving offices to a more fancy London location) and pay consultants huge fees to improve... absolutely nothing, because they know nothing about education. All of this while eroding the few things that made teachers' lives bearable when they were working directly for the LEA.

So academisation is likely to make finances worse, not better.