Schools 3 day a week?

[Sunflowerkeep]

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

Depends on how many kettles you have and the position of the power sockets around the room.

The last thing you want is 20 - 30 kids ferrying boiling hot water around the room.

Well, I'm going to guess you have means to boil water if you can cook 😆

Schools should eradicate homework and instead build in a study/reading time during the school day for students that doesnt require hours of marking.

Yes, you could just put some cold water in one of your dirty pans, heat it up, then carefully tip it over all your other washing up and mix with cold.

But we're too inflexible and risk averse to allow teenagers to practice their problem solving skills in this way.

3 days weeks is just the media shit stirring. But you might see some impact on the school day. Our school have reduced lunchtime from 60 minutes to 35 minutes and break from 25 to 20 minutes. This time has been used to shorten the school day by 30 minutes from September. We've also been told that we won't be allowed to hold holiday revision classes next year because they can't afford to pay us, and they don't want the extra energy costs.

It will not happen. But you can cut staff hours.There is a legal process to go through, but it happens all the time in other industries.

There’s another option though, that the government give the schools more money?

I don't really understand what the difference is between that and cooking.

But anyway, the heating won't be going off. Not with a GE approaching 😆

Agreed. Academies spend way more on management and back office than traditional schools. This is somehow progress.

I was saddened by this post because it rings so true.

There was a massive schools rebuilding project - it was a government flagship policy - in the 00s.

Has all that spending really gone on works that we’re so shorty that a mere 10-20 years on, school buildings are again not fit for use?

It’s not. There is a huge MAT where I am which will still close early on a Friday afternoon. As long as they meet the required hours and days of education - nothing can be done.

My sons school was always red hot. Think staff wearing skimpy summer clothes in winter hot. If I had to go in for any meetings I'd boil in normal winter clothes!

They'll be paying the staff anyway. There's no heating the place in September so it is not imminent. They could start laying teachers off from January at earliest but when there is a teacher shortage are they really going to lay teachers off when they'll be desperate for them in a very short time? They might lay off support staff - technicians, office staff, TAs, etc but the school could still run a 5 day week without them even if they had to stop doing experiments in science etc.

You're more likely to see schools asking for 'voluntary' contributions for materials for art, science, even exercise books.

Once the heating comes on things change - if staff and students work from home, maybe rotationally, then they could turn the heat off in some buildings or parts of buildings.

Ludicrous idea if it even happened, it’s the same with Scotland trying to up the school start age to 6, all fine and well but they would need to seriously up nursery places and capacity to allow for the extra children now staying longer especially with the 2year old funding. Might not be the same everywhere in Scotland but in my area they are all bursting at the seams and that’s with the current school starting age.

as for 3 day school weeks and even early finish on Fridays it will be a nightmare for working parents, I’m a community nurse and this happening would mean i would probably need to stop working. Even half a day on Friday I have no one to collect them

It doesn't matter what work arounds you come up with it is a legal requirement that food technology rooms have hot water.

If teaching time for students were cut, it wouldn't be necessary to reduce teachers' hours. You would just have fewer teachers on their current contracts, and make the others redundant. Nobody wants to reduce the school week. The situation is dire though.

And it’s worth pointing out that yes school isn’t childcare but the government clearly see it as a form of childcare otherwise you wouldn’t be forced to find work or lose benefits

My sons school was always red hot. Think staff wearing skimpy summer clothes in winter hot. If I had to go in for any meetings I'd boil in normal winter clothes!

Blimey-that certainly isn’t the case in my school. Heating goes off at 12pm and we freeze all afternoon. I am often to be found teaching in hat and coat in the afternoons and marking in gloves after school.

Probables just the media.

I would hope they’d trial a 4 day week before jumping into a 3 day week anyway.

For many kids their only safe space or only time they get a half decent meal is at school.

As someone who works in a school I couldn’t afford my rent and other bills on just 3 days.

They may well be able to reduce the hours in each subject but the compulsory subjects at KS3 are

English
maths
science
history
geography
modern foreign languages
design and technology
art and design
music
physical education
citizenship
computing

as set in the national curriculum in order to do what you suggest they would have to rewrite the curriculum, suspend certain aspects of it or teach subjects on a rotational basis.

The money was spent on the worst school buildings or to replace them. The school I went to was knocked down and rebuilt during this time as the roof was falling apart and the repairs that were not happening were ultra expensive.
There are other old school buildings that were not in a bad enough state at the time to be prioritised, that have since deteriorated.

Most staff wouldn't work 3 days, but they'd need fewer staff.

But it won't happen. Society would collapse without the childcare. They could maybe reduce the amount of teaching time, without cutting the time they're in school however. We've added some pastoral stuff to our school day to comply with the new requirements, children aren't getting any more teaching time.

They might lay off support staff - technicians, office staff, TAs, etc but the school could still run a 5 day week without them

I take it you don't work in a school?

Who will process staff salaries / provide first aid / support disabled students and prevent those with behavioural disorders disrupting the whole class / buy materials such as textbooks / chase up absences which is a basic safeguarding requirement?

To give just a few examples of what all these supposedly superfluous (if you believe the likes of Kemi Badenoch) staff do to keep a school running.

www.newstatesman.com/chart-of-the-day/2021/10/how-the-funding-gap-between-state-schools-and-private-schools-has-dramatically-widened

Food for thought...

Well yes, of course. I'm not suggesting it. I'm a Deputy Head. It would be my job to manage it. I'm saying it could be redundancies than forced reduction in hours for staff.