Schools 3 day a week?

[Sunflowerkeep]

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

I don't know about three days a week but I can envisage schools running a four day week and making some savings. Longer days with sports and creative subjects in the later afternoon and teachers all doing PPA and attending meetings online at home on the non teaching day could work really well. Child care for the day off would be no more expensive than after school and breakfast clubs which would not be needed due to earlier starts and later finishes. that set up could save some part time employees money because the length of a school day finally mirrored a working day. I believe a lot of schools in Scotland and France operate this system. The Secondary schools in my local area also have early finishes at 1.30pm on certain afternoons in the week. All that said, I do not agree with it but, recognise that it could become a sad reality due to chronic under investment in education and schools. We may need to adapt and this could be an option that we may need to become more used to!

They haven't extended them as such-they've said they need to be open for 32.5 hours per week which the majority of schools were already - 8:45-3:15, 9-3:30 kind of hours are pretty standard but some will have to have extended and some might actually reduce!

I'm not suggesting they teach. I'm saying that a lot of what teachers do, isn't teaching and maybe that's worth looking at.

Oh, so the fine words about the extent of this flagship programme were just spin.

Disappointing, but unsurprising.

It does depend a lot on the MAT. I work at a small local MAT - no fancy head office or the like, and no syphoning off - just a small and very transparent recharge to cover the appropriate proportion of central functions like HR and Finance. We also have used staff moving between the two schools to provide cover when staff absence levels have been challenging and cover staff were too expensive. There is a world of difference between really healthy collaborations between local schools to best meet the needs in that area as efficiently as possible and huge national MATS being run in a very corporate way. The current storm of unfunded yet inadequate pay rises, massive utility costs and the impact of several years when there have been very limited funds for premises maintenance and improvement is bringing the sector to its knees, but no talk of a 3-day week as yet.

There’s a fuel shortage. Surely basic common sense says that 30 kids and a teacher sharing a classroom is more efficient in terms of heating and power than having them in 31 individual homes with heating and electricity for laptops
etc

I was confused by your phrasing. I assumed that when you said "core lessons should be delivered by qualified teachers, but not everything needs to be" I thought you were suggesting that anything outside of core could be delivered by pastoral staff. Sorry if I've misunderstood. So what is it you're saying pastoral staff should be delivering that they don't currently?

The comment about pushing out experienced teachers is a very real one.
It's all well and good replacing all the experienced teachers for cheap ECTs, but these teachers still need support and mentoring, which is often what the experienced teachers do.
Standards of education will simply slip further.

Remember that back in the day, the LA took a slice of each school’s allocated budget to pay for those types of services.

With academisation, there was a new option as academies could continue to pay the LA. Or, if they preferred other suppliers of those services they could switch. Most switched, because the LA services in most areas were poor VFM.

So there might be more suppliers in the market, but the amount of money going on those services reduced after the LAs’ non-negotiable stranglehold on top-slicing was ended

One of the failing schools locally was forced into becoming an academy and employed a consultant to advise on a new name for their new start. They came up with "Name of Town Academy". 😆

I know the head of that school and when he first started they had a really harsh clear out of staff, due to cost savings needed, but actually, now their financial situation is quite strong and last year they gave teachers a pay award above that recommended.

They still don't get good results and they still have awful behaviour problems (their intake hasn't changed) but OFSTED seems to like them better now.

The government need to listen to what Keir Starmer has announced today & make it happen, it's the only way to keep energy prices down.

This has happened for the past few years for a lot of upper pay scale teachers. It has become a common way to cut costs. Put the higher paid teacher on a support plan with targets they are unable to meet or tell them they are not meeting them. They jump before they are pushed and then in their place is a fresh off the line ECT.

Essentially yes. My secondary was a mix of 30s buildings (which were solid) and 60s building (which were full of asbestos and falling down). They decided to rebuild our school as part of academising in the mid 00s. They gave the contract to a French company as they wouldn’t pay the price quoted by a local company and they built a cardboard school, which, within its first few years, had sinks pulling away from walls and walls so thin lessons were being disturbed by noise from the class next door. It was an absolute shambles!

We had three-day weeks back in the 1970's, to ration and share the limited power available.

There was also the winter of discontent which feels a lot like what we're going into now.

'The Winter of Discontent was the period between November 1978 and February 1979 in the United Kingdom characterised by widespread strikes by private, and later public, sector trade unions demanding pay rises greater than the limits Prime Minister James Callaghan and his Labour Party government had been imposing, against Trades Union Congress (TUC) opposition, to control inflation'

I would not cope if schools went to 3 days a week. As a teacher it is near impossible to to get through the curriculum / exam specs as it is with the knowledge gaps due to covid. We need to be in school five days a week.

We got a letter out for the new year last week - school will now open at 8.20 and we must be off site by 4.30 ( last year you could go in from 7am and lock up was 6.30 pm so alot of staff came in either 7am - 4ish and worked before school or some do 8.45 - 6ish). Ultimately we are going to have to take work home now. Lunch is down to 35 minutes. Saturday morning school is no longer approved for this year with a review in Febuary half term. Our afterschool clubs must end at 4.15 ( last year this was up to 5.30 for the homework club). Afterschools will be voluntary and no funding for specialists coming in. We are being told if we wish to park onsite we must now buy a parking permit for the year. This has never been the case !!! Parking as always been free although the car park is not big enough so some people end up having to park elsewhere.

Our school is cold even with the heat on - last year students were permitted a hoody under the blazer if v cold and a scarf on in lessons. We could ask them to wear coats too but a school jumper / hoody / blazer and then a coat over this is not going to be comfortable. Even pre covid when there was no windows guidance our school was cold.

I am also concerned about the food - so many of our students depend on school for a proper meal. I complained last year that the quality of canteen food was unaccpetable and I got told off for this basically and told it was the canteen operating within their budget. But really the kids were getting pizza and chips most days or some other sort of colourless food with a big biscuit as this was apparently cost effective.

@EllaB22 what kind of school/area, may I ask? You have (had) Sat morning sessions and many dependent on school meals?

*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?*

I remember the state schools were in by the end of the Major government after decades of underfunding. It was dire. We had leaks everywhere, on a day of heavy rain I had to squeeze my class into half the room so they wouldn't get dripped on. Half the floor tiles had come up and couldn't be replaced.
Our school building was open plan, which didn't work - even the toilets were open plan!
Our buildings funding went on repairing roofs, new flooring, building walls to separate classrooms. Schools also spent money on money on IT infrastructure. Our playground also needed investment and we were able to make our school wheel chair friendly (when I started we had a child with limited mobility who used to have to bump himself up and down the numerous stairs in the building!)
We were one of the lucky schools that got the funding before it was pulled (not everyone did!). But public buildings need ongoing investment, not one off injections every few decades.

School managers (whether head teachers or academy executives) have again shown their lack of common sense and how inept they can be when discussing their budget squeeze - especially considering energy costs.

Shorter working days will make so little difference as to be worthless. A 4-day or 3-day week would save more, especially if combined with longer days. An even bigger saving would come by extending the Christmas break by 3 weeks and cut the breaks in late spring and summer.

Commenting on plans for education spending per pupil to increase to 2010 levels by 2024, the IFS claimed spending per pupil will remain three per cent below 2010 levels after factoring in a number of rises including teacher's salaries. Are teachers salaries not classed as education spending, and if not WTF is the £6000 - £7000 per pupil spent on?

“But public buildings need ongoing investment, not one off injections every few decades”

Of course. But it’s still disappointing that is seems that for some schools the rebuilds are no longer fit for purpose after as little as a decade (those where work started just before the end of the 00s) because windows don’t open and there is lots of glass, and they’re also difficult to heat.

also that, as pp pointed out, the programme was less than it was held up to be - it was hailed at the time as an ‘every school’ success story - more ‘sexing up’ I suppose

It wouldn't. Pre pandemic a lot of schools in our borough switched to early finishes two days a week to cut down on support staff costs and utilities. All staff PPA was crammed into these times and they were encouraged to work from home to save on costs to schools. Everyone hated it; staff but especially parents. TAs were suddenly being paid less as they'd had their hours cut, teachers were teaching all day on the full days (often the schools did Tues-Thurs as the full days, so they'd not have a feee period between Monday and Friday in order to tweak lesson plans or do any of that stuff within the school days) but more than anything parents were up in arms.

No primary schools doing it lasted more than a year because of the childcare implications and how much parents were against it. A few secondaries have carried it on. I'm not sure how much difference it's made financially, presumably some otherwise they wouldn't have continued it. It's not very popular though (I do some work for the education department of the local council, hence my knowledge of this).

it was hailed at the time as an ‘every school’ success story - more ‘sexing up’ I suppose

The Building School Fund would have been an every school success if Michael Gove hadn't pulled it. He originally wanted to scrap it altogether, but was forced to just half the funding himself. Years of budget cuts followed that decision.
Personally, the schools I know are not in as bad a way as they were prior to 1997, but give it a few more years!

I wonder if schools will have to go down the route of sharing teachers, so a teacher teaches a number of classes at the same time using remote provision, and having a cheaper member of staff in the classroom for crowd control. Save money on the qualified staff as won't need as many. Not saying this will be effective from a teaching point of view but will save money.

One near me has closed completely. New building standing empty all down to shocking back handers to do with money and 2 schools merged into one and completely ruined.

Even though it won't prevent them from getting covid?