To think schools should get with the times re working parents.

[working8til4]

Why can't they be open 8-6 for everyone? It would help reduce gender inequality in the work place

AIBU - DON'T BE SILLY
YANBU - actually you have a point

Quite. If I did what people suggest I do here, the patients who have waited six months for a clinic appointment with a female doctor, would be waiting a hell of a lot longer as I would be doing the school runs instead.

@working8til4 im in Ireland where wraparound care is lacking in general (but improving) and the school day is actually shorter. However my dc start at 8:40 (finish at 2:20) and I start at 8 officially (as does their dad) we share drop offs we have flexi time and we are lucky their school has an afterschool club that is open until 5:20- this we pay for -it is subsidised by a government childcare scheme so it costs €50-60 per week. I consider this a good set up. It’s not up to the school to provide wraparound care.

When assessing the affordability of a mortgage, you should have been advised of the impact of it shooting up and considered this as a possibility before taking it, surely?

Lots of people mention the model in Scandinavian countries, would you also be happy with the whole system including the high taxes? To have good services they have to be funded. The residents in these countries seem to have a very good social conscious and are happy to pay higher taxes in order that everyone has a better life, less poverty and better services.
It never seems to me that this is how the UK operates, I could be wrong, but to me we follow the US system of capitalism, which is generally based on thinking about yourself and not wider society.

Teachers are under enough pressure as it is without forcing them to work 8 til 6. I don't want my child to spend that long in school each day either. It is your responsibility as a parent to organise childcare. The purpose of school is not childcare.

And I'm not a teacher.

My DD is a teacher. The workload is horrendous. The only way this would work, is to significantly increase the staff numbers. I think some people think that teachers only work the same hours that the kids are in. They don't. They have an enormous amount of planning and marking to do.

If the pay and working conditions were right there would be no shortage of workers. Currently 4.3% of UK workers are unemployed.

No thought for the children.

Educators are closed minded about suggestions?

Suggestions have involved paying staff to run clubs before and after school. Being realistic about life currently in schools is not being closed minded. We can't get staff, we have no money. We barely make it through each day as it is.

Sudden hike in interest rates, global pandemic, war in Ukraine, FFS @working8til4 did you not have the foresight to anticipate all this on a spreadsheet before becoming pregnant! How silly of you. You should have done a graph to calculate the exact moment to have children which would be when you are aged precisely 278yrs!

I’m on your side. Life is unpredictable. Some of these comments are ludicrous.

Is it better for the children to have parents who are unemployed?

4.3% unemployment is low, and tells us nothing about the location or aptitude of the people being described. It's vanishingly unlikely that they're all evenly spread within commuting distance of primary schools, for example.

But sure, if you pay enough for it then the jobs will be filled. I think the point at which the disruption might be worth it for me would be about, ooh a hundred grand a year or so? Not pro rata'd either. We all have our price.

However, this doesn't tell us that enough suitable staff would be available for a price that can realistically be paid. I absolutely agree that the roles currently aren't paid enough, but equally it's not a blank cheque either. So let's go with what they pay people doing these jobs in Scandinavia, as this is the example that's been given as best practice. You're still totally guessing at the 'no shortage of applicants' part. You simply don't know.

And part of this is the nature of the working conditions. By their nature, these roles are inflexible. Roles that have got to be done in a set time or place are often increasingly hard to staff.

The title of this thread is:
‘To think schools should get with the times re working parents.’

and the people who work in schools are simply saying…
’your childcare is not our problem’.

Perhaps op would have different responses if she’d titled her thread:
’To think that there should be better childcare provision for working parents’.

I work in a school, the children are there from 9-3 but the staff are there for at least 8 hours a day if not more, (plus we all do extra work at home).
If we had to cater for the children to attend school 8-6 when would we ever get time for planning lessons, resetting classrooms, updating displays, marking work, completing paperwork, staff meetings, staff training etc? There’s never enough time in a day as it is!

Don’t forget we also have families at home, I want to be able to see my own children, help them with their homework and spend time with them before they have to go to school the next day.

Wow. Take a long, hard look in the mirror. You've just set feminism back about 200 year. false eyelashes and husband hunting relentlessly until you find the right man who can fund a SAHM lifestyle. 🙄

It is not up to school or the state to fund your children. You chose to have them, you either look after them yourself or outsource childcare.

Exactly this. So many posters seem to be shocked that kids go to school from 9am ish to 3.30pm ish. Like who knew??

It was the same when I was at school and it was the same when my Mother and Granny were at school. This is not a new thing. Maybe midwives need to say after delivering babies ‘right in the September in 4 years time, this baby will need to be dropped off around 8.45am and picked up again at 3.30pm, you and Dad alright with that? Your mortgage will still need to be paid by the way, so you’ve got four years to get your head round this.’

So between the hours of 9am and 3pm for 39 weeks a year precisely it is of the utmost importance that children attend for near 100 per cent of the time or, we are told, their life chances will be irreparably harmed and their mental health will suffer.

But should they spend an extra hour in the morning having breakfast on the same premises or an hour or two after lessons playing or crafting on the same site so their parents can earn enough to pay the mortgage their life chances will be irreparably harmed and their mental health will suffer.

Genius!

It reads more like ‘please don’t make another massive job the responsibility for schools without enough staff or funding’ response to me.

I don't think anyone is disputing that there should be available before and after school care. What is being disputed is that this should be the responsibility of schools to sort out. We are not childcare providers, nor should we be sourcing private childcare for parents. Because , what would inevitably happen when external providers can't be sourced or drop out ( as they would when it is simply unviable to run) is that it then, by default, becomes another issue that schools are having to deal with themselves- along with social care, mental health care, parenting and a whole host of other activities ( toilet training, teeth brushing to name but two) that have ended up our responsibility as services are cut to the bone elsewhere. Simple things like referrals for medical diagnosis which used to be the responsibility of GPs are now down to schools( the referral form for the community paediatrician is 19 pages long,) we do hearing referrals, speech and language referrals and therapy, occupational therapy referrals and follow up therapy, you name it, it has become , by default, schools responsibility. Wrap round care is just one more to add to the list. We would quite like to teach !

Well I was a nurse working 7 am till 8 pm.
So obviously 🙄 school should open at 6 and close at 9 pm 7 days a week to allow my travel time, being late off duty and shift pattern .
I'm not expecting nights to be covered see how reasonable I'm being.
Or you just do what everyone who can't do " normal hours " work flexible hours do
You sort out your childcare

You might have four years to get your head around it but there still won’t be many feasible options for coping with it. That’s the reality. It’s really hard to find childcare if there is no wraparound provision at school.

For me that’s my old response. Now I’m just getting pissed off.

My kids are at secondary now, but when they were at primary we had a system exactly like the one the OP is talking about.

Breakfast club and after school club staffed by people that were not teachers.

Some of the staff were independent people just employed for that purpose, some were the dinner ladies and TAs who I guess wanted to earn some extra money.

I was on the after school club committee for a while. They were financed by the fees parents paid for their kids to attend.

However there were limited spaces and a waiting list for certain days due to the number of staff.

I'm not sure why some posters are deriding the idea as simply ridiculous. It is possible - it just needs refining.

This is true.

Additionally, the situation in 2024 is a pretty new thing. Or at least, it doesn't look like it did in recent years. Which is the appropriate comparison here, because of course nobody in like 2015 made their TTC plans based around availability of wraparound childcare decades earlier. That would be absurd. The whole childcare sector is really struggling.

people are not all saying it’s not the schools’ problem, many schools do provide out of hours provision. However there is not the demand in all areas to make it viable, it’s another thing to staff and organise and it’s going to be expensive. Private schools obviously have the money and there are lots of commercial provisions. Until the government organises and funds out of hours and holiday provision it won’t happen across every school, but it will cost and who will pay at a time when we can’t adequately fund actual education for all children. Raising taxes seems to be an unpopular election pledge!