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

We hear all the time that parents can't work from home when the kids are around yet expect teachers to do it with 30+ kids around and just call it 'annoying'. Nope it is their space to work and it prevents teachers from working. If parents can't do it then it shouldn't be expected of teachers. Another space needs to be found.

Certainly some investment in building might be necessary if schools were to be used more extensively than they currently are.

But also, I wouldn’t have thought classrooms would be a necessity for wrap around care for many schools. Except for Reception, my kids’ primary schools both kicked them out of the classrooms during break and lunch and managed to entertain them all between the common areas and playgrounds.

No. I didn’t say it was okay for teachers to have to put up with this shit.

I don’t think it would be at all acceptable for teachers to have to put up with kids running around them when they were no longer in school time and were trying to prepare for the next class.

I don’t think it’s acceptable for after school clubs (or anyone else) to use consumables designated for school use or to damage books or mess up the classroom setting so the teacher has to spend time putting it back the way they need it.

I said this was a solvable problem if there was the political will for good education and wrap around care.

I'm not sure I agree with school buildings being used for wrap around. One of the schools near me was private and then became a free school but they still offer boarding or extended days.

BUT if children are staying late they go to the boarding houses where they get to hang out, play games, have dinner etc. but they are not in classrooms.

As many have pointed out, schools are for education not childcare.

From the staffing standpoint, who will supervise them for these longer hours? Teachers are already burning out, with most working many hours more than full time to keep on top of lesson planning and marking. Contact hours are already much greater than in many countries, and attempting to increase them significantly seems like a recipe for causing more to quit and drying up recruitment further.

From the pupils' point of view, increasing hours in the classroom would pretty much inevitably leave children bored with consequent discipline issues. They're children, and need time out of the classroom to play and socialise.

Even in countries where the school day superficially appears longer than in the UK, the number of hours of lessons doesn't approach a full time job for an adult. For example, French schools are open longer than hours - perhaps 08:30 to 16:30, so similar to a full time job - but primary schools at least have half days or close entirely on Wednesdays, and lunch breaks are much longer - 1.5 or even 2 hours.

The one good point I could see would be if extra hours in school were spent on well thought out extra curricular activities. I don't mean extra music lessons or PE, but genuinely engaging clubs etc. that the children could choose and wanted to engage with. The cost of funding and staffing them would not be trivial, and trying to do it on the cheap wouldn't work out well. You couldn't reasonably use teachers to supervise these, for example, without relieving workloads significantly in other areas.

There should be 24 hour child care, and they should be taken to and from school

I know you’re not suggesting it should be teachers OP, but just to say I used to work in an East Asian country. I taught classes 8sm to 3pm like most of my fellow EFL teachers but my school had the bright idea of me also taking one of the after school programme classes from 3:30 to 4.45. I absolutely hated it and the school for doing it to me , it wasn’t what I’d signed up for.

It made my day so long and tiring. Other teachers worked in schools where they would hire in instructors for the ASP, so they’d get to use 3-4:30pm time for prep while I’d be standing up for yet another class! I did get paid extra but it wasn’t worth it and wasn’t as much as what they’d have to pay me if I was an instructor coming in just for the ASP. Awful 😣 but yeah- I can see the value of wrap around care involving non-teachers and having a varied ASP.

My friends kids go to school 8am to 6pm. They attend various after school classes and clubs. They even get an evening meal in their school. They are great parents and close to their kids . I don’t see this as not being a good parent or being irresponsible.

I was talking to a colleague in Germany who is a single parent, i remember she said schools usually provide this - at least in her area. She said it’s expected and most parents would struggle otherwise.

As a working parent, I don't agree. I think the money would be better spent on making sure that there is adequate childcare provision for wraparound around and school holidays. I feel very fortunate that there has always been wraparound care at my ds school which is shared with another school. It's very chilled. The children can play, craft, be outside or just relax. Holiday Club is a little more structured but very lucky it runs 8am-6pm every school holiday.

East Germany. From 2026 parents will be entitled to free Ganztagsbetreuung (all day / wraparound care) for their primary school children however, including during school holidays https://www.bmfsfj.de/bmfsfj/aktuelles/alle-meldungen/rechtsanspruch-auf-ganztagsbetreuung-ab-2026-beschlossen-178826.

I feel the same about our lovely after school club equipment… keeping it away from general school use and abuse is quite a challenge!!!! I and my fellow ASC TA have bought a lot of the things ourselves so the kids have a different experience after having been in school all day!

Investing in building is grand but the gov may like to invest in the buildings they already have before that. That wouldn't work at my school either. There is no land to build on.

In my school there are no common areas. There are classrooms and a library. That is all.

The wording said a lot. Nope it isn't acceptable for kids to be in my working 'office' when not in school time and I can't set up or have the resources I need.

So the problem is solved by taking the children off site or go outside all year round at my school. Those are the only two options.

And how do you propose she finds this elusive employment with more flexibility, has the time and nerve to go through recruitment and instability of first 2 years and make it pay enough for more out of hours childcare?

I think Oxford would be awarding you an honorary PhD in economics if you managed to figure this out for parents nationwide...

The discussion about problems with schools and ASC sharing the same space are more proof that the reduction in childminders is really damaging.

In schools where the ASC needs to be in classrooms, why is this the case? In my kids primary school, the ASC is in the hall and playground only, they don’t go into classrooms at all. Don’t all schools have a hall? Yes as it’s used for ASC nothing else can go on in the hall before or after school, but I guess my kids school have just decided that they’ll offer the ASC instead of using the hall for anything else. Everything is a trade off in an imperfect world.

Yes. DD was a baby so I expected primary to have wraparound care when we started, but nothing.

In primary schools when it rains the kids have to stay in the classrooms at break and lunch. It isn’t ideal at all. At break times it means the teachers get no chance to set up for the next lesson or have a proper drink or go to the toilet. At lunchtimes the lunchtime supervisors are then looking after a class indoors on their own in many cases, which can be a lot more demanding than shared supervision of all the children playing independently outside. It becomes more like behaviour management then which they don’t get any training on.

at my own kids’ primary when it was a wet lunchtime sometimes the kids were all taken into the hall to watch a film. This was possible because there was a separate dining hall. However at the primary I work at the only large space is the one hall we have, and it’s multifunctional so doubles as the lunch hall too. There are just no other “common areas” as you put it, so wet play and lunch is held in the classrooms.

Terribly sorry for the misunderstanding Dweefti. I've somehow got myself all muddled up in to thinking that when OP said "Why can't they be open 8-6 for everyone? It would help reduce gender inequality in the work place" what she actually meant was "Why can't they be open 8-6 for everyone? It would help reduce gender inequality in the work place" - I mean how stupid is that, right? How did I not realise that an opinion poll about whether we should redefine what we consider standard office hours to be was in fact a statement standing up to the rampant and intentional misandry that some parts of society are so eager and proud to display, written with the utmost effort to frame it from a neutral viewpoint?

Then as if I'm not dumb enough already for not realising OP's question talked about every point I brought op and how they affect millions of men, you know what happened next? You won't believe this, but silly old me went and got all fixated on the part where she mentions "reducing gender inequality".. and if that's not bad enough, I totally forgot that "equality" doesn't mean "equal" at all! That's right isn't it, that's what your claiming? That you're not only entitled but right to take this misandric, outdated, sexist attitude on the grounds that "it's not discrimination if it's against men because they don't count!".

Utter madness. The only saving grace is that you are here to set me straight, or I'd have no fcuking clue what to do. Thank you for giving me permission to be with my own family, I 👏🏻 will 👏🏻 continue 👏🏻 to do that as 👏🏻 well 👏🏻 as 👏🏻 anything else you'd like me to, because it's important 👏🏻 that 👏🏻 I 👏🏻 do as I'm told👏🏻 by 👏🏻 you, right? Right?

The hall is a classroom in my school.

The hall is usually used for sports after school not the childcare club.

Yep happens in mine we are all in the classroom. During wet play days there are kids in my classroom 7:30am - 6pm. There is not one minute they are not there. We can't use the hall as it needs to be cleaned after lunch and has to be done before 1pm as this is also a classroom. Yep 'common areas' now are rare within schools. Every space is utilised.

OK, so some schools don't have a hall but most of them do. Anyway school buildings can be extended / portakabins installed. A lack of space in some schools is a not a good enough reason to dismiss the idea of all day free wraparound care.

We do have a hall, it is just used as a classroom.

Grand so a portakabin on the road outside will work will it?

Why can't parents pay?

Why are there kids in a classroom 7.30am-6pm? What are they doing before 8.30am and after 3pm (or whatever the normal school hours are)? The hall can still be cleaned at lunch if it's going to be used for before and after-school club.

They are in breakfast club and after school club.

The hall can't be used for breakfast or after school club.

My kids primary had three halls, so had a fair bit of flexibility. But they also had about a third of the playground covered with a wooden structure that provided shade in the summer and allowed for a rain cover when it was wet, so there was outdoor space kids could use year round.

Of course I see that some schools would find it challenging, as I said I would expect there would be a need for infrastructure investment.

A serious policy to make schools work for a much longer day providing extra curricula activities outside of school hours might mean a few schools with limited sites would have to take fewer children and more schools would be needed (though changing demographics might well take care of that in the near future).

The point is that these are solvable problems if there is political will. The current ethos of underinvestment in schools and disregard for the expertise and effort of teachers wouldn’t support it, but I’m not suggesting it should be done in that way.