Schools should close early on a Friday

[Goolagoo]

I know this will be very mixed opinion - especially for working parents .

But , I’m a teacher . Over the years I have seen so much in schools regarding PPA time and really unfair practices . I have seen , and experienced , teachers having PPA taken away due to staffing issues . I once saw a teacher have a day of PPA ( a whole day because she wasn’t having it the week after due to staffing issues so would need to plan 2 weeks work in this PPA session ) taken away - it was a Friday too so she was supposed to be having that day to plan for lessons beginning on the Monday . It was taken away due to staffing issues and she was in tears - she had plans that weekend that she had to cancel so she could plan for the week ahead ( I didn’t work in that school , she’s a teacher friend ). I have also had PPA time taken away from me before and I also have never had a class that didn’t get upset at me not being in class and having a supply or a Ta cover . Usuall work that’s done during the cover whilst class teacher is out on PPA isn’t ‘important’ work - it’s a lot of filler work , or work that doesn’t go in books . A lot of children also get anxiety over their class teacher being out and children with SEN especially suffer with this .

I read about a school that decided to close at 1pm every Friday to allow teachers to all have their PPA time . They said that they made the time back with a slightly later finish time / slightly earlier start time and they found that behaviour improved massively. Fridays are usually the end of a long week and filled with behaviour issues and this reduced along with attendance improving . I know some schools around the area do Finish at 1/2 on a Friday and I wonder if this is the reason why .

It seems like it would really make sense !

Maybe even , as TAs don’t get PPA time as they don’t plan , they could offer a kind of after school club ( until normal pick up time ) where the TAs watched the children who’s parents couldn’t do an earlier pick up time .

I think you have little idea about how teaching has changed. This is far from reality for many teachers now

They don’t have set hours like other jobs do.
There are obviously the set hours which they need to be in school for but then it’s however many extra it takes to get the job done and then there are afterschool staff meetings and parents evenings etc.

It is on average 52.4hours a week, according to recent research.

I can see the value in having an afternoon for PE and hobbies, but clearly it would have a detrimental effect on working parents if a child can't stay in school. And while MN likes to say "schools are not childcare", in the real world, parents need to work so that they and their kids can eat.

I think there is a debate to be had about opening hours, holiday times etc.

It used to be the case that sixth forms used Wednesday afternoons for sport.

And maybe school days should be a bit longer but then the kids don't have to do homework other than a bit of reading practice? We support work life balance for adults but apparently kids are meant to do six hours at school and then do two hours homework as well. Why not have 7 hours at school (not all classroom based, some of that could be sport and other activities like music, art) and no homework.

And if the kids don't have homework, the teachers don't have to mark it. Win win.

When do you think other people leave work?

@Choochoo21

Is that 52 hrs a week average over the year or over the school year ?

If the former that's shocking , if the later that's pretty standard working over a year

My parents were both teachers (now retired). My father was a deputy head and his usual hours were 7.30-6.30, almost every day. Sometimes later evenings, and always at least some days in the schools holidays. It was rare for him to leave at 5pm, and I cannot remember a single time when he left school when the children did, either on Friday or any other day.

I have voted YABU. No because the extra time won't benefit the teachers. Extra time will benefit us all. I can do with two hours of quiet work on a Friday to plan next week and to finish some task. I have voted YABU because of all the changes that will have to happen in those kids parents busy schedules to accommodate those hours for the teachers.

I think this is another source of confusion/misunderstanding. Most professional/salaried roles don’t have set hours either. I have ‘core’ hours of 9-5, however my contract, and every contract I’ve ever had, states that I must work ‘the required hours to fulfil my role’. Like teaching, there is no paid overtime. There is an expectation that people will go above and beyond, and if you don’t/can’t do that then you’re first in line for redundancy in the constant merry go round of ‘restructures’.
I’m not in the habit of moaning about my profession as I chose it, and I can always choose to leave. However I work in the same industry as my husband. We often go weeks without seeing each other because on the nights I’m not working until 11pm, he is. We also have a disabled child so we have to tag team around his care, and we have to use our limited annual leave for his medical appointments and therapies. It’s tough for a lot of people.

Sounds like your school are missing a trick when managing PPA time and staff cover. Or maybe teachers are our DC's school are lucky. Teachers from each year group take a morning or afternoon per week for PPA and they all sit and do it together with the head of year leading (3 form per year school). Then the kids have PE, French, other subjects taught by staff who are not their class teacher, supported by TA. If any class teachers are off for any reason and there are no spare TAs or cover teacher, the kids are split into other classes for the day. From what I gather PPA is fiercely ring fenced and never dropped. Kids are used to being flexible and never moan about any of this.

Working parents could not cope with a 4.5 day week on top of all the holidays, inset days, polling days etc!

You do your overview of the year and add a bit more detail for each term.

The issue is that despite your planning, each class is different.

Sometimes the kids get a concept really quickly, so what you’d planned for the rest of the week goes in the bin and out comes the laptop. The opposite happens and you have to plan additional lessons.

Occasionally a child comes into the class for whom a unit work is inappropriate and you have to plan something else.

Sometimes, you’ve planned one thing, but discover an amazing creative or scientific streak in your class and want to take the learning towards their interests.

The class TA might be off sick for weeks and the lessons that require two people can’t work like that any more.

There’s all sorts of reasons why the details of planning happens on an ongoing basis.

This!

you already finish in the middle of the actual working day!

kids might benefit from more creative Friday afternoons/ more outdoors stuff etc for sure but there is nothing stopping teachers from doing this!

I was responding to the person who was under the impression that teachers leave work early every day. I (as a non teacher) leave work at my part time 30 hours job between 2 and 6 depending on what day it is.

The problem with the ‘If you don’t like it, leave’ attitude towards teachers saying they’re overworked is that they ARE leaving.

@Youdontevengohere do you know how bad the recruitment and retention is in teaching? Teenagers are spending entire school years being taught maths by non specialist teachers. Do you want that for your children.

I’m retired now, so no skin in the game, but come on, we need to value and protect the people that teach us to read.

I think in that situation I'd be concerned how much my child could take in by doing an extra 30 mins a day and if they would need extra break times to allow them to absorb the information.

I'd also be concerned about how the extra time each day would impact in extracurricular activities. 30 mons a day extra doesn't sound like much, but if they also need another 15 mins break to make it meaningful, then it makes it difficult to do a range if activities afterschool each evening. It's not practical to do 3 hours of exercise across 3 different classes and locations on one Friday afternoon. 1 hour every other day is reasonable.

Do you have any linked studies on the benefits for the children by having a longer school day 4x a week and a shorter Friday to demonstrate the benefits? That would be more reassuring bout such a proposal.

@Goolagoo

The problem with PPA is that schools ignore the fact that it should be fixed on the teacher's timetable and shouldn't be used for anything else.
Unfortunately SLT used PPA time as a bank for cover to save money, but then complain when lessons are not "outstanding".

What is PPA?

No, I don’t want that for my children. And I didn’t say ‘if they don’t like it, they can leave’, I was talking purely about my own situation and attitude to my role. I was just addressing the misconception that ‘most’ other people work set hours. We don’t.

I also struggle with the implication on these sorts of threads that parents can somehow solve the recruitment/retention issues in schools. We can’t. I am fully supportive of the teachers who teach my children, but I can’t make things better for them (I know I’m going to get the cries of ‘don’t vote Tory’ now but rest assured I don’t, and never have).

At my DD's Primary the class teachers got their PPA time while the DC were with specialist teachers - French, Music and P.E/Swimming. I think it worked well.

I personally think primary schools should only have a 4 day week. It's far too long for them and unnecessary to be as long in my opinion. :)

Yeah agreed, that would be fab, as long as all employers offered a 4 day week for the same pay too.

I thought Wednesday afternoon was the traditional early finish day. The same at university.

I agree with this as a parent but unless the country changes the model to a 4 day working week (with more available childcare) then it just doesn’t work.

I say this as a teacher also knowing that PPA would then be on the day children wouldn’t be at school - meaning it wouldn’t benefit my children either as they’d need childcare so I could plan etc.

Do teachers get paid for Parents evenings?

They don’t have set hours like other jobs do. There are obviously the set hours which they need to be in school for but then it’s however many extra it takes to get the job done

This is true of all professional jobs, why do you think it's unique to teaching?