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 agree with others. I do a 37.5 hour week in pharma. I regularly work through my lunch and log on of an evening. It's expected in my industry. When times are busy it's even worse. I don't get paid for it. The work just needs to be done I'm afraid and I work with people in different time zones.

I don't get why teachers think they do so much more than others? Most of my friends do unpaid overtime. In lots of private sector businesses it's just the norm.

We also don't get all that holiday to make up for it.

Teachers are not that hard done by. It's getting a bit much to keep hearing it all the time.

I know several teachers and they do not work beyond a couple of days of the summer holiday. My own sister teacher spent half term on a European beach. So you can't even deny the benefit of all those holidays.

I say early Friday finish is a rubbish idea.

You don’t get 13 weeks though as the half terms were spent catching up on marking and being ill (my body used to hold on to the illness until I had a break). Christmas and summer were the only proper holidays. Summer you can take away two weeks, one at each end for tidying, preparing etc. I only get 4 weeks off per year now, earn more money and feel 100% better about my work/life balance than I did as a teacher. That’s the same for most ex teachers.
Comments like yours just help the flood of decent teachers leaving the profession only to be replaced by under qualified people. No one understands the reality of it unless they’ve lived it.

It does work.
The school district my kids were in when we lived in California switched up the timetable so all the elementary schools finished at 12 on Fridays, so they were home, or after school care for lunchtime and the teachers had meetings and time to plan. It worked really well. The onsite after school care put on extra staff on Fridays only and increased the number of kids they looked after.

@Cluborange666 most teachers I know do very little work in holidays. My sister tidies her class one day and might do some bits towards the start of new term. Like I say, this half term she was on a beach. The whole time. Most teachers I know do the same.

Did you sharpen that stick especially or do you always have it handy?

house! 🙄

Do you think other professions don’t get ill when they’re on annual leave? I get 5 weeks a year and am usually ill for at least 2 of them. My body also seems to hold on to illnesses until I have a break. It’s not a phenomenon only seen in teachers.

They have done this in parts of Scotland since the 1980s when I was in school. My parents were both teachers and didn't have every Friday afternoon off though, this was used as the inservice/inset time so rather than tagging days on to the end or start of holidays for staff training and CPD, they did it on Friday afternoons instead.

It is a long-standing thing in Edinburgh at least for 40 years or more and doesn't seem to cause huge issues. After school clubs or childminders offer Friday afternoon sessions for people who are working.

In hospital medicine or GP land 5:30 is an early finish.

As a parent i'd love this idea. Make it a whole day off on a friday and I'd vote for it. Allows parents and children time together, children other learning opportunities and some down time from the structure of school.

Schools arent childcare. They're for education. I think you may also find it improves attendance. Which is the buzz at the moment. Win win win in my book.

Do you have a job?

Nope. You are describing a bad school. The focus should be on the kids education. The school should not be taking away ppa or filling that time with busy work for kids.

We should be addressing school budgets to allow them to call in supply when needed and to employ specialist teachers to teach their specialist subject during the class teachers ppa time. Music, PE, languages, science would all benefit from a specialist moving between classes. Not shifting about hours. I understand it's useful for a year team to have ppa together and it's possible to timetable that without herding the kids into the hall to keep them contained by an underpaid TA.

Oh and can we please get rid of the myth that teachers are the only people who have to work when they get home. It's the case for many salaried positions.

Completely agree @Neurodiversitydoctor Those hours seem decent in my world too...pharma.

I really do think teachers don't have a realistic view of the world beyond schools.

For 13 weeks of the year you are free to do what you want.

I think if "planning" and admin is such a hideous task that needs to be looked at. Make efficiencies. If you taught "great fire of London" last year then surely you can use most of that material again? I don't get it. Sure you may have students with additional needs but again, you should have an idea about how to adapt lessons for them.

I know a teacher writing reports at the moment. She's making out like it's the biggest task in the universe. She only has to do half the class as she's part time and has a job share.

In my world my client often demands impossible stuff off us at short notice. Make this slide deck, so this report by end of day. What happens if we don't.... we could lose the work. And then I might lose my job. That is pressure too, just get on with it really.

No way, the school day is short enough as it is.

As a side note, did you know that you don’t type spaces both sides of punctuation? For example when you are typing a comma you are doing this , when actually you should not have a space between the word and the comma, like this. The space comes after the comma and before the next word. For brackets, the space comes after the word (then no space between the bracketed words and brackets) like this.
I’m not usually a grammar pedant online but as a teacher you should know what is correct.

😂

Except for most kids it would be a day in some other sort of childcare, or home alone / with older siblings. Many families can't accommodate working part time hours and no way would a company let everyone have Friday off.

Let me tell you a little bit about the workload of a full time English teacher. There are 25 teachings periods in a week, so let's be very generous and say you teach 21 of those. The rest are PPE time.

The teacher has a Yr7 class, a Yr 8 class, a Yr10 class, a Yr 11 class and a Year 13 class. 30 kids in the first four, 10 in the A Level class. A total of 130 kids taught over the course of a week. On top of that you have a tutor group of 30 students, who you see for 25 mins every morning and ten minutes every afternoon. 2hrs 55mins a week is spent on tutor time.

So each lesson has to be planned and resourced in advance, with you going over the topic and creating or adapting resources, also thinking about the differing abilities in the group and differentiating for less/more able children. Let's say you're pretty quick at this and it takes around half an hour per lesson. That's over 10 hours planning a week.

You need to give each student homework once a week (school policy) and you need to mark their work at least once a week. There no right and wrong answers in English so no ticking, crossing and adding up. Each piece of work has to be marked forensically, and comments given at the end, generally with a positive comment and a target to work on in the future.

Let's be generous and say it takes ten minutes per student to mark a piece of written work, write up comments etc. 10 x 130 = 1300 minutes - that's 21.667 hours. On marking.

There's a new syllabus out and none of the books on it have been taught before, so you and a colleague from the department are collaborating on creating a scheme of work and resources for a new text. You need to plan at least fifteen lessons over an hour long. Let's say it takes you half an hour to plan a lesson (it doesn't, it can take longer). That's 7.5 hours.

You have a department meeting every Wednesday and a pastoral one every Thursday. They last at least an hour.

Shall we add those hours up?

It's over 61 hours a week.

Not including parents evenings, opening evenings, after school clubs, and all the tens of millions of other meetings that crop up over the course of a busy week.

So let's fucking quit with the idea that teachers are playing tiny violins. They're being shafted left right and centre by the government and seemingly now by the general public.

For this they're paid WAY less than people with similar skill sets in the private sector.

My dh works 80 hours a week. The work ethic is dire on here.

working 80hours a week is not something to aspire to

It's actually sorrowful.

You are absolutely a grammar pedant.

The public sector are incredibly lazy and self indulgent, I doubt they would last a week in the private sector. Always wanting to do less and less, no wonder so many schools are failing if this is the work ethic!

I’ve worked in the private, public and third sectors - the public sector I worked by far the longest hours and carried huge levels of risk. In the private sector I had distinct times that would be very pressured with long hours, the public sector it was constantly long hours and high risk. I really think it depends on your job role, literally nothing I’ve done has been as hard as being a social worker in child protection. Private sector was a walk in the park comparatively speaking.

I agree with you. I’m not a teacher; I’m a parent. Schools loose a lot of good teachers because they expect them to prepare lessons in a time which is supposed to be their downtime. All teacher work should be done within school hours.
working parents would be up in arms if they were expected to give up their weekends to accommodate their jobs/ clients consistently so this is no different. Schools aren’t babysitters, they’re educators.

Grammar matters. Especially for teachers.

Schools arent childcare.

True but if you withdraw school time from primary age children then working parents will either have to cut their hours or pay for childcare to plug the difference.

Not everyone can afford the luxury of being a SAHP or part time.

This could cause hardship in many families

I don’t want teachers to ‘babysit’ my children on Friday afternoons. I want them to teach them.

@norfolkbroadd and what about year 2 teachers? And maths teachers?

Have you ever done any job in the private sector before?

Most teachers I know work part time too. In fact I don't know any that work full time. At my kids school only 3 x male teachers do 5 days. The rest job share.

My last request for part time work was rejected due to business requirements.