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’m not usually a grammar pedant online”.

The inference here is that I know that what I wrote is pedantry. But, as others have recognised, the OP is a teacher and is responsible for making sure our own children are given the correct information.

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.

Time away from children isn’t downtime though, in Scotland 12.5 hours a week are available outside contracted contact (teaching) hours, teachers have a 35 hour contract, some of those hours will be outside the school hours of 9-3, but within contracted hours.

Actually @Youdontevengohere the message is what matters the most, any English teacher worth their salt will tell you that. If you obliterate every bit of a child's work with a red pen you risk them being willing to set down their opinions and ideas. They are the utmost most important thing, not whether they leave a space before a comma or capitalise a proper noun.

Do you know a comma needs to be placed before a co-ordinating conjunction?

Genuine question - you seem to have included planning the lessons twice there? As in, when there is a change to the syllabus you have to create an entire new scheme of work with the set of lessons to match.....but then you also say you have to plan every lesson as you go along for the established material as well?
Is that planning from scratch, or more 'finding the folder, printing out the discussion cards again', etc etc - the night-before prep to actually deliver it?

And on the established material, although you have to provide differentiated lessons, presumably each year you can reuse the same upper/middle/lower tasks that you sorted the year before (I appreciate some specific individuals may also need specific adaptations on top of this)? So that needs doing, but presumably isn't a recurring task?

"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."

Are you for real? You're asking TAs who get paid £13,000 a year to take on your responsibility?! So that teachers on £30,000 have more admin time?! Get away with you! Do you realise that the TAs will just leave?! Then what will you do?! How silly!

Have you ever spent time in a room with 30 Year 2 kids? Their workload is IMMENSE.

Also in Edinburgh when I was at school, the days were longer to account for the Friday afternoons. We started registration at 8.40 and first class at 8.50, finished at 3.40 every day. My kids who are in school in Glasgow have the same hours overall, but start at 8.50 and finish at 3.05 on 3 days and 3.55 on two days.

@BestZebbie long term and short term planning were standard in departments I worked in, colleagues would team up every term to do schemes of work for new texts or new syllabus requirements

But they faint have time to prepare for the upcoming week to teach them. also by Fri afternoon most kids are the end of their rope and aren’t really learning; they’re ready for downtime

Perhaps another selling point for teachers is job security.

Over here in private sector, things are bad. Hundreds applying for same job. Money getting worse and worse. AI taking over some jobs. My linked in is full of "open to work" green circles. Redundancies.... so many. Including me last year.

The tech industry is awful right now. I turned up to work on Monday and I was gone by Wednesday. That's how quick people in private sectors deal with redundancies. My computer was cut off as the call ended.

Not sure that would ever happen with teachers.

The private sector really has a lot of pressure too. It's one of the reasons I don't just log off at 5:30 and leave my work unfinished. They could decide to get rid of me tomorrow and I'd be gone.

I remember working in a school where I would regularly stop working in the early hours, and be up again at 5.30 to do it all again. This school had the attitude that if you didn't take longer planning each lesson than you spend delivering it, you were failing. Also, if you dared to say you weren't stressed to the max, you were obviously not working hard enough. Guess who burned out completely and left teaching.

Do you routinely have chairs thrown at you or get called a fucking bitch in the private sector? Do you have children disclose the most horrific things to you that you have to escalate up for child protection reasons? Do you have to buy your own pens? Do you have to buy extra sanitary products because the girls in your form have none?

That sounds tough @dreamerz

It’s such a shame that threads on here turn so divisive. People in all sectors work bloody hard and are under stress.

I don’t know what a co-ordinating conjunction is, but well done for impressing everybody with big words. Perhaps you could pass on some grammar knowledge to the OP, who is a teacher using incorrect grammar, as I have tried to do.

@norfolkbroadd and how is finishing at 1pm on Friday going to help that exactly?! That won't give you more pens. Your issue is with the government and funding and the way schools are run.

That’s the thing about Muprhy’s Law.

I think that’s the issue. I know teachers work hard. I know they are under pressure. I know the system is broken. It’s the insistence that they work longer and harder than everyone else which gets people’s backs up on these threads.

For me, it would have meant going home early, having a hot shower, putting my pyjamas on, then settling down to mark or plan in relative comfort instead of folded into a classroom chair.

That would have meant a lot back in my teaching days.

Really, it should be a half day Wednesday as that’s the usual afternoon for sports in secondary and university. But this government don’t believe in much other than the core subjects and hitting targets (ex-teacher here) when really we should be developing and strengthening each student’s interests outside of just academia.

@norfolkbroadd I'm not going to say I agree with a half day on Fridays so teachers an wear pjs and do marking whilst they watch countdown on tv. Ffs. Ridiculous.

Do you think that is what happens in the private sector?!

Anything that can go wrong will go wrong…? You’ve lost me I’m afraid.

I think teachers are sensitive to the old chestnut of ‘You only work 9-3 and are always on holiday!’

Morale is rock bottom in the teaching profession, as it is in lots of sectors.

OP
The opening line in you OP - you answered the corners yourself, EG, "working parents."!!

*@norfolkbroadd I'm not going to say I agree with a half day on Fridays so teachers an wear pjs and do marking whilst they watch countdown on tv. Ffs. Ridiculous.

Do you think that is what happens in the private sector?!*

Many people in all sectors have the ability to do some of their work from the comfort of their home - and many do so in pjs in front of the tv. There’s no reason why teachers couldn’t do their planning and prep at home during their contracted hours.