School day

[Gwendolinee]

In our recent primary newsletter we were told that the school day has increased at the behest of the DofE. I’m really not onboard with this especially at primary. My son is y1 and is one of the youngest. Is this as a result of Covid?

We have a similar issue. Pupils have 190 school days per year but the length of day needs to be standard across all schools. Therefore, our secondary is increasing each day by 5 minutes.

2.30?! That's just after lunch!

And here's me wishing school would have a later finish because 3.15 is impossible with work (and we both WFH!)

Surely most kids have been in nursery before reception so are used to longer days? My youngest has just finished reception and went from 7.30-5.00 in nursery, to 8.45-3.15 at school.

That may be true for where you are, but here in prime London commuter belt most people are back into offices at least 2-3 x per week.

My kids school has kept hours the same but have decreased lunch break and removed the afternoon break to accommodate the new structure. This happened last school year for us.

I would have preferred a longer school day but kept the breaks.

This isn't something to get upset about. Your child won't even notice the extra time. Just parent affectively after school and manage their evenings better. For example less or no screen time, in my experience it never works, earlier dinner, bed and bath. Do homework while dinner is being cooked.

Or what we have to do, rush to pick up two kids across two different settings and trying to navigate rush hour traffic and have both kids in by 6 10 pm, cook, homework, feed bath and bed time routine all whike smiling and being overly positive!

Anyone working from home isn't able to give the quality time you think is needed after school.

I assumed all infants and juniors would be close together as all our local ones are. That must be really challenging if not close.

We start at 8:35am and finish at 3:35pm.

Wrap around club is 7:45am to 6pm. The majority of children are there earlier than 8:35am and most will be in clubs until 4:45pm.

While other nations manage to educate their children to the same and in some cases I would argue higher and broader curricula.

Mine went 0830-120, until 7 then 08:30-220, and then at 13 years old 08:30-3:20.

Our children go to after-school or had nanny as I worked full-time but it is pure play based in a fully focused child setting. From what I read on here that isn't typical in a lot of schools in UK.

If the school day was cut... what do you think would go? Art, music, technology, pe? Or reading, writing and maths...

If the UK didn't have such an insane curriculum there would be time for all of those subjects in shorter days. In my country the youngest children only do 4 hours a day, goes up to 6 hours a day max* at the end of primary school yet they fit in literacy, maths, science, history, RE/ethics, social studies, foreign language (2 languages in the last year), music, art, handicrafts, and PE (with a lot of time for the last 4 subjects), and a quarter of each day is break time so really its only 3-4.5 hours a day that they fit in all into.
Upper school the day can be up to 7 hours I think, as they do more subjects there but they are older then (13) and can cope with longer days

OP I wouldn't like that either, its a long time for children of that age to focus. Its not at all the same as long days at nursery, sitting and reading and writing and other active learning requires much more energy than playing, and taxes the brain so much more. Much more tiring.

Seriously? Listen to yourself. He'll be fine! An extra 30mins per day which will probably be made up of settling in 1st thing &/or story time at the end of the day. No big deal.

If you're getting outraged about this, buckle up, because you're in for a really fun ride as your son goes through primary and secondary school!!

Good. Always amazes me to see kids going home from 2.30 here. It was 9-4.30 when I was small.

Same rule change at ours too, and I don't care for it either. The idea that DC as a whole are going to benefit from more time spent in school is hardly universally accepted. I made the point that a lot of the SEN kids struggle with the length of the day already, but the consultation was a clearly a fig leaf for a decision already made.

Oh do behave.

Time to abandon thread I think.

Many schools weren’t impacted by this change because they already offered these hours. Your school must have been very short on hours for you to find this is having a noticeable impact so yes, it’s a very good thing that they are coming in line with others.

Is this a joke? That’s nursery hours! And assuming they would need lunch and playtime you’re down to 4 hours a day! Have you any idea what kids at primary schools have to learn? And how long it can take them to learn it- my lockdown home schooling showed that kids would be able to do something one day but completely unable to do it the next morning!

Plus if you did this the kids would literally be doing maths and phonics/ English for most of the day, all the other subjects plus PE, assemblies etc would be crammed into half an hour a day which wouldn’t be pleasant for the kids either. Then most kids would be off to some kind of childcare anyway to 6pm.

Well, clearly they aren't "working" from home or anywhere else if they are looking after small children, are they ?

As for "Quality time to wind down" Wind down from what ? Plus, why would anyone need as much time to "wind down" as they are actually at school ?. Very odd.