Teacher lunch hour!

[everychildmatters]

First off, I am glad I left primary teaching last year after 20 years in; things are only getting worse. I feel for the colleagues I left behind.
It is now becoming a common expectation that, for many different reasons, teachers are now being expected to supervise children over the lunch hour.
I used to avoid this by taking the time to which I was entitled but in order to do this I had to physically leave the building - go for a walk etc. In reality of course this was only for about half an hour or so as I wanted to be back in time to prepare my afternoon lessons.
AIBU to think teachers should be entitled to a lunch break?!!

Who is supposed to supervise children? I recall there always being a teacher present. Usually they would take it in turns like some rota.

Teachers still aren’t paid for lunch time. It’s not part of their directed hours. So, in theory, none of them should be doing anything in that time unless they are paid extra. Anyone who knows anything about teachers knows that is absolutely not what happens in any school, anywhere. Sigh. Yanbu at all.

This.

Lunch time is unpaid. Therefore, we can't be directed to work during that time.

I mean, we do - in reality, my actual 'break' is around 15 mins, but we can't be directed to. It's not part of directed time.

@BluntPlumHam So you do expect teachers to give up their unpaid lunch hour to supervise kids? Which also means in reality not having a break away from the classroom from when they get in until when the children are dismissed? For me that was 8 - 3.30 (but obviously didn't leave school until much later). I don't suppose they have a right to go to the toilet either?
To answer your question: lunch time supervisors.

@TeacherTales It is so unfair! I'm a tutor now and once I have travelled to the home of my next student in my lunch break I really feel fortunate to have that 40 mins or in the middle of the day that I never got in teaching.

@everychildmatters I'm sure @BluntPlumHam doesn't personally expect you to supervise children in your unpaid time.

Your employers do, however. That's who this should be taken up with. My child's school have a team of lunchtime supervisors and the teachers cover the playground on a rota. It's not ideal but it works. I'm not sure what the answer is, unless we just leave kids outside knocking around together without an adult.

What's your solution, @everychildmatters ?

@abathofmilkwithladydi Lunchtime supervisors should be supervising. All teachers should be entitled to their (unpaid) lunch break. I'm assuming you get a lunch break if you work?
Employers should absolutely stop asking this of teachers.

At my school, the HT and DHT do it on rotation.

@TeacherTales I suppose that makes more sense if they are non-teachimg so can be flexible with when they take their lunch break.

Weren’t there strikes about this in the 1980s? For a while when DS1 was first at school I had to bring him home for lunch and take him back afterwards. This meant four round trips in about six hours, which wasn’t easy with newborn DS2. It wasn’t a settling-in thing.

A neighbour/friend who worked at a secondary school used to go home at lunchtime, bringing several colleagues with him as they also wanted to leave the site.

I can’t find any reference to exactly this online, so maybe I’m misremembering. Or, perhaps it was a local thing.

There's a rota first thing for the school gates and a rota at break times but at lunch the playtime supervisors (dinner ladies) watch the children.
In some schools teachers run lunch clubs (voluntarily).

As an ex teacher of 30 plus years i hear u. I now have an office job- 30m break. I walk for 30m- it great

We had to do a break and lunch duty and run 2 clubs a week during lunchtime…
yeh, no lunch for us.

Are you sure you’re entitled to a full hour? Many contracts just say a reasonable lunch break which could mean 30mins/45mins and some schools ask teachers to supervise children as part of their lunch time because of this.

Our “hour” is 35 minutes.

If schools expect this, it should be taken into account when calculating directed hours.

I do a 35 minute lunch duty a week as a secondary teacher. 25 minutes is the legal entitlement for lunch.

Edit: it is calculated into directed hours. The 25 min lunch is unpaid/not directed.

Doesn’t happen in Scotland. Teachers are never asked/expected to supervise before school, at break time or at lunchtime. Support staff do it.

I'm SLT, if i get five minutes, it's a good day.
All staff where I work are entitled to 30 minutes but it gets eaten into with behavioral and pastoral issues.
Working 8-6 with no lunch is no fun and one of the many reasons we have retention crisis in education.

Primary school teachers have been very lucky in that most schools have lunchtime supervisors. High schools haven't for quite some time and all staff have to do lunch a break duty on a rota. They do get a free school meal when on duty but that's it and yes I do think this is unfair but I'm assuming it's again a cost cutting exercise so they don't have to employ more staff.

lunch is unpaid in most jobs and usually 30mins. Depends on the school, we had to cover one break a week and an occasional lunch if we were short staffed. Clubs were before/after school. My lunchtimes were spent marking.

If you are a ‘burgundy book’ school, the length of your lunch break would depend on how the 1265 hours of directed time a year are allocated at your school. You should have a reasonable length break in the middle of the day during which you cannot be directed to work. This is not just teacher rules, it’s every job rules. The lunch break for teachers was hard fought for in the 1980s when teachers stopped doing lunch duty and mid day supervisors were employed to look after the children while the teachers have a break. The issue now is that the army of mums who didn’t have a job and could afford to work for a few hours in the middle of the day on minimum wage have gone as those mums need to work longer hours and for better pay in order to provide an adequate standard of living for their families. This has led to some schools asking teachers to supervise lunch breaks as there is nobody else to do it. It should be SLT who take on this role as they have no directed hours restrictions.
Teachers should ask for a directed hours calendar for the year, we should be given one in September but I’ve never met a single teacher who has had one and most haven’t heard of them. It should set out how the 1265 hours of directed time are spread through the year and should contain parents evenings, lunch duties etc as part of this. For context, I work on a teacher contract in a non school setting, my directed hours are 9-4 every day with half hour lunch breaks. I don’t do anything like parents evenings out of those hours and that covers my 1265 hours. It’s also worth remembering that there’s a sentence about working above those hours for preparation etc but that these hours above the 1264 can’t be directed, they are for you to choose to fit in as you can. We are a profession who are walked all over in terms of how we are expected to work beyond our directed time but we are also a profession who, on the whole, are disempowered because we don’t take the initiative to find out the nuts and bolts of our contracts and stand up for the restrictions of them. You may find lunch cover is part of your 1265 hours, you may find it’s not.

In my years as a teacher I never once had a lunch hour. I just gobbled down my sandwich and had to either run clubs, prep the afternoon lesson or do other admin. Little interaction with colleagues since they were all at it too!

Breaks were also spent supervising the playground or walking round school if wet with a coffee in hand if I was able. (This may now be illegal for H & S reasons).

When I left teaching I experienced the following phenomena for the first time with wide-eyed wonder:

• having time to eat a leisurely lunch - maybe even with colleagues!
• coffee breaks just to myself
• being able to go to the loo whenever I wanted!

Bliss.

Yes.

Now ask the same question of ambulance drivers, social workers, police officers, carers, a whole host of professions

All people who of course are entitled to a lunch break but are unlikely to take it if they're with a client in an ongoing situation, stuck in traffic on their way to their next job/client, etc etc

All number of scenarios where the technical entitlement doesnt really exist. I couldnt tell you when I last took a proper lunch break. Meetings run over into the next one, a court hearing goes on longer than expected, the 'lunch' is actually spent with the barrister sourcing more information or documents, a child is in need of emergency action, the list is endless

In many jobs you cant just stop at a certain time and say Im not working now. Front line work is like that.

I worked in a secondary. New management in the last year I was there was very keen for everyone(apart from office and maintenance staff) to be "boots on the ground", either supervision or running lunch clubs.I was cover manager and had a half hour lunch. I lost that 2 days, then three days and finally five days a week. I generally didn't have any "free" lessons and my lunch usually went on sorting cover and my other tasks.
People were running around demented, barely getting time for toilet breaks nevermind a coffee or lunch. But it benefited the calm running of the school, so that's ok.