Or is 30 minutes too short for school lunch?

[flossydog]

I live next to a school, and it has a 30 minute lunch break. I went to three secondary schools growing up, and checking their timetables, they now have a 35, 40, and 45 minute lunch break respectively. I suspect some of them have shortened the break in the 20 odd years since I left.

AIBU or is 30 minutes too short to eat your lunch, go to the loo, and socialise?

(I often take an hour out for lunch at work as an adult, but it's not as if I'm on the clock.)

There is keeping them busy and stressing them out.
Some kids must need down time.

Society wonders why so many young people have MH issues and anxiety yet.
They moan about them being fat and no exercise.
Yet we encourage short lunch breaks little time to que and eat never mind walk a bit further to the nearest Greggs.
Little time to socialise and even less time to do any clubs or anything.

But we'll just blame mobile phones for everything.
Someone needs to look at the big picture

That’s a slight different issue to the length of the lunch break. You are absolutely right that’s not OK (assuming not faffing around and taking ages)

30 minutes should be enough to do those things if school has adequate facilities and staggers lunches properly. If they don’t and people don’t have time to eat then they need to look again.

But a lot of them don’t have adequate facilities. So surely it’s easier to give 10 mins extra at lunch than build extra canteens and toilet blocks?

Lots of schools probably find staggering lunch breaks quiet a hard thing to do keeping in mind the teachers need a break too.

Its easy to say half the school get lunch at 12 the other half at 1 but how do you make sure teachers also get time for lunch?

Timetables for a school seem like a dark art to me in the first place making it more complicated sounds like a nightmare

I like the 30 minute idea. We had 1 hour 10 mins when I was at secondary school. It was far too long. Always fights.

I went to school in the 80s. We had a 90 minute lunch break, which was great. We did sports and other clubs at lunchtime, and did homework in the library. The school day started at about 8.20, and we left at about 3.45. Sometimes we did other clubs after school.

My children barely have time to buy lunch as they only get 30 minutes, and lunches aren’t staggered so the queues are huge.

1 hour 45 mins at my child's school (plus a 20/30 min morning break) I get 30 mins at work if I am lucky!

That depends how the school does things. I know where my niece works she has certain years she works with (currently Y10: and Y11) so technically the teachers would have lunch at the same time as the children but I don't know what happens if they work with different years with different breaks.

Yes thats what I mean, how would it work for teachers taking different year groups?

I think timetabling a secondary school must be a complete nightmare at the best of times without adding in different year groups having different breaks and making sure the teachers also get breaks.

Why have we become so scared of our children becoming bored? If they are getting into trouble then that's a separate issue to do with their behaviour. At my son's school in France they have a two hour lunch break as standard. The children are handed over to the lunchtime staff at 12 until 13:55 so the teachers also get a proper break. They go to the canteen in waves and when they aren't in the canteen they are either in the playground (with supervision), library or free time area playing board games, chess etc. Some children eat at home but otherwise they have to get almost 900 students fed in that time. It's the same format in primary school too. My son is 11 and plays tag and hide and seek with his friends or they chat or he reads. Once a week he has choir during the lunch break. Honestly, school isn't just about teaching them to pass exams, it's an education in socialising, eating together and how to conduct yourself through life. The lunch break up an important part of that and the lunchtime staff are really important people to help them learn these skills by correcting manners, resolving playground conflict but otherwise they just leave them to it and let them get a bit bored so they develop some independence and cultivate their own interests.

100% agree with this.

That sounds like bliss for staff too giving them time to do stuff.
What time does school start and finish in France?
The UK is generally 9.00-3.00

8:30-16:00/17:00 depending on their timetable. There are sometimes gaps in the timetable too which isn't ideal but at least means they can get some homework done.

Thats a long day but it must help parents getting to work too.

The UK is reported to have lowest happiness/ satisfaction with life rates in Europe.

Phones take the brunt of the blame. But I can't help feel thats only a small part of it. There has to be a bigger picture. But anything else will cost money to fix.
Lack of investment, lack of quality jobs for people, and the resulting lack of hope.

And you've added to my list lack of play time. Lack of freedom. I'm amazed from this thread that some secondaries don't allow pupils to leave school at lunchtime.