Extending the school day

[LemonSherbetFancies]

What are your thoughts on this?
Many are saying it is pointless and won't achieve much if an extra half hour or so is tagged onto the end of the day. Others have said that it should be based more on sports and free choice activities but my thinking is, isn't that what after school clubs are for?

Our lunch was 40 minutes.

Most teachers I know are working really hard once the children go home already, so would have to stay even later! Maybe they want everyone to sleep at school- no surprise from a bunch of men who went to boarding school.

It wouldn't work for ds so it's a no from me and if there is any funding that comes with this, there are far better things to spend it on.

Our local primary school now finishes at 12:30pm on Fridays. So much for caring about our children’s education never mind catching up on covid missed education.

It wouldn't really work at our secondary school as the students come in by bus so they either negotiate with the bus company and everyone on the bus does it or the bus children miss out or the car children miss out if there parents cannot accommodate them

It will never happen - not as a National thing anyway!
Teachers won't accommodate this and schools won't pay support staff more.

@MumofSpud

It will never happen - not as a National thing anyway! Teachers won't accommodate this and schools won't pay support staff more.

Damn right we won't. I'm not giving away any more of my time for free. I would require a significant pay uplift or it'll be a hard no from me.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-57246697

And this is what students think of it. It’s a ‘no’ from them.

As per pp our school has had a reduced day (lost 25 mins) due to staggering the start and finish times. Getting that time back would be good.

They also have always done small amounts of PE, art etc so I wouldn't mind a longer day if it included some of these subjects

I only want to return to the pre Covid times. An hour has been lopped off the school day.

I’m really surprised at the amount of shortened school days. My school hasn’t changed it’s time. My own DC’s school has a staggered start and end (doesn’t effect then though as they go to wraparound) but the amount of time in school is the same.

Longer school days would mean going home in December and January in darkness in much of the country if not all. There are enough people whose driving standards are inadequate in daylight, imagine the consequences if those people drove in the dark.

I hope it happens. It would bring DS1’s state grammar more in line with DS2’s indie, making pick ups easier for us.

@BunsyGirl

I hope it happens. It would bring DS1’s state grammar more in line with DS2’s indie, making pick ups easier for us.

Surely ant change to education should be for the pupil’s benefit? Not for the convenience of the parent.

I'd not comply. My DD (aged 6) is already flagging by 2pm most days, the 3pm finish due to covid has really helped her in terms of getting through the day, I am dreading them re-extending the day to 3.30pm as she'll be asleep on her feet again.

By Friday she's flagging even earlier in the day. Even her teachers have said she's not cut out for longer school days. I don't see it'd be any benefit to smaller kids. Maybe once they get to 9/10/11 and secondary age but even then I remember feeling tired by the end of the day and felt I learnt very little in period 6 Maths compared to period 1 Maths.

Nope. I'm in year 1/year 2 ... kids are completely done focus-wise mid-afternoon. Extending the day will achieve nothing but cause burning resentment by any staff forced into providing the cover.

I won't be one of them.

I hope they don’t! I’m a teacher and so is DP. I could manage it but I don’t think I would feel enthusiastic towards it because I’m already shattered.

DP on the other hand gets up at 5am, sets off at 5:30, gets home at 6pm, usually brings his lunch home with him, has tea and then works until about 9pm then goes to bed. He doesn’t need to work longer hours, he’s close to burnout as it is, if he burns out it will be supply replacing him and adding extra pressure onto others.

@Piggywaspushed

The longer holiday is a red herring for private schools ; the longer lunch produces the longer day.

Dd used to have 3-4 weeks extra holidays and a much longer lunch break.

Her independent primary timings were:
Infants - 8:30am to 3:30pm
Juniors - 8:30am to 3:45pm

Where I work (state infants) the day isn't that much different at 8:40am to 3:20pm, and we have 10 minutes less lunch. The private also had assembly daily which the state infants doesn't.

DD's private secondary was 8:30am to 3;30pm
The state secondary she moved to for sixth form did have a shorter day: 8:30 to 3:00pm but has half the time for lunch as the private school did.

Not all private schools have much longer days in my experience.

Our infant school children couldn't cope with a longer afternoon. They are tired (for more academic stuff) by the time they go home already.

And many already do sports, music, hobbies etc outside of school as it is.

A longer school day could cause issues (numbers reducing and therefore loss of income, leading to potential for closing or loss of employment for staff) for providers of other after school clubs, for after school childcare providers, groups such as Rainbows/Beavers, etc.

Our school day is currently 20 minutes shorter but due to the one way system and my position in the playground I end up hanging around with the few kids who don’t walk home until about 3:40.

I wouldn’t really mind an extra half an hour teaching, but I’m not sure what we could do with it that would be really beneficial. I think any “proper learning” like grammar, mental maths etc would have to happen at the beginning of the afternoon (which it already does) as tacking it on the end would be exhausting. For my school this would probably look like half an hour extra of that kind of thing and then topic lasting the rest of the time, which I don’t think would be that great.

Realistically I can’t see the time being used for a whole additional core lesson like maths, as there wouldn’t be enough time for that without sacrificing foundation subjects. It’s half an hour; I would have thought it would be more likely to be used for something like grammar as I said. I don’t think it would add on too much marking time but it would add additional planning - can’t be done in the fly or it’s not a properly purposeful use of the time and therefore pointless. Frankly, half an hour extra SPAG would make a difference to their learning but LITERALLY only in terms of SATS because they won’t bloody use it come secondary school 😂

@MumofSpud

It will never happen - not as a National thing anyway! Teachers won't accommodate this and schools won't pay support staff more.

Teachers, teaching staff and support staff would need to be paid if they are expected to do more contact hours. Many already work far in excess of their normal hours, often working evenings, weekends and in the holidays.

Even if paid many won't want the extra hours.

If you make the day longer and want teaching staff to,teach during that time, then more planning and prep will be needed. Therefore the extra PPA needs adding into their timetables too (it's build into the contract that PPA is a set percentage of teaching time. PPA time is already not enough time to do the work in. So the staff then need to be in school classes longer, and need to do more planning/assessment so will need to work longer into their evenings/weekends. If they have their own children then this has another issue, especially if childcare didn't change their hours to accommodate this as well.

So yes, too right teachers and other teaching staff would expect to be compensated for their longer working hours, and may well just not want to have their hours changed in this way.

The cash would be better spent on funding more TAs to make sure the standards are high across the classroom and differentiating work for different groups.

Following the pandemic my top of the class daughter is now behind in some areas and ahead in others & it appears she has all but disengaged from school since lockdown 3...

I don't really see which age group of children would actually benefit much from this?

An extra half hour for secondary is going to be pointless anyway, must be difficult enough too to timetable all the different lessons for year groups as it is. So how does it work?

For primary, the very youngest in R and Y1 are likely to be too tired to actually learn anything meaningfully if their day is even longer.

Maybe they could do PE or something in the 30 mins extra and that would gain a bit of extra time for catching up on phonics, maths etc, but tbh I'm just not seeing the value of it. But hey, it's easier for the gov/DfE than looking at more meaningful long term changes to the curriculum that would have been beneficial anyway, isn't it.

My school's day has remained the same length for covid though parents can collect 10 minutes earlier if they wish. We lengthened the collection time to try to spread the concentration of parents in and out of the playground. But it's optional for the parents. The children are normally reading, etc in the extra 10 minutes,

No, no no! School days must not be made longer, they're more than long enough. The last thing we need after this rubbish year is a major overhaul.

I take it none of the people proposing this have ever tried to teach yr 9, p 5 on a Thursday?