Shorter school week due to funding issues

[gutrotweins]

Can someone explain the reasoning behind the shorter school week, when the bulk of a school budget will be used for paying for salaried staff? Where are the savings going to made?

Or... are schools just sending an unequivocal message to Government that school budgets are running perilously low?

If schools are shut on eg a Friday afternoon then all teaching staff can have their 10% PPA (planning, preparation, assessment) time then and the head won’t have to pay for anyone to cover their class to release them. I think that’s the main saving. They won’t need to pay any TAs to work then either as there won’t be any children in.

Oh yes - didn't think about PPA. (Thought that might have been ditched in the 5 years since I retired )
Thank you!

I am not convinced that the saving is that much and much more important there is a moral dilemma here in that it is leaving lots of parents with a difficult problem of what they are going to do when their kid is not in school on the Friday afternoon. The school is attempting to solve their problem but giving every parent in the school a problem

Technically PPA has to be during timetabled lesson time so I’m not sure how ‘legal’ it is in that regard anyway.