playtime staff ratios?

[spudpudding]

Can anyone advise seems to be 2 staff to ks2 playtime - approx. 150 kids? Yesterday DS was pushed over and dragged in a woodland area at the bottom of the playground by 2 other boys. Seems to me that they need more staff? does anyone know the ratios??

I don't think there is a legally required one for break times. There might be best practise but generally in my experience schools do what works for them and seems reasonable.

If you have a specific concern, I would direct it at the school eg this happened. What do you intend to do about it?

Our school has 2 KS2 classes and one person from each class (eith teacher or TA) from each class goes outside.

The school I work in there are approx 130 per year group and and they have two TAs per year group at breaktimes. Each year group has its own playgorund so much the same ratios as you describe. We have a lot more staff about at lunchtime.

I hope your son is ok by the way!

I'm not sure of the legal requirements but when I was a lunch time supervisor there were three of us to supervise 4 classes of 30 children. This was KS2.

In KS1 there were 3 other welfare staff to three classes of 30 plus any SEN staff that were needed for children who had 1 to 1.

For morning break we have two teachers at KS2 (240 children), and one teacher and a TA for KS1 (120 children). At lunchtimes there are many more TAs/MSAs.

I'm not sure that more staff on duty would necessarily have stopped what happened to your son. What's more important is that it is dealt with appropriately now, and the perpetrators disciplined.

I think the legal ratio is something ridiculous to 1:70 - a couple of years ago a school I know well had a major budget crisis and absolutely everything was cut to the complete bone. Parents volunteer to come in and do a lunch duty to help out the few paid staff - I think that really is going beyond and above the call of duty (but shows what wonderful, supportive parents the school has).

I used to work in a large junior school (approx. 400 children) and we would have 2 teachers on duty outside at break time and 1 in the hall doing detention. It wasn't that unusual for me to be out there on my own, if the person I was paired with went to get a drink before coming out...

At my last school two teachers for nearly 600 children at break times, (yrs 5-8), current school two teachers for about 200 (yr 3-8) and pre-prep have 2 for the 3 classes. There are no 'legal' ratios, only what the school sees fit.

Two is a standard number as it means that someone can fetch help whilst leaving the rest supervised by an adult. It also means that the majority of staff can have a quick break and go to the loo unrushed! It is tiring constantly being in a classroom and for many teachers break time is the only chance in the morning that they get to visit the toilet.

Thanks, as it was parents evening I spoke to the teacher who said she would to speak to all those concerned. DS is fine and said that as soon as he said that he was going to tell the teacher it stopped. There were 2 teaching assistants on duty that were not aware of the incident - I appreciate that they can't be watching all the kids.

The school seem to have a bit of a laid back attitude by my standards - I am sometimes guilty of over parenting! A friend is a parent governor so going to discuss this with her. Just wondered if there are guidelines on supervision.

There is on-going problems with another child who was involoved, if anything else happens will go in and see acting head - headteacher has gone (another story).

thanks for advice x