Do most prep schools have long hours? And what are your experiences of them?

[Rivvy]

Hi

This is my first message on here and I know it's a bit of of touchy subject! But here goes..

DD is in state infant school at the moment, I have looked around at private prep schools to move her to in year 3.

Two of our local schools have very long hours often not finishing till 5pm (with out prep or clubs which would take it to 6 or 7pm. Is this the norm? I understand it helps working parents but I fit my work around school hours so it seems a very long day to me.

Does anyone have experience of these long hours and do their children do anything in the evenings or are all their activities school based?

It varies greatly. Dd is in pre-prep(infants) and her hours are 8.45am - 3.20pm. When she goes into Prep (juniors) she will finish at 3.40pm. There is an option of clubs or after school care after that.

At another local prep school the children don't finish til 4pm. I consider this to be too long and wouldn't consider that.

The prep school my kids went to finished at 5pm in Y3 and Y4, and then 5.30 for Y5-8. It's 'normal' for the kids. At this school, their academic lessons finished at 3pm, and then they went to Games for 90 minutes, then tea, then prep (prep is wonderful btw, because you don't have to hassle them at home).

The school I work in now finishes at 3.25 in the Prep dept, but there are activities running up to 6pm, in three separate sessions. This is when kids to ballet, choir etc.

Ours is 8:15- 3:30 in Yrs3-5 and later ending at 4pm in Yrs 6-8. But there are clubs, rehearsals etc after school, so typically pick-up is later. Trade-off seems to be the longer hols - in effect you're doing a similar number of hours but in shorter terms.

at mine i started at 8:30am and finished at 3:50pm

oh yes but then you could do prep and other after school cluns up until 6.

4.15
but they do games almost every day in the afternoon so it isn't all work until then

but I agree it is long

we don't really do any after school stuff, all the rehearsals clubs music lessons etc are during school hours (exept golf and polo )

hi

Thanks for your replies. I hadn't thought of the holidays!

I know a child who goes to one of the schools and registers at 8 and gets picked up at 5pm (apparently that's with no clubs/prep). It seems such a long day.

It's a lovely school but it's the one thing that's holding me back - it ticks all the other boxes. They also do lots of sport but don't do any Saturday matches or school which is good.

Thanks again for your replies

it is a long day, but it isn't full on intense at the books as I say. and holidays are long. and if you haven't got saturday school that is EXCELLENT
If you are happy with everything else about it then give it a go. I find that they can cope with stuff in year 3 and 4 that you wouldn't have believed looking forward from year 2 iyswim. they grow up SO much at that age... sigh...

You may also find they have a long lunch hour to do sports/clubs etc in daylight that ohterwsie would be grim in Novemebr after school.We looked at one last week where the Hm was at pains to point out that this was the reason for the long day.
I would prefer this to the rag bag of clubs they have chosen that mean odd finishing times on different days at DC current school, and ferrying about the to the on-school ones.

My son's day is 8.25 until 4.10pm. He's y6 and just about copes. One evening a week he's there until 5.50pm doing extra activities.