Our School wants to finish at 3pm everyday and deliver 6 lessons instead of 8...postives and negatives?

[flowerpot1000000]

How on earth are the teachers expected to teach everything that's required...tough enough now. Im not sure how I feel about this

That is a weird way to organise the lessons though. 1,2,3. I wonder why on earth they haven't gone for 2,2,2?

Our school recently introduced double lessons for some GCSE subjects which has apparently worked really well. But you wouldn't know they were there just from the outline timetable.

Yeah, I’d definitely only have two lessons after lunch, and make lunch later. Behaviour after lunch with 3 lessons in a row will be a big challenge.

Ours have tutor time then 2, 2 and 1 after lunch

I would hate to teach in a school with 3 lessons after lunch. Teens concentrate much better in the mornings and behaviour is better.

Secondary HoD here. Fewer longer lessons are better than lots of short lessons. We finish at 3.10 after 5 hour long lessons. My last school finished at 3.35 and outcomes were much worse with a similar cohort, so it's what you do with the time that counts.

I agree. Three lessons a day works s0 well at ours.

Our school tried having 3 very long (1 hr 50) lessons each day, but this year has reverted to 6 55 minute lessons, which can be doubled if necessary. While certain subjects that had usually had doubles in the past (science, art, PE etc) found the longer lessons worked well, for others such as languages and maths, they much prefer the shorter lessons with more regular contact with the children. Trying to teach a language with just one or maybe two sessions a week is much more difficult than with 3 or 4 shorter lessons.

OP I agree with others, on that proposed model I would push break and lunch back one lesson. That's an early lunch and a loooong afternoon.

15 mins is plenty for tutor time; time for notices, a brief assembly/discussion one day, reading another, uniform check another, sign planners another.

My DCs' school and the one I taught at have five x 1hr lessons. Works better than lots of small lessons, wastes less time and easier for planning too. Unless the new proposal features a significantly shorter day (does it?) they will learn more on the new plan, I'd say

DD's school moved to 3pm finish. She's home by 3.15 which means she can have a snack, stare at her phone for a while but still have plenty of the evening left to do homework/activities.

The only downside is she often misses lunch if she has sports practice during the 45 lunch break.

My school used to have 5 1 hour lessons, we had 1 class, then break, 2 classes, then lunch, then 2 classes then home. I feel like that is nicely spread over the day. Hours were 8:45 - 3:25

DDs school has 5x 50 minute lessons, which seems short but as it’s a private school the class sizes are much smaller than the comp she came from which had 5x 1hour lessons but more time was spent moving around the site to different buildings for the lessons.
Overall the results in both schools (non academically selective) are pretty similar.
At the comp her day was 8:50am to 3:30pm. At her independent it’s 8:00am to 1:00pm for the academics (Then vocational training until 6:30pm)

My son's school went form 6 to 5 lessons a day, so 1 hour for each lesson.

They have 20 mins tutor time every morning, 2 lessons and break, then 1 and lunch then 2 lessons and finish at 3.10pm.

Every week they have a rolling tutor time where they miss an entire lesson and it is spent with their form tutor across the entire school. It is constantly moving so that they don't miss the same lesson all the time.

I feel it works really well.

At our school, late comers are greated at the school gates. There is some leniency for those busing in but cyclists must be in school within a 5 minute grace period and not repeat offend.

Wave goodbye to practical subjects, unless school are proposing doubles.

How would moving to 6 longer lessons, rather than 8 short ones, mean that they lose practical lessons?

Dd still does practical lessons for an hour

Ds1 has 3 double lessons a day. With the odd single pairing ( has a fortnightly timetable). Starts at 8.30 and finishes at 3.10 but theure chang8ng to 8.15 to 2.55 in September to allow more time after school for interventions and enrichment. Seems to work ok.

Dd has 6 lessons a day, usually doubles. I used to have 8 so could have days with 4 or more subjects with only 35 mins a lesson. Not really enough time and too much to carry.

So basically I think he gets 100 mins a fortnight of art/cookery/tech/drama/music/textiles which are on a rotation - this term was tech and drama, last term was cookery/music, next term will be art/textiles.

Which school please x

@flowerpot1000000 the statutory minimum number of hours is 32.5 per week, so as long as they're meeting that they should be able to cover the curriculum: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/length-of-the-school-week-minimum-expectation

As others have said, the upside of fewer lessons is less time wasted moving students around.

Some people may say their children can't concentrate for the longer lesson. Others will say it benefits their children to move around less. Swings and roundabouts.

Ours has 6 x 50 mins lessons per day