"compulsory" extra lessons, legally required?

[russelldb]

Hi,
First time poster, bit of a long time on and off lurker.

My son is in GCSE year and his school have added two compulsory extra lessons to his week. A Session 0 for an hour before school, and a session 6 for an hour after school.

They're calling these "interventions". My son is amongst the top students in the school. His results/reports all show hard work and project good achievement at GCSE. His maths is exceptional. There has been no evidence that he is underperforming in either of the two subjects.

He thinks that the better students are being hot-housed to try and boost the school's results. I don't know about that, but I do wonder if this intervention is more for the school's benefit.

My question: where do we stand legally? We don't want to burn him out. He's doing fine at school. Work-life-balance means a lot, and education is a long long run (life long ideally). I think these sessions will be counter-productive, both short and long term. I've emailed the school to explain this, ask for him to be excused, and offered to meet and discuss. However, forewarned is forearmed: does anyone have some prior experience, legal advice, or links to same for me?

Many thanks in advance

Russell

We are having the same issue, and for the teacher on the post down below, please be quiet. You teachers are an issue. You go on like you have some legal rights to our children. You need to realize if extra lessons out of school hours were an option, the same parents that moan about it would actually take up this opportunity. The fact of the matter is that it's not an option; it's forced. You can't threaten or force a parent and expect a good response. It's how you offer these opportunities that matters most. Most will not take this opportunity, and it's down to the fact we live in a country that thinks it's normal to have children in education from as little as two years old to 18, then they're forced into uni or college or work thereafter. There seems to be no option to spend quality time with families in the UK, and we all work to just simply pay bills while left to struggle to eat. So yes, the state of the UK then leads to anger and resentment towards schools when issues like this are forced upon us. These kids spend enough time in school, and schools have never done this before. I was never forced; we had the option for extra lessons, and it did our generation just fine.

Time you joined a union! If it's an activity on school site that you have been told to do, it's directed and should be in the directed time budget. It can't be called "compulsory".
It can't be covered by " any other hours deemed reasonable" either because thats are for activities where you have control over time and location such as marking and lesson planning( and even these should be within a reasonable number of hours in a working week)
Heads who want to put on these extra sessions should be asking for volunteers and paying them or giving them time off in compensation. This isn't fiction. It actually happens in well run schools.