School cleaner - mornings

[BeMintCat]

Why do schools have morning cleaners (6am - 8am)? School have just advertised, but I thought cleaning all happened after school.

It's because the caretaker usually locks up the school at 6pm every evening. If a cleaner needs 10 minutes more, they can finish off until 8:10am if need be (unpaid - it's sneaky ofcourse). It's also cooler at 6am in the morning, and given a fresh clean for the day.

Schools can have 101 ways of doing cleaning, it won't all happen after school. My former school had cleaners both mornings and evenings.

Thinking back, I think it might have been they did rubbish bins, cleaning tables and chairs etc, corridors in afternoons, and hoovered classrooms/offices in the morning, but I'm not overly sure.

It might be easier to find people who want to work 6-8am. It means they're free then to either do a second job or be at home with younger children. 3pm - 5pm isn't as convenient for many people.

My Reception classroom is cleaned first thing. I hate it. The toilets are left smelling overnight, and the floor is often still wet when the children arrive. The only thing that is done the night before is the emptying of the bins. Personally I think the toilets and the mopping of hard floors should be done after school too. I'm ok with the hoovering and wiping of tables to happen in the morning, but it's still not ideal when you're trying to set up for the day.

There are still a lot of staff working on site up till 6pm so they’d be getting in the way of the cleaners.

In my school, we have circa 60 classrooms, halls, offices, sports centre, drama studio, chapel, toilets, staff room and the communal corridors as well as the canteen but this is cleaned by catering company.

We have a team of 15 cleaners - who typically work either 5.30-8.30am (classroom cleans) and then all other areas are cleaned between 3:30pm and 6.30pm - school is locked up by site manager at 7pm unless school function is on.