So How Long Is The School Day Now?

[sunny-dave]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22202694

It seems to my eye that school days are way shorter than in my youth. Can anyone confirm

a : The bandwidth (ie when they start in the morning until they finish in the afternoon)

b : The contact/lesson hours

For comparison I started at 8:45 every morning, finishing (on average) at around 4:15 each afternoon (earlier on days with academic subjects in the afternoon, later on days with sports).

That was 6 days a week too (and no - I wasn't a boarder).

I would guestimate at 35 forty minute academic lesson periods, plus three afternoons of sport, plus lunchtime activities and some voluntary (yeah, right) community work after school on one day. Plus homework, lots of homework ...

It seems rather more than I see being done now?

[rockyracoon]

Kids school, start bell goes at 8.50am
First lesson starts 9.15
4 lessons per day
Finish 3.45

[rockyracoon]

Sorry, lessons are hour and 15 minutes long.

[MyBlackHen]

9 till 4 for me.

[sherrardk]

My eldest has 5 x 1 hour lessons a day but the school is about 10 miles away so there is travelling time too. I am against a longer day (they don't need it, most of the time is spent on busy work anyway).

[B00]

you were at school 6 days a week?? When? What years?

Mini boo starts school at 8.50 and finishes at 3.15, seems long enough for me.

I agree that holidays could do with being shorter, especially the colder months. I quite like her having the 6 weeks summer holidays though, especially if the weather's decent (hah!), it's great seeing her along with the neighbour kids playing out, being...well kids!

[factor-fiction]

In all schools I teach in the standard day is 5 hours of lessons, plus 30 mins of form periods (in which some RE, Citizenship and PSHE activities take place). In addition there is one break and a lunch period, with the latter including any lunchtime clubs).
There are usually some after school enrichment activities, revision classes etc which last around an hour..

[ummmm]

8.50 - 15.25

15.55 when they have detentions.......

[vulcan42]

It might all change
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22202694

[sherrardk]

He didn't do too well with his other ideas. The man just to seems to say stuff for the sake of it (and good luck to him in changing the working hours of teachers).

[sunny-dave]

I was lucky (academically at least) to get an 11-plus scholarship to a local Independent School.

I think if I'd been warned that it would cost me all my term-time Saturdays from 11-18 I might not have been quite so pleased ...

I think the 25 hour week sounds about right - I just seem to see a lot of local schools who must cram these 'contact hours' into the shortest possible band-width so as to get the pupils off their hands by about 2:15 - 2:30 or so.

[sherrardk]

The last school I worked at finished at different times on different days (it was very confusing).

[DJHawkes]

seems a very short day to me, at the grammar school we had an 8.50 start and 4pm finish. lunch was from 12.30 until 1.45. Most afternoons the last 2 lessons were a double period, I think single lessons were 40 minutes long.

[sherrardk]

Lunch times are shorter now (too difficult to 'police').

[B00]

swings and roundabouts dotty, as Sherr's pointed out, lunchtimes tend to be shorter. If I remember correctly, Mini Boo has an hour for lunch.

[DJHawkes]

lol god job we weren;t policed, but probably the worse thing we did was sneak into the wrong wet day room and listen to the transister radio, though a few did try to sneak out into town for a crafty smoke in the coronation park,

[gness]

We used to have a ninety minute lunch break.....good for a quick shop or leg wax. Then it was shortened to sixty five minutes and an earlier finish at the end of the day.

[FredPuli43]

I did six days, right from age 7, but only until 12.30 on Saturdays from ages 7 to 11. I think my parents thought that was the next best thing to my boarding, which I objected to, because they didn't have to see me much ! Lessons were 30 minutes and 40 minutes from age 12. Hours: 8.45 to 4.15. Never had time to wax my legs.

[jim360]

Law restricts formal school times to 5 hours a day for 5 days a week, so 25 hours, which includes sports. Your school week comes to just a little over 23 hours, I think, but that's missing 3 afternoons (a couple hours each) of sport.

So they're about the same - only you had more Physical Exercise!

[craft1948]

There doesn't seem to be so much sport in the curriculum nowadays. In Winter we used to have gymnastics, hockey, and netball, and in Summer we had rounders or cricket, lawn tennis, and athletics.

[jno]

don't know how long sunny dave was allowed for leg waxing. I think I started at 9, finished at 3.45, hour for lunch. Much the same as jno jnr. Homework about the same too.

A friend's son had to stay at school till about 4.30 every day, might have been 5, to do supervised homework. This instilled better habits in him than jno jnr, who had to learn diligence at uni, and I always thought it wasn't a bad idea.