School hours

[codswallop]

Being an old codger I can be out and about at all hours during the day and what amazes me is the amount of school children you see in the streeets.They are obviously out with permission because there are so many of them.Don't they do the 9.00 am -16.15pm anymore,or are the teachers doing their usual "teacher trainng"?????

[tiggerblue10]

I think school finishes earlier than 16.15 these says. I'd say about 3pm but don't quote me on it.

[Mosaic]

Some of the kids you see might be on the 14-19 Diploma courses set up in the last couple of years. The idea was, one school took all the kids from round about to do engineering, another school took them to do 'health and social care' (real, not a made up name) etc. Consequently kids have to be given time to get from their base school to the diploma school. Yes, I agree, its ***.

[ummmm]

3.25 mine finish school.

Plus year 10's and above can attend courses at college.

[Mosaic]

well if I can't say that can i say rowlocks?

[factor-fiction]

I'm a teacher. I leave home at 6.45 and get to school for 7.30 to start setting up rooms and finalising lesson plans and materials.
Pupils start to arrive at 8.00 and lessons start at 8.35. Lessons end at 3.30 but there are many after school revision classes, activities and detentions, phone calls to parents and meetings (and yes the occasional traininhg event) so I leave at 5.00-5.30. Approximately once a month we also have a parents' evening until 9.00 at night
( I won't bore you with details of marking and planning at home each evening and weekend.)
Pupils shouldn't be out during the day except perhaps at lunchtime but of course maybe 2-3% nip out for a smoke or just to escape lessons.

[Chaffinch]

I think it depends on the school. My daughter is in her first year at Uni, but at her school, lessons started at 08.30 and finished at 15.40. She also went to school Saturday morning from 09.00 to 13.00, but got an extra weeks holiday in the summer.

Swings and roundabouts

[mollykins]

9am until 3.30 but we often get let out between 3.15 and 3.30 if we've finished all our work, and they can just let sixth formers go, without having to wait for the bell :)

[sara3]

my kids, 8.30 - 3pm, with a short lunch break.

[Buenchico]

When I started teaching, in 1975, the school day finished at 3.30pm.

However it was decided that the lunch break was too long, because it resulted in lots of bored teenagers roaming the streets at lunchtime. Given that there were two other secondary schools within easy walking distance, that meant that gang rivalries were likely to break out. So the lunch break was cut from 70 minutes to 50 minutes. The start of the school day was also moved ten minutes earlier, meaning that the school day could end at 3pm without the loss of any teaching time.

Around the same time, other Sheffield schools also reviewed the hours when formal teaching took place. Many of them adopted a similar model to our own, but at least one (by starting the school day earlier) was able to finish at 2.40pm without the loss of any teaching time.

Chris

[codswallop]

Thank you all for explaining it all to me.My schooldays were in the '40's so I should have expected that school hours would have changed,but it has been very interesting reading your replies!!