I'm glad you trust your school enough to give your child a rounded and well balanced diet, along with explaining why its important, e.g. to eat their veg, and making sure they actually eat it, I certainly wouldn't! I take it the school also gets the kids to help with the cooking and to chip in with the washing up and tidying up afterwards as well? (Arguably far more important life skills than an hour or 2 extra learning about Shakespeare or osmosis).
Why would we need to extend the school day for this to happen
To be honest your comments about childcare costs and needing 2 parents working just make it sound like you resent the fact you have to pay for wraparound childcare.
In my opinion we need to be doing more to get parents engaging with their children's upbringing rather than the opposite!
Yes I trust my sons school to feed him what an odd comment. I see the menus and the types of food they are preparing (the mountain of fruit and vegetables they get delivered every week is massive) Plus my son regularly comes home and talks about the food he has eaten that day. The days of chips, burgers and fried foods are over (except on fish and chip Friday). I’d be quite happy to continue paying for school food after the free school dinners end.
I can’t remember the last time I washed up. Why? Because I have a dish washer. Washing up isn’t exactly an essential life skill and even if it was I wouldn’t expect the school to teach this skill.
I agree with you that cooking and food tech could be a bigger part of the school day but without extending the day what else do you feel should be dropped?
So you expect a visit to a religious building with meaningful conversation to happen within an hour. Interesting.
I don’t resent paying for wrap around Childcare at all. FYI it costs £9.00 (minus tax and NI as I can pay for these costs via Childcare vouchers) for 3 hours at our school and that includes food and snacks and all of the materials for the activities he does within those hours. It’s brilliant, it’s staffed by brilliant people and I have no problem in paying for it because it allows both my wife and I to work AND more importantly my son really enjoys it.
When did I say we need 2 parents working? But well done making that assumption. However lots of families do need two full time working parents just to be able to afford to live.
Why would extending school hours (whilst removing home work) reduce parent/child engagement? We engage just fine with our son, by limiting ‘screen time’ and planning out regular activities. We also take an active interest in his schooling and make sure we attend as many of the school activities as we can. I don’t think we have missed one in 18 months to be honest. Whether that’s one or both of us attending. Again I appreciate this is made possible by having very good employers who are flexible.
There would be no additional costs for teachers.. We’re on a fixed salary! I could work 34 hrs or 74 hrs and get paid exactly the same.
At most the costs would have to cover additional resources.
Schools have tried extended days and I’ve yet to see it catch on. The effects are negative rather than positive, for the children that is.
Teachers are an important part of a child’s life. I’d welcome a rethink of what they do, how much they do and how much we pay them. We should be creating an environment where teaching is a aspirational career choice and it encourages the best people and candidates into these roles.
Is the negative due to having more hours to do more of the same? Like I’ve said in previous comments I would like to see a fundamental redesign of how we teach and interact with children at school. More of the same simply wouldn’t work as a lot of teaching (in its current format) is boring.