From the start of the next academic year, so beginning in September 2024, we need to make a slight change to the hours when the children will be in school. Recent guidance from the Department for Education states that children should be provided with 32.5 hours of education in school each week. Currently, with our soft-start system, our daily hours are 9:00 am to 3:15 pm, which means children are in school for 31.25 hours each week. All of which means children at Bayford would be 15 minutes short of the requirement each day, or an hour and a quarter each week.
A small change to our start and finish times will make us fully compliant with the new guidance, but we know that small changes can still make a big difference to some parents, so before we make any decisions, we would like to know the views of parents.
Some ways in which we could change would be:
- Remove the soft-start and have all children come into school at 8:45 am, with school finishing at 3:15 pm as it does now
- Move the soft-start to 8:30 am with gates closing and registers opening at 8:45 am, with school finishing at 3:15 pm as it does now
- Leave the morning as it is now, but add 15 minutes to the end of the school day, so all children will finish at 3:30 pm every day
There are all sorts of other tweaks we could make, changing by 5 or 10 minutes both the start and end of the day, but the three possibilities above seem to be the simplest.
We really want to know how any changes would impact you, positively or negatively. You can let us know by any of the usual channels, but it would be really helpful if you could click on the link and fill out the quick online form. How would a change at the beginning or end of the school day affect you? Are there other changes which you can suggest?
We will take all your responses into account when making our decision and we will make sure everyone knows what wil be happening well in advance.
Let us know how you feel about changes to the school day