for reference
some schools in NSW already operate on different hours from the standard 9-3,
personnally with 2x primary school aged children i would support a 8am - 2pm or even 730am - 130pm
i'm also one of those people that would like retail hours to extend much like our south east asian neighbours
Distraction politics.
indeed.
of all the mess going on in politics at the moment, its convenient this 'discussion' comes up to distract the mum and dad voters with something new on the morning tv shows to talk about..
Nothing particularly bad about the current 9-3? Worked well for everyone I know, no real complaints. Moving it earlier would be ghastly for students with long commutes, as stated numerous times above.
Starting at 9 gives enough time to wake up, get ready and travel to school and 3 onwards also gives enough time to complete homework, unwind, etc.
i'm also one of those people that would like retail hours to extend much like our south east asian neighbours.
Not sure those working retail would agree. They already spend the majority of weekends away from their families, no need for them to get home at 11pm each night. They often get paid minimum pay, and over the last couple of years penalty rates have been reduced for that weekend work making it less worthwhile to work those hours.
Don’t think you can generalise retail workers like that. Those who are willing to do more hours for more money can work, those who don’t want to can work during the day. If there’s not enough staff hire more. If no one in retail wanted to work past 5 why don’t I see more supermarkets or cinemas shutting at 5?
It works fine in Melbourne and actually makes life a lot more convenient. It might not sound like a big deal but the fact you can go shopping at 7pm on a Saturday is bloody great. Forgot something you need for Sunday and it’s 8pm on a Saturday and don’t want to go out tomorrow? Go to the shops and get it then you can stay home on Sunday. Feel like catching up with mates after work on a Friday? Well you’re not limited to some restaurant or cafe somewhere and can do some shopping/browsing whilst you wait.
I don’t see why it wouldn’t work in Sydney. Sydney’s supposedly aiming to become a global city but has retail hours that are like a country town. It’s not a small town, plenty of people live there and can do the work.
Yes it is a generalisation,
A couple of issues there (Having worked in major and minor retailers for the last 20 years, in positions from casual to management):
* Many no longer get to choose their hours. They can put preferences, but it depends how much the rostering manager likes them. Even permanent positions are often on variable hours (ie this week working Mon/Tues/Sat,Sunday; Next week working Tues/Fri/Sat/Sun). As long as they are given the roster enough weeks in advance, all permanent means is a guaranteed X hours per week.
*Hire more staff - Experience has shown me that extra opening hours generally means no extra hours for wages. So current staff tend to get spread out over the extra time (Instead of having 2 people working 9-5, one works 9-5, one works 12-8). Management wants the extra income without increasing wages.
* Closing at 8pm - I'm sure it's the same in Melbourne, but most people working retail don't live in the city. Previously I worked in Sydney, we closed at 7pm, so I finished at 7:30. With the commute, it was 8:30/9 by the time I got home. Late night trade meant I wasn't home until 10:30/11.
If no one in retail wanted to work past 5 why don’t I see more supermarkets or cinemas shutting at 5?
You can't imagine that corporate management don't care what staff want and just want extra $ in the till? Trust me staff don't get consulted when management want to change this type of thing. When you earn so little, it's either do it or find another job, which isn't easy for everyone.
My kids won't survive the early school hours and my wife won't survive the early mornings trying to wake the kids up for school. I would probably have to quit my current job too.
personnally with 2x primary school aged children i would support a 8am - 2pm or even 730am - 130pm
Home school if you want flexibility to suit your personal needs.
our school hours are a relic of ol England - how many 'businesses' work 9-3 …. can't think of any at the moment … so time for the school system to move into the 20th Century
as a parent of secondary kid schools, am supportive of the proposal
our school hours are a relic of ol England
England maybe, but its a relic of when only one parent could work and earn enough, while the other could stay home and look after everything else.
how many 'businesses' work 9-3 …. can't think of any at the moment … so time for the school system to move into the 20th Century
Ok so kids go to school 9-5, the same hours as you. Does that really help though?
You walk out the door at 5pm, the same time the kid does…… How does that help if you have primary school kids unless you work within 5 mins of the school.
Ok so kids go to school 9-5, the same hours as you. Does that really help though?
Yep, when people correlate school with day care…
I think a 10pm to 6am timetable would be good.
Perrotet needs to go. Viva la coup!
7-1pm will be good
Leave it as it is. Before you’ll know it, the bloody school zones will run from 7am to 6pm.
How ridiculous to have office staff and school children all rushing around on the limited transport system all to be at a certain place by 9am.
Who thought of this rubbish…. stagger the times… office workers rush to work before 9, and school children rush to work beef 10.
I think the current school hours give the best outcomes for the children and don't see any advantages sliding the time window earlier in the day or even expanding the time interval.
Kids need sleep. School starting at 7:30am would mean kids would have to be up by 6am or 6:30am depending on how far and how they travel to school. Starting at 8am only improves that by 30 minutes.
I don't see a great benefit to parents on the whole. How does an earlier end time help parents? It either means you have to interrupt your work day earlier to pickup children, or pay more for longer hours of after school care. The only financial benefit would perhaps be eliminating the need for before school care for some families.
The only change that I can see helping parents, but detrimental for the children, is starting earlier and ending later. More hours in school and less hours in after school care. Would never happen due to teachers and their unions opposing it. For most younger kids, after school care is dead time. They don't get much educational assistance with homework, they just play around. Older more mature kids can spend the time on homework, but they are usually the minority of the after school care population (older kids tend to be trusted to travel home and stay at home alone).
I'm just not seeing any benefits across an entire school family population for changing start times. Sure, there will be benefit for some, but I don't think the majority of families.
Start at 6 or 7am and then end at 6pm or later to help harden them up for competition against Chinese and Korean students.
Need to include Saturday morning as well
I got a flexible job to be able to pick up and/or drop off with my significant other. Any change should reflect what's best for kids.
"personnally with 2x primary school aged children i would support a 8am - 2pm or even 730am - 130pm"
This would cause traffic chaos by coinciding with prime tradesman traffic and peak lunch hour return to work traffic.
"i'm also one of those people that would like retail hours to extend much like our south east asian neighbours"
Our east asian neighbours have much lower retail wages and significantly more customers per staff member. It would not lead to an increase in sales if all stores started doing this.
It would be better if school started at 10am.
Honestly after 2-3 hours no one is listening…..
My thoughts are that decision makers should have a read of 'Why We Sleep' by Matthew Walker before making decisions that will impact cognitive ability, learning and retention in children and adolescents.
Studies have suggested shorter school days and later start times for children for better learning retention. Yet People want kids to be in school for more than the current hours and earlier that 8am? Lmao yeah right good luck most kids are done with 2 hours left let alone making it 2 hours longer.
Why do people force children to wake up early, its just not in their programming. Remember back to when you were young, you just did not wake up early.
In year 12 my high school started lessons at 8am. No one wants to be there that early. Not the teachers, nor the students. It didn't make any sense, but hey, someone high up said we had to do it and we did.
I suspect it will be from 8 AM to 8 PM but they will have flexible classes and longer breaks in between for the students to absorb the knowledge.
EDIT: Called it. lol.
There won't be any change imo
The teachers union would be up in arms
Ideally I think 9-5 daily 48 weeks per year would be best but the govt would go broke if every teacher went from
1000 hours per year at $100 per hour to
1900ish hours per year at $100 per hour (plus super - experienced teacher)
$200k for a classroom teacher working usual hours and the nurses would then strike etc. Gotta keep a lid on it.
The government wouldn't go broke with those hours - the government wouldn't be able to staff schools with those kinds of hours.
One minute there is an oversupply the next there are not enough.
40/25x the wages or 40/25x the children in the classroom
Either way it can't happen
I'm not sure what you're talking about. There hasn't been an oversupply in years. They've been warned about staffing shortages for at least the last 5 years. Even 10 years ago there were murmurs of it happening.
@mdavant: Now sure. Find a few outlier schools like in articles I have read, but there are a lot of casual teachers who would be permanent if offered the position and would increase their participation.
Over the top covid rules have lead to pseudo shortages in almost all industries.
Nothing special about teachers.
Unis are pumping them out like crazy still.
@mdavant: The NSW Dept. might be fine in those areas, but you can't just think of it like that. They're needing to staff an entire state. And besides, western Sydney always faces shortages.
Regardless of that point, if you increase student school hours to 9-5, as you suggested would be ideal earlier, you're going to have a fair percentage leave the profession. That basically extends face to face teaching by 2 hours per day. A teachers day doesn't end at 3 when the kids leave, and so if you extend when the kids leave until 5, you're making the teachers day push back until 6-7pm once you include all the extra things teachers do outside the classroom. The profession wouldn't cope.
@Orion au: I think 9-5 would be ideal, but as I said it is not feasible.
I have many teachers in my family.
Their day ends at 3 and the extra work is similar to mine and other professions I know.
Nothing special about teachers
Except 25 hour work week
12 weeks paid holidays
Zero weekends
No night shifts etc
Now of course I could have been a teacher, so all I am doing is pointing out that there are obviously teachers who don't understand that their conditions are far superior to other professions
@mdavant: "Except 25 hour work week
12 weeks paid holidays"
You've got no idea if you think that's the case. Even the 'zero weekends' is debatable, considering the marking that occurs at some points of the year.
@Orion au: There are many teachers in my family.
I work many unpaid hours per day in my profession, so do many other professionals.
I am not making up anything
I am accessing the teachers award and getting the figure of 25 hours from there, all in black and white, all in the public domain
Dyor
@mdavant: "I work many unpaid hours per day in my profession, so do many other professionals." - beside the point and largely irrelevant to this discussion.
"I am accessing the teachers award and getting the figure of 25 hours from there, all in black and white, all in the public domain
Dyor" - I'm assuming DYOR means do your own research? Okay, I shall. You're citing the QLD award I see. And you're right, I see that figure in black and white. It refers to "rostered" duty time. This isn't the same as total work hours - teachers aren't always "rostered". If its 5 hours a day, and add in a 45 minute lunch break, thats 9am-2:45pm. I assure you, teachers aren't working these hours. There's planning on top. Teachers can't get to school and work from 9am - there's work that goes in before. There's answering emails, calling parents, marking work, most of which gets done outside those 25 rostered hours. Usually it happens between 3-5, but sometimes on weekends, sometimes in the "holidays". And then there's the 2-3 meetings that occur in the afternoons each week, after 3pm, outside those rostered hours.
As for research, okay, let's do it. The ACT teachers EBA states, on pg., 18 Section B 5.3 that, "The standard hours are 8.30am to 12.30pm and 1.30pm to 4.51pm, Monday to Friday for a full-time employee." Clearly more than 25 hours a week. You're capable of doing the math yourself.
The Victorian EBA, on pg. 25, Section 24 3 a. states, "Ordinary hours of work for full-time employees are 76 hours a fortnight."
You gave me one random jurisdiction, so I'll give you two. I haven't looked any further beyond that, and needless to say, I don't think I need to. Your arguments are based on ignorance and a total lack of understanding for what working in a school looks like. You mightn't be making anything up, but you don't understand what you're reading. I'm done. I don't think I need to respond further.
@Orion au: "The Victorian Government Schools Agreement 2017 specifies the maximum face-to-face teaching hours that a principal may assign to a teacher as follows: for primary teachers — not more than 22 hours and 30 minutes per week."
Even worse.
22 hour 30 minute work week
Unless you really believe that teachers put in 3 hours extra work per day!!!
As I have said I have teachers in my family, they do not put in 3 hours extra per day, every day (though for only approx 190 work days per year mind you)
Stop denying the fact that teachers hav excellent work conditions and are paid very very well.
Even if teachers put in extra time per day (which they do) other professionals do too!
PS I have taught in the past…. Ooops that hurts?
@mdavant: My wife is a teacher and she works twice as hard as I do. I think you’re just a bs artist that googled some Victorian agreement. My wives conditions are crap and her pay isn’t anything special. What did you teach how to be a stupid (profanity)?
@Tony1981: I am not the poster who brought up Victoria. Perhaps you should refrain from posting personal attacks and getting angry until after you actually read the posts.
I have pointed out the award. I have pointed out that other professionals do extra hours, I have pointed out the published pay rates etc
I apologise that pointing out facts angers you, but that is more of a reflection of your character, not mine.
I have family members who are teachers. I am very aware of their work conditions / workload and they are nothing special.
I must have taught you :)
Where i grew up, schools are 7:30-12ish for mornings, 12ish-5:30 pm.
In high school you often have afternoon classes as well for literature, english and sports and on senior year you have Saturday morning classes as well.
Some schools will also offer evening classes for adult who have not completed school or working teenagers.
In saying that, in my city, parents often go home to have lunch. Or at least used to.
I'm absolutely all for it , changing the school zone times as well to help stagger traffic better and let people get to work easier due to improved traffic flow.
Instead of the usual 8am-9:30am morning peak it could be 8:45-10:25am instead and the afternoon peak could be adjusted accordingly also so people going to work or leaving work are also not fighting the same people trying to drop off and pick up their kids (so to speak) , shift workers and overnight workers you are just as important as those who are on the 9-5 but i do have to say politely that a large majority of the workforce are 9-5 workers and most are at work by 9am or slightly earlier anyway however that 30 minute time-shift would actually make a huge difference in traffic in the morning and afternoon to everyone.
It would also help parents in the morning help balance their own work-lives as well and give the kids more sleep so they have better rest to improve on all their psychological and physiological aspects they need growing up at an important age.
Not saying there would not be a lot of "adjustments" that would have to be made but change has to start somewhere.
Our kids school is 8.20am to 2.40pm.
im all for flexible school hours but that should include later and earlier starts - i would add i think the work places needs to have more 'flexible' hours to accommodate i think innovation is needed to improve work place accessibility esp for families.
I give credit to NSW for at least trying but more flexibility and innovation is needed.
We are only in school for 6 hours a day? Definitely feels longer than that.
It would create a giant mess, most employers aren’t going to allow this, it’ll also stuff up before and after school care a bit so there will be backlash from the sector
10am - 4pm for high school.
Kids in Japan start around 9am and finish in the mid afternoon, then have after school club activities. Many high school students then go to cram schools, and it's not unusual to see kids heading home on the subway at 9pm.
It seems some politicians look at that and think 'nice'.
earlier would be more convenient for you, but not good for kids since they need more sleep.
Only someone without school age kids could think that school starting EARLIER is a good idea. Either that or someone who is an early bird and is unaware that many of his/her fellow humans physiologically struggle in the morning.
School should be 9:40-4 instead of 9-3:20. Kids get more sleep, takes cars off the road at rush hour, everyone wins.
The whole school hours thing is a strategic distraction from the real issues in education - big surprise - around election time. The teachers union has long been campaigning for competitive wages to address the massive teacher shortage in this country. Who cares what the school hours are if we don't have enough teachers to staff the schools in the first place? https://www.morethanthanks.com.au/
When can schools change to the new hours ? The traffic is horrendous.
There are schools they can sleep at ;)