Friday afternoons off for pupils who ‘lack focus’ after long week

A PRIMARY school is to give pupils Friday afternoons off as its children “lack focus” by the end of the week.

From September, Neyland Community School in Pembrokeshire, west Wales, will close its gates at 12.15pm rather than 3.20pm on Fridays.

The move is not a way to “give teachers an afternoon off ” nor is it a moneysaving mechanism, the school said.

Instead, it argued that Friday afternoon lessons are pointless since youngsters are short of “attention and focus” to learn after a full week of classes.

The school claims that the move will improve children’s education, as well as enable families to spend more quality time together.

In a letter to parents, the school said that it is implementing the change after finding that on Friday afternoons “pupils often suffer from a greater lack of attention/focus than at other times in the week”.

The school hopes the early finish will “further raise standards and improve outcomes for learners across the school”.

The move was greeted with a mixed response from parents, with one mother saying: “It is a really good idea – I know that by Friday afternoon the kids are burnt out and don’t take anything in.”

Meanwhile, another pupil’s father said: “This is ridiculous. Both my wife and I work so this will mean one of us having to take Fridays off to look after our kids.”

A spokeswoman for Pembrokeshire county council said: “We want to establish a culture of inquiry, innovation and exploration where teaching approaches and interventions used in class are research and evidence-based on an ongoing basis. This is a change to existing arrangements. The intention is not to give teachers an afternoon off as has been mistakenly suggested by some. Teachers will have no change in their current contracted working hours – just in the way they work them.

“If we cannot utilise Friday afternoons in this way then teachers will end up being regularly taken out of class for training. Naturally, this results in disruption for the children and supply teacher costs, both of which we really want to avoid. This is a schools’ initiative which we wish to see implemented because we see real benefits for the children by improving their learning experiences.”

Dozens of schools have warned that they may need to close early on Friday in order to save money. Others have started classes later in the day to allow “bleary-eyed” students to have a lie-in rather than come to school tired.

Ministers say that head teachers have the autonomy to set their own school hours, including when their school day should start and finish.