Parents are consulted over plans to alter school hours

PUPILS could start and finish earlier at North Chadderton School.

The school is consulting parents on proposed changes to the school day from September which could include a lunchtime finish on Wednesdays.

Lessons currently run from 8.40am to 3.20pm with an hour for lunch.

However, this could change to 8.30pm to 2.45pm daily, except Wednesdays when the final period would end at 1pm.

Lunch would also be cut to 45 minutes, with the school saying that an hour is no longer needed now that pupils are on one site in Chadderton Hall Road. This means that they do not have to travel to and from the old lower school in Broadway.

The school also wants to have more lessons in the mornings when it says pupils learn best, while staff professional development and extra curricular activities for pupils will take place on Wednesday afternoons.

Governors will make a decision at the end of the month after letters were sent to parents of the school’s 1,500 pupils before Christmas explaining the plans and asking for their views.

School business manager Gillian Hindle stressed that no decision had been taken and that North Chadderton would still meet the statutory 25-hour week.

She added: “The reason we have always had an hour for lunch is that the children had to move between sites. Now they do not have to do that, the full hour for their lunch is too long.

“It is also about changing the way we operate and we feel educationally pupils learn better in the morning. Rather than having two periods in the afternoon, we will have one and four in the morning.”