My old school: they now start their day at 08.15!

Bournemouth, England
April 10, 2018 8:15am CST
I don't have too many fond memories of my old senior school. I walked out of its doors in 1976 and never wish to return, despite them having an active 'old boys' ' association, but I do find myself looking at their website just to see how much has changed. When I started there we began the school day at 09.05 with registration then Assembly. We had seven lessons each day, broken up by a lunch break of an hour and 20 minutes. I lived less than a mile from the school so this meant that I could go home, have my meal, listen to some music or comedy on the radio (or perhaps finish some homework due to be handed in that afternoon) and get back in time for 14.00. Sometimes I would spot our Divinity master on the way to his lunch - in the pub! We went home at 16.10. But when I was in the fourth form (what nowadays is called Year 10) they made a radical change. Being the only grammar school for miles around, some pupils travelled in long distances from rural districts. Changes were made to the bus services which meant that they would now be picked up at 7am and get there an hour early. As the school didn't want the legal responsibility for children hanging around an empty building for ages, they decided that the day would now start at 08.20. I went from being a kid who was nice and early for 09.05 to one who struggled to get there in time. But a least it meant that we now went home much earlier, around 15.25. I assumed that this would have been a temporary measure but, 42 years later, they start even earlier at 08.15. Assembly has been moved to just before lunchtime for some reason (although some pupils have personal tuition instead). The lunch break afterwards is now just an hour so I'd find it very difficult these days. The lessons are all 50 minutes (I'm sure they were shorter in my day) and 5 minutes more is allowed for getting between classrooms (possibly a challenge in a building of that size). But 'hometime' is now well after 16.00, which means that today's pupils are working far longer in a week than I ever did. And, unlike me, they probably can't wriggle out of doing sports so they must be exhausted. Do you ever go back to your old school? Do you ever want to? And how long was your school day?
5 people like this
6 responses
@Poppylicious (11133)
11 Apr 18
I remember the days when teachers went to the pub for lunch. They don't do it these days; there's no time and they have too much work to catch up on. :(
2 people like this
@pgntwo (22408)
• Derry, Northern Ireland
10 Apr 18
Hmm. 8am start, 3 periods to 10 then a 20min break. 3 more periods to lunchbreak from 12:20 to 13:10, then two periods to 14:20 and home for the day. No desire to go back either.
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@pgntwo (22408)
• Derry, Northern Ireland
11 Apr 18
@asfarasiknow The joys of being schooled in a hot country: the school day ended at 12:20 from 01-June to 15-June, and at 11:20 from 16-June to 29-June, with no school again until the Monday of the week in which 01-Oct fell.
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• Bournemouth, England
11 Apr 18
@pgntwo Which country? It sounds like a place where people's jokes about teachers' long summer holidays might have been justified.
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• Bournemouth, England
11 Apr 18
At the time I thought we were freakishly unlucky to have such an early start but it seems to have been pretty widespread.
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• Philippines
10 Apr 18
I love my old school, I started studying there when I was four until I graduated in High School. half of my schoolmates and classmates migrated in different country and some of them transferred to a different school, but the 50% stayed and I am one of them. Our class start at 7am and end at 4Pm, we have one hour lunch break. What I remember when I was in kindergarten, all levels in our school have a 3 day vacation from school every week, but it was lessened into two.
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• Bournemouth, England
10 Apr 18
That is a very long school day. Is that the normal sort of time for schools and workplaces where you live?
@sprite1950 (30452)
• Corsham, England
30 Apr 18
I actually disliked school up until I reached 5th form. I was bullied until then but in those days kids could leave school when they reached 15 so all the kids who were nasty to me left at this point and I started to enjoy it. I know we started at 9 am but I can't remember what time we finished. I've just checked the website and they start at 8.20 am and finish at 3 pm although out of school activities carry on until 4 pm and the lessons are 50 minutes long so similar to your old school.
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@sprite1950 (30452)
• Corsham, England
1 May 18
@asfarasiknow It's strange but when you talk to people most will say they were bullied at some point in their school years. Kids will pick up on any little thing that makes a person different, I wore glasses and was very thin and geeky, my daughter was very tall. We were both bullied for these reasons. I took my granddaughter out of her first primary school because a mother and her child were picking on her and the head refused to acknowledge it. There have been no incidents at her new school.
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• Bournemouth, England
30 Apr 18
Bullying started at 15 for me and pastoral care was non-existent.. I met an old teacher 15 years later and he insisted that sort of thing wouldn't happen anymore. Then, years after that, an old boy, the TV choirmaster Gareth Malone became famous and spoke about the bullying he received at that same school - which would have been around the same time that the teacher was saying how much better things were.
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@LadyDuck (472060)
• Switzerland
10 Apr 18
I remember that we started at 8:30 in the morning, we had a short break at 10:30 (10 minutes) to have a snack and the lunch break was from noon thirty to 2 pm. We had three hours in the afternoon, from 2 to 5 pm with no breaks. I never went back to check my old school.
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• Bournemouth, England
11 Apr 18
That was a very long school day. I'm sure I remember someone telling me in the 70s that schools in France closed on Thursdays but taught on Saturday mornings. I'd have liked a 4.5 day week.
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@LadyDuck (472060)
• Switzerland
12 Apr 18
@asfarasiknow I have lived in the south of France from 1975 up to 2006 and I do not remember that the schools were closed on Thursdays. I think to remember schools were closed on Wednesday afternoon, it is the same here in Switzerland. When I went to school, we went on Saturday morning.
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@just4him (317238)
• Green Bay, Wisconsin
23 Jul 18
You kept some interesting school hours. Grade school grades 1-8 started at 8:15 and got out at 3:30 (15.30) Junior high - grade 9 or 7-9 public, I went to a parochial school, started at the same time. However, high school - 10-12 started at 7:30 and got out at 4:30, and we had 8 classes a day and an hour lunch, but lunch was done in two sessions, you had early lunch from 11-12, later was 12-1, depending on how you did your class schedule, determined your lunch.
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@just4him (317238)
• Green Bay, Wisconsin
26 Jul 18
@asfarasiknow That was my thought when I read what time you started.
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• Bournemouth, England
24 Jul 18
Since posting this I have been really surprised at how much earlier pupils started their school days in other countries. Sounds like we had it easy!
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