School Session Times

In Pontllanfraith we start at 9:15am and end at 3:30pm which is later than a lot of schools. Infant aged children have a much longer lunchbreak (an hour and a quarter) than juniors (who have 45 minutes) so that they finish at the same time.

Breakfast club provision cannot start earlier than 8:30am because of our 9:15am start. We are conscious that many working parents might prefer an earlier start.

We also have a lot of families with children in Islwyn High who start at 8:30am and finish at 2:50pm. There is a large gap between our timings.

Some parents may prefer a small gap between infant and junior pick up to facilitate moving from one class to another.

If we do have infants finishing earlier this will have a knock on effect for lunchtime and afternoon starts. There could be benefits to this:

Exploring changes to lunchtimes may facilitate movement through the canteen: there has been an increase in numbers of children having school dinners since the introduction of universal free school meals which has been a challenge to accommodate.

Changes to the lunch hour may also benefit the school if we continue to have Rising 3 children in the afternoon sessions rather than the morning (decisions around this will be informed by budget projections).

As an initial step, please complete the form linked below to vote for your preferred times and provide some feedback for us to consider. The responses to this survey will be discussed with Parent Forum ahead of the next Governing Body meeting at the beginning of February.

At the Governing Body meeting a decision will be taken as to whether to propose any changes at all. If the decision is taken to change the session times, the results of the parent survey will be used to decide what the times might change to.

The proposed times would then be communicated to all stakeholders and a period of formal consultation would take place during the second half of this term.

Following formal consultation, if a decision is taken to change the session times, we are required to communicate this at least 3 months before the changes would be implemented. As changes to the start or end of the day must be implemented at the beginning of the academic year, this means a final decision would need to be taken during the first part of the summer term at the latest.

Link to survey form: here