During the Covid crisis, school leaders and teachers have had many unprecedented demands placed upon them.

From delivering remote learning, to running coronavirus testing sites and helping to track and trace, this has been a year like no other for the profession.

But now headteachers are facing a new, and perhaps surprising, demand as part of the government’s response to the pandemic - to justify the length of their lunch breaks and the time they send pupils home. 

Williamson: Too many schools shorten lunchbreaks

School day: Williamson says he wants schools to stop finishing ‘far too early’

Recovery: No extended school day in new £1.4bn catch-up announcement

Funding row: Covid education catch-up plan a ‘paltry’, ‘disappointing’ ‘damp squib’

What has Gavin Williamson said?

At a recent appearance at the despatch box, Gavin Williamson made shorter lunches the focus of his response when questioned by his Labour counterpart, Kate Green, about his department’s plans for Covid catch-up.

The education secretary said: “As we talk about the school day, we’ve seen too many schools go down a route of actually restricting what children have the benefit of doing.

“A school lunch hour has become increasingly restricted and is increasingly a school lunch half-hour as against an hour.”

And, he said, he asked himself whether schools finishing at 2.45pm could be justified. 

Mr Williamson returned to this theme today, when he appeared before MPs at the Commons Education Committee, and said: “We do have, sadly, a number of schools that are finishing early - too early, in my view - and I don’t want to see that continue.”

The education secretary’s original comments triggered a strong reaction from the teaching profession.

But what prompted his intervention, why has Mr Williamson chosen to criticise schools in this way and what is actually happening in schools now?

Why does the government want to lengthen lunch breaks?

The length of school lunch breaks and their pupil leaving times have been on the government’s agenda since well before the coronavirus pandemic.

Back in 2019, schools minister Nick Gibb told Radio 4: “It worries me; children should have breaks and be running around the playground, getting exercise and making friends.

He added: “I see children leaving at a quarter to three and, you know, they’ve only had a half-hour break for lunch.”

This is exactly how Mr Willamson framed the issue earlier this month.

But it was raised in the context of helping pupils to catch up from the disrupted learning during the Covid pandemic.

Is a longer lunch part of the government’s plan to extend the school day?

An extended school day had been expected to be a central part of the government’s plan for education recovery.

Tes revealed last month that the department was considering options to either pay for a compulsory half-hour extension to the school day, with an academic focus, or fund a longer 8am-6pm school day that would be voluntary.  

However, we also then revealed that a lack of funding from the Treasury was set to scupper this plan and that the government’s much vaunted education recovery plan was likely to amount to little more than around £1.5 billion, with no cash to extend the school day.

Days later, the official announcement came that confirmed this.

Instead of announcing a plan to extend the school day, the department said it would carry out a review of the time spent in school and college, and the impact this could have on helping children and young people to catch up.

It said the findings of this would be set out later in the year to inform the government spending review. But sources have pointed out that backers of the extended school day will still have to persuade the Treasury to change its mind, with the levelling up agenda competing for cash.  

Mr Williamson raised the issue of school lunch breaks when talking about this review. Does this, along with his criticism of 2.45pm finishes, indicate that it will form a key part of extending the school day - with or without cash from the Treasury?

It certainly seems to fit with the briefings that Tes received from sources close to government discussions over the extended day when we first learned details of the options being looked at.  

They suggested that phase one of the plan ministers were considering was to set a minimum expectation for the length of the school day. It would clamp down on a small number schools that were seen as not running full days and would need to extend their provision.

So, has ensuring a lunch break with a set time always been part of the plan? 

What figures is Gavin Williamson basing this claim on?

When Tes asked the Department for Education what information his statement about school lunch breaks was based on, it pointed us to research carried out in 2019.

A study for the Nuffield Foundation found that about half of all secondary schools have lunch breaks of less than 45 mins, with about a quarter having 35 minutes or less.

It also found that there has been a reduction in the length of break times since 2006 and a really marked decline since 1995.

So, what is happening in schools?

The Nuffield study - carried out by the University of Central London - is the most recent major research looking at the length of the school lunch break.

It looked at how school breaks have changed over 25 years, comparing data from more than 1,000 primary and secondary schools in 2017 to data collected in 2006 and 1995.

It found that in 1995, less than a third of secondary schools (30 per cent) reported lunch breaks of less than 55 minutes. Now that figure has risen to 82 per cent.

What are the pros and cons of a shorter lunch break?

Sam Strickland is among the school leaders who advocates a shorter break and he is keen to point out that this is not a new development.

Mr Strickland, principal of The Duston School, a through school in Northampton, said: “There is a differential to be made between the needs of primary and secondary phase. In primary schools, it can take longer for pupils to eat their lunch and they might need more time to unwind and play.

“In different schools I have worked, lunchtimes have varied from 25 minutes to 30-40 and 45.

“One issue I have with the longer lunch breaks is that it is in the last 20 minutes where pupils can get fast and loose; when boredom and tedium kicks in. Not everyone is going to be engaged in extracurricular activity at lunch time; not everyone is going to be interested in the provision their school might be able to offer. 

“I think a shorter break that is more functional, that allows pupils to have their lunch, get some fresh air and talk to their mates before returning, works better.

“Having a shorter lunch break also allows the day to finish earlier and it means that pupils will leave the site earlier. This is allows teachers to better get on with other parts of the job without a knock on the door after every five minutes.”

Mr Strickland also said he believes that extracurricular activities can be delivered more effectively at the end of the academic day rather than at lunch.

Does this depend on school setting? 

Geoff Barton, Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) general secretary, says schools he has worked in have decided on a longer or shorter lunch according to their context.

In one school, a shorter break allowed for a longer afternoon in which a broader curriculum and sporting activities could be delivered. But at another that Mr Barton taught at - where many pupils lived far afield and came in by bus - a longer lunch break was seen as the best chance to deliver extracurricular work.

Primary school headteacher Michael Tidd runs a school that operates an hour-long lunch.

Mr Tidd, who is head of East Preston Junior school, West Sussex, said: “We run an hour-long lunch break here because we thought that this would be the best way to be able to focus on our extracurricular activity. But it is important to say that we have had to plan for this and invest in it to make it work.”

What challenges would the government face in introducing longer breaks?

Supervision

Jonny Uttley, chief executive of the The Education Alliance Trust, in East Yorkshire, points out that two key reasons that schools can operate a shorter lunch break are simply costs and practicalities.

He adds: “It is a real challenge to try to manage 2,000 young people all at the same time. So lots of schools have gone to a staggered lunch break and split into two. If you do that, then you almost inevitably have to shorten the lunchtime because of the issue of duty time cover.

Mr Strickland adds: “If you are in a school which has standard teacher-terms contracts, then you cannot ask teachers to take on duties to supervise after midday. Unions would oppose this, and rightly so.

“So, if the government does want schools to extend their lunch breaks, you would need to either pay assistants or pay teaching staff extra to do this. And in my experience, the take-up among teachers to do this would be low.”

Mr Tidd said that it could also involve schools directing staff to help with extracurricular activity after lunch but this would mean using up some of teachers’ directed time budget - in which schools are not allowed to require teachers to work more than 1,265 hours a year over 195 days.

In short, this cannot be done without schools incurring extra cost or losing staff time.

School capacity and Covid issues

The reaction of some school leaders to Mr Williamson’s comments over lunch breaks was to point out that, in their schools, the length of lunch was dictated by the space they have available and the need to stagger when pupils have breaks.

Posting on social media, assistant head Hannah Tuffnell said: “Another day, another ridiculous statement by Gavin Williamson.

“We have 1,600 students and not enough dining space to seat them all, so we run three lunch sittings. He really is just clueless about how schools operate.”

Another day, another ridiculous statement by @GavinWilliamson. We have 1600 students and not enough dining space to seat them all so we run three lunch sittings. He really is just clueless about how schools operate https://t.co/FKFUQWoeGH

- Hannah Tuffnell (@hannahtuffnell) June 7, 2021

Others pointed out that a shorter lunch break has become part of a school response to Covid as schools ensured that pupils were only eating within their bubbles.

Tes asked the Department for Education (DfE) whether it considered a lack of dining capacity or Covid control measures as justifiable reasons for operating a shortened lunch break, but it did not answer the question.

Will DfE legislate over lunch breaks?

Mr Barton also points out that the government currently does not have the power to compel schools to take a certain length of lunch break.

He said: “The government can’t enforce the length of school lunch breaks and I think the idea of them using legislation to do so is very unlikely. 

“I think what there is appetite for is to do some research, which was something Sir Kevan Collins was advocating, into the impact of the length of the school day and whether schools which teach children longer do better. Some people will think that is the case but I am not sure.”

What are the current rules over school lunch breaks?

Government guidance for state schools - including maintained schools and academies - says that every school day must have two sessions divided by a break in the middle of the day.

It adds that the length of each session, break and the school day is determined by the school’s governing body.

The guidance also says that the “structure of the school day and school week should not be the cause of inconvenience to parents, and it is unacceptable for schools to shorten their school day or school week unless it is a direct action to support and enhance their pupils’ education”.

How did heads and teachers react to Mr Williamson’s criticism?

Mr Williamson’s decision to choose to criticise schools over the length of their lunch breaks, just days after the government’s own education recovery commissioner had resigned over a lack of funding to help pupils catch up, unsurprisingly created a lot of ill feeling.

Mr Barton said: “It is depressing but predictable that the education secretary tries to deflect criticism of the government’s inadequate education recovery plan by attacking schools over the length of lunch breaks.

“There’s nothing new about the fact that some schools have decided on shorter lunch breaks and it is pretty odd that the education secretary chooses to alight on this topic now.

“We’re very happy to have a discussion about extending the school day, but the government kicked that proposal into the long grass when the Treasury vetoed the recovery plan that was put forward by the Education Recovery Commissioner, and precipitated his resignation.

“It would add insult to injury if the idea of an extended school day is now reduced to a manufactured row over the length of lunch breaks, and we hope that the government will set its sights higher with a much more ambitious recovery plan.”