Until recently most maintained schools were subject to the Changing of School Session Times (England) Regulations 1999. The Government revoked these however, on 1 September 2011.
The regulations meant that if community, voluntary controlled or community special schools wanted to make any change to the times of their school day, they had to follow a lengthy consultation process and serve a prescribed period of notice.
Overall, the process took several months for changes to lunch times and up to six months for changes to the start or finish of a session. Changes to start or finish times could be made only at the beginning of the next academic year. Some schools found this bureaucratic – an impediment to making sensible decisions at local level.
Foundation and voluntary aided schools and Academies were never in scope of the 1999 regulations. Without these regulations, as from 1 September 2011, all schools enjoy the freedom to:
- change lunch times easily using local procedures
- change start/finish times easily and at any time in the year
- move from proposal to implementation quickly.
We still expect schools to have regard to the views of parents, pupils and staff and to manage change reasonably. But we no longer tie them in to specific procedures prescribed at national level.
