🧒🏼 MANAGEMENT OF CHILDREN
MDS may need to help them make food choices – cut their food up and ensure that social groups are managed. So many pupils don’t know the ‘correct’ use of cutlery so the MDS may need to teach, demonstrate and reinforce.
🪁 PLAYGROUND MANAGEMENT
Radios and playground zoning (ball zone/ free play zone/ quiet zone/equipment zones) are a minimum standard in schools and we spend a lot of time ensuring that MDS know their roles, properly supervise and don’t stand in groups chatting!
🎾 FIELD MANAGEMENT
Extensive playing fields mean that a school needs to deploy its lunchtime team carefully – it’s a bigger area but the same number of staff. We believe that zoning a school field should be no different to that of a playground - therefore, place staff appropriately.
⛑ FIRST AID SKILLS
In most schools, you will find that some of the MDS team carrying first aid bags. Although good, this is unnecessary (and often they are untrained). We advise to incorporate your First Aid space within a quiet area. This encourages certain pupils not to fain injury so they can go into school, but instead go and sit in the quiet area for a nice chat and get the same attention.
❗️BEHAVIOUR MANAGEMENT
It’s very important that MDS’ have similar if not the same rights as teaching staff… and communication is made clear.
One of the most common but fatal errors around lunchtimes is MDS’ getting called by their first name, whilst teachers are referred to as MR/MRS X. This instantly reduces the validity of the MDS’ role.
📝 ACCURATE REPORTING
Midday supervisors play a key role in the school’s behaviour and H&S systems. Do you have a good feed-forward system that allows them to share concerns with classroom staff, whether they have been dealt with or not?
Lunchtime supervisors have a range of duties and responsibilities. The least we can do is to ensure that they are equipped for the role and feel part of the team, not separate from it ✅