Curious as to where you grew up.  In Scarborough about 60 years ago we went from 9 to 12 and then 1:30 to 3:30,  The hours were similiar when I started teaching 40 years ago.  Of course, most  children walked to school and went home for lunch.  That's why the long lunch hour.  In Ontario the instructional day is five hours.

Happy, those were the times in Manitoba.

We have more instructional time per year in Ontario than we used to when I was a kid in the 1980s. The school day is still 5 hours long, but we used to have lots of PD days when the kids were off and the teachers were doing professional development.  Now there are very few PD days.

I don't remember the total hours but I do remember elementary school in the settlement where we walked to school the hours were 9 - 12; 1:15 to ------

In a one room school the younger grades were dismissed first.  Maybe 2:30 or 3:00.  Older grades 3, 4, 5, 6 a half hour or so later.  I'm quite sure I was home to do chores by 4:00.

From grade 7 on we were bussed to the the village 16 miles away.  Classes still 9-12; but now lunch was only an hour.   I'm not sure or dismissal time but we were home by 4:30 or so.    (It took a long time traveling 16 miles in a rickety old bus on gravel roads, stopping at every farm to let kids on or off for the first ten miles - then a nice ride through the woods to our settlement.)

I am not aware of the hours being shorter now.  I know school starts earlier in the mornings in this area - usually by 8:30, and lunch is only an hour.  But I think classes get out earlier in the afternoons.  This may be to accommodate working parents who have to be at work themselves by 8:30 or 9:00 but who arrange for child care after school.  

As to what they do in school - field trips, special guests, etc. can be learning experiences if they are well planned, prepared for, and followed up.   (ie a visit to a salmon hatchery should be introduced by a unit on fish, particularly salmon, and followed by oral reports, posters, essays or displays on what they saw and learned.)  

I sometimes wish they would spend a bit more time on the basics though.  It's hard to write an essay if you don't know how to spell basic words and your penmanship is so bad you can't read it yourself.   (I'm talking early grades - I'm aware that they soon with be doing everything on the computer but it seems to me that a 7 year old entering grade 2 should be able to print the alphabet. 

I was never done before 3, most often 3:15 or 3:30.  Started at 8:30 mostly.

My kids (one in middle school gr 7&8) and one in high school - they are both done by 2:30 which I find totally irritating.  It means they both have WAY too much free time on their hands which gets spent on a computer. 

Lately, my son is doing a paper route W-F, but can't start delivering til 3 usually.  Most programs they do are in the evening, except my daughter's music lesson at 3:30.  She usually walks so that uses up some time. 

Even with my job flexibility and chores listed out each day, I know they are on the screens for too much time.  She should get a part time job or extra-curric school activities, but that is not on her to-do list yet, nor is a job a piece of cake around here.

By the way - I'd love year round school with long breaks periodically.  I think it would be brilliant.  Or 4 day work/school weeks. 

My son is in Gr. 7 in the Thames Valley board in Ontario. He goes from 9-3:30. Not sure of the exact lunch hour, but I think it's something like 11:45-12:45.

PA Days are 5 per year in recent years, but Thames Valley uses the last day of school in June as one so they only get 4 over the school year.

I think my hours were similar, but can't recall how many PA Days we had. We still got Remembrance as a stat when I first started school so I know that we had one more stat than they do now. In high school, once I got into the senior grades, I usually had either a long lunch or an early dismissal due to spare/study periods, though one year I think my spare was first period so I had come in to home room for attendance and then go to the library or caf for study. Nice for getting homework done, though.

Mendalla