Lengthen school day says Gove!

[speckytecky]

Ah, just what wonderful idea is this man going to come up with next in his constant crusade to tinker with education.

 

BBC News - Gove urges longer days and shorter holidays for pupils

[jallsop]

Great, even less time to rebuild, rewire and install new kit. Just what everyone needs. I don't really need to spend time with my family. At all. Ever!

[tech_guy]

Sorry but I'm all for it. Look at the Asian model of education - longer days and shorter holidays. No wonder our education system is lagging behind now. And compulsory languages from age 4. And proper IT. Not PowerPoint crap.

[Theblacksheep]

13 weeks off is just silly.

[tmcd35]

If it had come from almost anyone else it'd probably be worth some serious debate. This is likely to be as well thought through as the rest of his policys (most likely lifted directly from the 1945 conservative manifesto). I wouldn't be surprised that his next big idea is work houses for the poor, good knows we need them - rampaging unemployment, kids truenting everywhere, benefits cheats and chavs everywhere you look - it's getting bad I tell you. You can hardly walk from Harrods to Claradiges with out bumping into these annoying little oiks...

[NikChillin]

I'm all for it too, the kids need to be in full time education, not having all the subjects crammed in over the short day - short academic year. It would also enable the teachers to get stuck into their subject rather than just trying to get the kids through an exam. However, it does need some serious thought rather than rushed in as per usual.

[CyberNerd]

Actually finding myself agreeing with Gove. *shudder*

[MatthewL]

Totally agree with it, they need to be used to the working day.

 

As for time when things needs to be done, evenings, weekends, plan the downtime and inform users will be down, its what we do in the corporate world as we don't have the joys of so many holidays.

[hardtailstar]

I'm for it.

 

I can see lots of benefits from it but can also see teachers dead against the idea.

[featured_spectre]

I am with MatthewL. In the corporate world we get no such luxury and have 4 weeks, not 13. Teachers tend to go from school, too college, too uni, back to school and dont know what a full working day is like (planning etc is also done in the corporate world at home, hell I have spent 80 or so hours writing scripts for customers in my own time since I started my job).

 

Also in France and various scandinavian countries the school day is longer, but on the flip side, there is no homework.

[jimmckenna]

 

As for time when things needs to be done, evenings, weekends, plan the downtime and inform users will be down, its what we do in the corporate world as we don't have the joys of so many holidays.

 

Heh!! that's a bit cheeky I do that already in the "non-corporate" world!!

[TechMonkey]

Totally agree with it, they need to be used to the working day.

 

A 9 year old needs to be used to the working day? 0_o & who decides what a working day is? the 8-5 some do? the 9-5 that is considered standard? 10 till 1? 9pm till 05.30? That's it, we start having night shifts so kids get used to some of them working that?

 

Ok, the holidays are maybe long but what about allowing kids to be kids, to see the sun? Do we really want them to hate education more than some all ready do? To grind them down to think drudge work is standard? & what about looking at the private sector? They seem to have even longer holidays & yet their results seem to be ok. 3 weeks for Easter?

[pete]

As for time when things needs to be done, evenings, weekends, plan the downtime and inform users will be down, its what we do in the corporate world as we don't have the joys of so many holidays.

 

Agreed, this is what we do already. Holidays are for "hey, why don't we demolish the physics block" scale projects, not standard-issue systems maintenance. It'll go a long way towards fixing those schools that only deploy patches in the holidays, then whine they get compromised.

 

The bonus is that LAs, RBCs etc will all have to start doing proper out-of-hours (i.e stupid o'clock maintenance windows) work on the infrastructure they provide, which will hopefully lead to broken things being fixed (as opposed to "still not fixed and we reported it yesterday") overnight.

[localzuk]

I'm not sure about the longer days. Young kids struggle to concentrate over long periods of time. Many are knackered after a normal school day, let alone a longer one.

 

However, the holidays are a hangover from ye olde times. I didn't enjoy 6 weeks off as a kid personally, I was bored by about week 3.

 

There's a key thing here though - if they want schools to have longer days and fewer holidays, then this will cost more. Staff will be in for more hours, both teaching and non-teaching.

 

Things like IT and building maintenance will end up having less time to get things done - meaning downtime during the school day, or people working weekends/nights - so more money.

 

In a time of austerity, are the government going to increase budgets to accommodate this?

[elsiegee40]

With shorter holidays, I would like to know how parents are supposed to get time off work to go on holiday.... everyone would want to be on holiday at the same time. It would also increase the price of holidays at peak times as demand surges in these periods.

 

Perhaps Mr Gove should be lookjng at parliamentary hours too. If parliament started sitting earlier in the day and didn't get even more holidays (recesses) than the schools, perhaps we'd get better laws?! Or perhaps it doesn't work like that, eh?!

[pcstru]

Perhaps Mr Gove should be lookjng at parliamentary hours too. If parliament started sitting earlier in the day and didn't get even more holidays (recesses) than the schools, perhaps we'd get better laws?! Or perhaps it doesn't work like that, eh?!

 

Ha! Sometimes I think they should sit a lot less - less law might be better law (and we could cut their pay and pensions pro-rata!).

[JJonas]

Im happy to accept the lower than average wage in return for the increased time I spend with my family. If Mr Gove expects me to spend less time with my family then I need to be compensated for that.

[witch]

The point about private schools having longer holidays and yet often better results is a good one - IMHO it is class sizes that makes all the difference rather than time. I know several private schools locally and even though you would think they did, they don't have "better kit" than we do and in a couple of cases it is substantially worse, so that isnt the reason. The teachers are good, but not necessarily substantially better than public ones. Which leaves class sizes. Every teacher I know feels that they get on so much better when a good proportion of the class are away ill or whatever. We are up to 35 in some classes at my schools.

Costing is a huge issue too - schools certainly can't manage the extra costs of heating, lighting and staff on their present budgets so that would have to be looked at very carefully.

Primary children certainly can't concentrate for long periods and they don't need to experience a working day. If it gave more time for things like Art, Music and Sport I can see the merit as these subjects are being squeezed out of the curruculum. For older children expanding some subjects could be good.

I like the idea of no homework - with all the distractions at home I think children would do better to do it at school - but the older ones do need to learn self-discipline and how to structure your own time to get work done.

As for Asian schools - I have just read a very interesting article - which I can't find - by a Japanese girl who is now in the west and tells of how at school she was just taught reams of facts which she regurgitated for exams - with no real understanding of anything

[NikChillin]

I think primary and secondary should be separated here, primary schools could incorporate a longer day but with more physical activity or team games to break up the time in lesson. It doesn't all have to be study.

[localzuk]

Play is needed more in schools - primaries are slowly but surely removing it. Play means socialising, it means enjoyment - which means linking the things they've learned to good times and therefore making them more memorable.

 

The idea of all work all of the time is not a good plan.

[pcstru]

The teachers are good, but not necessarily substantially better than public ones. Which leaves class sizes. Every teacher I know feels that they get on so much better

 

Sorry, but you can't ignore the demographics. You have parents who are spending sometimes tens of thousands of pounds on their children's education and THAT is very strong evidence that they are interested, engaged and motivated parents. I'm not sure how you would normalise that aspect out of the data to look at the effect of just class size, but without doing that any conclusion is suspect.

Edited April 19, 2013 by pcstru
typo

[penfold]

As for Asian schools - I have just read a very interesting article - which I can't find - by a Japanese girl who is now in the west and tells of how at school she was just taught reams of facts which she regurgitated for exams - with no real understanding of anything

 

After finding myself with lots of asians on my course I can confirm this seems to be a bigger problem than is recognised. I've recently been on a course with lots of asians already with degrees from their own countries who have come over to the UK to study here in the hope of gaining better employment when they return home because they have studied in english. What was blatantly apparent is that some of these students have been taught to listen to their teacher and repeat it for any coursework/exam and they would pass. When they were tasked with having to think for themselves they couldn't do it, and didn't understand how they could fail when they had repeated information already given to them.

 

Don't get me wrong there were some very clever people too, but the majority of students struggled to gain an understanding of the subject.

[difinity]

The point about private schools having longer holidays and yet often better results is a good one - IMHO it is class sizes that makes all the difference rather than time. I know several private schools locally and even though you would think they did, they don't have "better kit" than we do and in a couple of cases it is substantially worse, so that isnt the reason. The teachers are good, but not necessarily substantially better than public ones. Which leaves class sizes. Every teacher I know feels that they get on so much better when a good proportion of the class are away ill or whatever. We are up to 35 in some classes at my schools.

Costing is a huge issue too - schools certainly can't manage the extra costs of heating, lighting and staff on their present budgets so that would have to be looked at very carefully.

Primary children certainly can't concentrate for long periods and they don't need to experience a working day. If it gave more time for things like Art, Music and Sport I can see the merit as these subjects are being squeezed out of the curruculum. For older children expanding some subjects could be good.

I like the idea of no homework - with all the distractions at home I think children would do better to do it at school - but the older ones do need to learn self-discipline and how to structure your own time to get work done.

As for Asian schools - I have just read a very interesting article - which I can't find - by a Japanese girl who is now in the west and tells of how at school she was just taught reams of facts which she regurgitated for exams - with no real understanding of anything

 

From personal experience, private schools also have far better student behavior and push the kids more.

[sparkeh]

a Japanese girl who is now in the west and tells of how at school she was just taught reams of facts which she regurgitated for exams - with no real understanding of anything

Ah, that ties in with Goves' new curriculum then.

Play is needed more in schools - primaries are slowly but surely removing it.

Really? Evidence for this is...?

Edited April 19, 2013 by sparkeh

[localzuk]

Really? Evidence for this is...?

 

First hand experience of primaries in the area - they have such a focus on English, Maths and Science now, 'creative' and 'play' subjects are diminished.