Lets sort out summerborns, holiday hassles and childcare by 1 big change

[asharah]

I have a big, bold idea that would be easier to implement than you think.
I've started a petition about it on change.org and I'd be really interested to hear what you think about it.
It basically proposes changing to a three semester education system, to address summer born, holiday peak, exam cram stress, greater teacher freedom and education attainment problems in one bold change.

www.change.org/p/secretary-of-state-for-education-lets-sort-out-the-uk-education-system-together?recruiter=180122391&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink

[SoupDragon]

It is completely and utterly unworkable.

[BrieAndChilli]

How can teachers build on concepts that were taught earlier in the year of half the class weren't there to be taught them?
Only way it would work is if there were 3 classes per year essentially tripling the amount of teachers you need

[lighteningirl]

No for all the reasons stated above

[LIZS]

Do you have children? ! No system is perfect, nor does it work ideally for everyone but this crazy. Essentially 3 intakes a year throughout.

[LibrariesGaveUsP0wer]

I am afraid it's nonsense.

Only even vaguely possible in PAN 90 primary schools.

Three lots of A levels a year. Do you have any idea of the admin that goes into an exam round?

[Shetland]

This is one of those ideas that looks ok at first glance and then you start thinking about it and realise it could never ever work.
You'd basically be swapping one class per year for three - but each would need the same resources so massive increase in cost.
And staggered holidays is great too - unless you have one on primary and one in secondary and their holidays are different. I don't think too many working mums would thank you for that.

[LibrariesGaveUsP0wer]

Or, even worse, your kids don't get the same primary and have different holidays.

[Lonecatwithkitten]

I actually went to a primary school that did this. ??It was a horrific system that was perpetuated by a head teacher stuck in the 1940s ( when my dad went to the school).??It was disastrous as for maths and literacy the teacher was teaching three different levels in each class and each level had varying abilities the teacher was spread so thin it wasn't true. ??It was very difficult to really develop friendships as your class changed every term.??Finally the head retired and a sensible head arrived.??I then my moved to a new primary that arranged classes purely by ability not age that was better, but made friendships again tricky as being a bright dyslexic I was in top level maths and lowest level literacy.??My parents were fans of 'alternative systems' fortunately they woke up and smelt the coffee before senior school.

[Ta1kinPeace]

And in a rural school with 7 kids per year group?

Gotta love people who cannot think outside the North Circular.

[Hackersschmakers]

My step siblings are on a track system in America. There are 4 classes in each year all running on a different track so they all have different holidays.

Step sister is on d track and brother in a track so they have different holidays. It's completely unworkable if you have more than one child.

[Ta1kinPeace]

And what happens to teachers with children of different ages?

[MidniteScribbler]

Dear god, no. Just no.

[Butteredparsnips]

I'm sorry I don't think any of your proposed benefits would actually be realised for the reasons other posters have already given.
Exams are stressful regardless of when you take them, tour operators will still rip parents off price according to the market, and what evidence is there for higher attainment?

1) eradicates the summerborns disadvantage, creates blending of years so that children are successively the youngest, mid and oldest cohort in their class

2) no holiday peak prices as schools vary their term dates

3) a steady trickle of school leavers and graduates into the jobs market, benefiting the economy

4) no annual cramming and stress culture

5) higher attainment

6) flexible work-life planning and convenient childcare.

7) staggering holidays and school start times will reduce congestion and pollution

[Butteredparsnips]

Bold fail!

[DontCallMeBaby]

Good grief. "Attributes of a successful education system are:" some stuff I just made up. It's not 'big and bold', it's tinkery bullshit. I work in HR policy and this just reminds me of staff who state 'it's easy, just ...' and proceed to dig themselves into the most complex if- then-but holes imaginable.

[ShadowLine]

It doesn't sound easy to implement without a heck of a lot more teachers.

For example, DS1's just started reception. They're looking at letter sounds for now, then over the course of the year, they'll be moving onto segmenting and blending the words. These aren't topics that can be done in any order. You can't teach a child about blending letter sounds to read words if they haven't first learnt the letter sounds. So in this proposed 3 semester system, every semester the reception teacher would have to be teaching a new cohort of children the basic letter sounds, while continuing the more advanced reading skills with the older children, while at the same time differentiating for different ability levels within each semester's cohort of children....

This won't be the only subject where teaching in a subject builds on concepts introduced earlier in a child's education.

Either the teachers would be running themselves ragged trying to teach 3 different things at once (plus differentiating for different ability levels), or you'd need 3 times as many teachers.

[NaughtToThreeSadOnions]

Surely this would make the system worse!!

So you could have three groups of children in the same class coming and going at different times. That's surely having three different year groups in the same class. each semester group could have what 3 different levels of ability, so what the teacher is having to set 9 different sets of work?! Yes there's already composite classes but they're together at least the whole 9 months! The friendships develop, is that's going to affect the kids, they just make friends with some one and off they go to the next class!

Surely having students ready to take exams at different times in the year would increase the exam stress, again how do you prepare three different groups at three different stages within the same year surely that would make secondry school time tabling a nightmare! And they'd see their friends needing to revise and stress out over exams when theirs could be two semesters away!

How on Earth would this solve the holiday problem? what happens for incidence, if you have one child at year 5 one at year 7 and one in year 12, at three different schools and the primary school has weeks 3&4 and then week 10&11 the secondary school have weeks 5&6 and 12&13 and the sixth form have weeks 7&8 and 14&15 as holiday when the hell would they go on holiday?! The only option would be to take them out during their schools term time something thats actively being discouraged! What about child care it's hard enough as it is but partially at the primary/secondry turning point or if you have infant/junior schools or first/middle schools it could mean taking 4 weeks off work twice a semester!

I'm not sure you've thought this through and I've probably cross pisted with loads!

[roguedad]

I think giving parents some discretion over whether to delay a summer-born child a year, if they feel they are too immature, is a much simpler solution to one of the problems. Restoring the discretion of headteachers to allow some time off for a special holiday would help people a lot as well.

[LadyPenelope68]

Totally unachievable, absolute nonsense for both parents and teachers!

[mummytime]

Umm you do know what the word "semester" means don't you?
Oxford Dictionary : A half-year term in a school or university, especially in North America, typically lasting for fifteen to eighteen weeks:
eg. "the opening week of Harvard’s autumn semester".
Origin: Early 19th century: from German Semester, from Latin semestris 'six-monthly', from sex 'six' + mensis 'month'.

So are you going to change the year too - to 18 months long?

[Charis2]

This wouldn't work at all.

it is total nonsense from start to finish.

But just to pick up on one tiny detail:

What do you mean the current school year is not fit for purpose? I agree with the pp who said you can't think beyond the North Circular, although you don't have to go only North, but also south, west and east of London to find thousands of children in farming families who need the summer holidays exactly as they are. Teaching in Kent there are schools that have to finish by 2pm in summer as the kids will be working on the farms, whether school is finished for the day, or not. And the problem is that city dwellers can be so divorced from the reality of food production that they come up with these loony schemes without any understanding at all.

And who is going to pay for the billions required for extra teachers class rooms, resources, maintenance staff etc. Just the heating bill itself will cost billions per year.

[mrz]

Basically you want free child care ?

[Ta1kinPeace]

Parents are often the worst judge of whether their child will benefit from being held back.

So many sensitive children needing a nurturing environment
when actually its neurotic helicopter parents
and the sooner the kids get real the better

its like the parents wanting Tarquin to be in the top set with no knowledge of the rest of the cohort

Scotland does flexi admissions : Scotland has a smaller population than Central London and bugger all population churn outside the central valley.

Scandinavia does flexi admissions and is even less diverse than Scotland.

A child will always be the youngest (my DS was the 2nd youngest in his year)
get over it
they will all be 30 soon enough

[uhoh1973]

This looks like heavy admin to me - borderline crackers ;-)

I think schools should 'lump' together their PD days and have a week off at some point in the school year to be determined by the governors. This would enable people to have a cheap holiday one week per year. Tough if you have kids at different schools (or be a governor to more than 1 school!!).

As for all this summer born whining... Get with the programme!! Someone will always be the youngest in the class. There are various options - defer by a year, go part-time. You dont HAVE to turn up til you are age 5(??) so if you could find an accommodating school you could do just that? My son is end of May baby and some of his cohort (aged 2) are already turning 3 and twice his size. I will do my best to keep him out of their marauding paths as long as possible....

In fact my parents started me in school a year before everyone else so my birthday was November but some kids were more than 12 months older than me. They did this because a) they wanted to get me a place at the school and b) they figured I could hack the pace. I have survived (I was shorter than many of my friends for years but now they are 5ft 3 and I am 5ft 10 )!

[cosmobrown]

OP - I don't get it, sorry. How does this work in primary schools with 5 classrooms? Where will all these different classes be held? How will swimming lessons be scheduled? Music? Art?
Have I misunderstood this?