Adding in an extra academic year

[Onemumtwokids]

With so much time in school lost and so little evidence available to award exam grades on, does it not make sense that every child repeats their current year in the 2021/22 academic year?

Universities should do the same too, and NOT charge extra fees, in my opinion.

The reduced number of school leavers entering the jobs market this summer will help those out of work/underemployed currently.

I've seen little discussion about this idea in the media. I wonder how many other people are thinking it would be a good idea?

What do you do with the children at the bottom who are expecting to start reception this year? You would have to double the capacity of every nursery and preschool to keep them there.

I would not support this as my children are not really behind. That would put my September born child at just shy of his 20th birthday before he finishes his A levels. We shouldn't wipe out a year of our children's lives lije that. Surely it's better to simply adjust the curriculum if necessary? Much less costly as well.

From a university point of view, as a lecturer I’ve ran every single one of my classes to timetable, just online (live teaching), planned as I usually would, marked on time - it’s been very much business as usual for my students and teaching never stopped. Us lecturers and tutors at my university have worked double our workload to ensure we are there for our students and answer the hundreds of emails we get. The learning resource centres never closed. Many students are still on campus and can book labs, rooms, computers etc. Work has been submitted as normal with generous application of extenuating circumstances where students need. I’m not sure students at my university would be happy having to do an additional year and resubmit assignments they’ve already done and I don’t see how we’d cope with 4 years of undergrad and additional postgrad students unless we all replicated ourselves. We are already dealing with timetabled teaching hours of 9am - 9pm and working through weekends to mark, plan and research.

How do you see that working for children who are not behind?

I'm sure this has been discussed at length on a thread a while back. No idea where though.

What do we do with the children due to start reception next year? Do they need to double up reception class next year (who will pay for the extra teachers?) or do we need to pay for an extra year's childcare before they start school?

If universities had to repeat a year, not charge fees for it and not get a new year of student intake, they would all go bust.

They just need to adjust the curriculum as necessary. Although I do wish they’d also use this as an opportunity to review GCSE and A-levels and move to a better form of assessing school leavers. Massive missed opportunity.

And LOLs at a year’s free Uni! Echo what @NameChange84 says (I also work in higher ed).