to think it's awful that British children have to spend 8 to 9 hours at/travelling to secondary school, plus 2 hours homework

[emkana]

When do they get any time to be? Dd1's transfer to secondary is getting closer and I'm dreading it! I am from Germany and school finished at 1 pm most days (started at 8), still managed to learn lots and lots, but also had time for other things!

Zzzen - yes I'm in Germany. I used to be BlauerEngel, so if you can remember me you can probably work out which primary school I'm talking about (you used to live very nearby).

I agree it's a fundamental distrust of parents that has brought the 8-4 revolution about, but there has really been no consideration of children's need to relax. It frustrates the hell out of me that these people instigating the changes (in the UK and Germany) haven't themselves had to experience them as children. We're screwing up a whole generation here.

And the pedagogical gurus love quoting the UK as an example of all-day schooling working, without considering that most schools in the UK are open from 9 to 3.45 or so at secondary level, meaning more than an hour less per day.

Don't worry OP - it all comes good.

I was very worried about DD's hours when she started year seven - leaves the house at 7.15am, get's back at 5.50pm.

But she still plays tons of sport ( one to a very high level), attends drama school, reads avidly, meets up wiht her pals and watches an unseemly amount of shitty TV whilst eating crisps.

She does get very long holidays though.

"if Germany is anything like Scandinavia, it is unlikely that anyone is thinking in terms of childcare for secondary school children. More likely to be asking them to cook dinner, if they can spare time from their social life"

[hgrin] so true!

My (Scandinavian) mum felt desperately sorry for us as kids because we started school so young, the schoolday went on forever and we were stuffed into uniforms to boot (and don't even get started on the horror of chips and pudding for school dinners instead of rye bread and fish).

Somehow we all survived ok(ish) [hwink]

I was with you till you got to the rye bread and fish...

MMG, I didn't recognise you in your new (Halloween) guise. Sorry, of course I remember you. I felt the same about those Ganztagsschulen really, 9-3 is long for primary; 8-4 plus travel time and homework is pushing it. I find it way too much. I spoke to a guitar teacher in B who told me that he had given up teaching dc on Fridays, they would roll into lessons more or less dead on their feet.

my dad is great friends with a Korean family whose son has to go to private cram school every afternoon after his regular school finishes and then has to practise piano for an hour or two every night. Seems like there is no childhood left and it is just preparing the dc for long working days as adult drones. Bit depressing really. Seems we are going that way too. Makes me wonder what the point in it all is when we are constantly being told how academic standards are dropping.

Why? Why are they dropping?

Yes Grimma and I think it pretty much still is, in rural areas anyway.

I haven't erad the whole thread but my dd is in yr8 and doesn't have homework apart from a termly project that she has 6 weeks to complete and hand in

My ds gets a train at about 7.30 and is home about 4.15. There are later trains up to about 8.15 which would get him there on time butbthen he would not be able to dawdle from the station, go to the shop and mess about with his mates. There's a sixth form girl who gets the early train who he likes to pester talk to in the mornings. He's 12. The train is definitely a big social thing for him. As for homework - despite what he's meant to do there is no way he does near to 2 hours. They seem to take a communal approach to homework on the train :)

OP - wait and see what it's really like before worrying too much. Also when the hormones start to kick in you'll be glad to have them out of the house a bit more.

British kids, as has been said, may spend more time out of the house, but the hours of actual lessons are more or less the same throughout Europe because in accordance with European law they have to be. There's more faffery in British schools, longer breaks etc. I imagine that the schoolday hasn't been arbitrarily designed like that, but because in a country like the UK where the vast majority of children would be returning to an empty house at lunchtime and childcare options are limited (mobility of demographic meaning that we no longer live on the next street to the grandparents etc) it's what works best for the greater number of people.

If UK children are travelling miles to get to school, then I presume that's because their parents have chosen to do that, so the school system can hardly be blamed for that one!

Dd is 7, 2nd yr elementary in Italy. Starts at 8.10, finishes at 13.10 and has one 10 minute break at 10.30. (and the 5 hrs are bums on seats with books and following the blackboard, no learning-through-play etc) Followed by about 2-3 hrs written homework every afternoon. School on Saturday as well, making a total of 30 hrs a week.

The full day in the week with no Saturdays is starting to be introduced as more women start to work down here.

I was a bit before dd started school, thinking about lovely brightly coloured UK schools with reading corners and carpets and teachers who aren't necessarily 55 yrs old with their specs on chains round their neck and very definitely female.... but you know what, dd loves it, she does well, and I'm perfectly happy that the system works. She's learning very differently from how she would be in the UK, but hey ho. She's happy. I sometimes think we make our own rods as parents, I know I'm now learning (and feck me it's hard) to take a step back and trust that the system actually does, most of the time, know what it's doing. We, as parents, are all a bit new and subjective about school, about bringing up children. Of course we are, these are our children. And of course there are going to be children for whom this system (or that one, or t'other one) doesn't work) and in those cases, I'd want a British school, because I still maintain that the UK system is better at dealing with differences certainly than here.

Now, if anyone could explain to me why my 7 yr old needs to learn about syllable division within a word.....(something I didn't have to do till I did linguistics at university) I'd be most grateful.

I've read that the school hours make life difficult for WOHMs in Germany - is that true?

Bucharest - that was a terrific post, and it made me think that yes, most children will learn very well in any number of different settings.

not really Grendel I don't think. If a school finishes at 12-1pm, the dc whose parents both work will be entitled to a Hort place which is a kind of afterschool care including a hot lunch.

Otherwise they are attempting to expand the school day in as many schools as possible throughout Germany to make it compulsory attendance even in primary from 8-4 and there is a Hort available for dc from about 7-8 I think and also 4-6 and it is income based contributions and state subsidised care.

Ah, that's very interesting, thank you. I'd been told that you needed to be back to do your children's lunch, which clearly isn't / is no longer the case.

Just out of sheer nosiness, why on earth is it called a Hort? I can only think 'horticulture'

My kids are in Swiss schools.

DD is 6. She has just done 2 years of kindergarten, with hours of 8.30-11.50 (4 days, Wed am off), then home for lunch, then 3 afternoons of 14-15.30. All non-academic, learning through play, outings, songs - marvellous, she loved it, and I never once saw a child in the tears of 'it's Thursday and I've just had enough week now' exhaustion that I saw constantly in my son's UK Reception class.

She's now in 1st Grade, with hours of 8.30-11.30, home for lunch, back 14-15.30 (Wed pm off throughout the whole of Swiss schooling, for activities or leisure).

DS is 10, and has just gone into the start of secondary here. He does 7.40 (!) until 12, home for lunch, 14-15.30 (except Weds). He gets 1-2 hours homework/ test prep per night; probably half an hour of that is because he's doing it in a foreign language so takes a bit longer and I have to explain some things.

Sure, these are short hours, but when they are at school, they are in classrooms, learning stuff. There is no assembly, no carol service practice, no govt interfering message of the moment dressed up as education.

I quite like the home for lunch. I thought it would drive me mad, but at first it was a lovely break from French for them, and now it's really given us a close relationship, both with me and between themselves. DS is still a sweet little family-focused older brother, rather than an obnoxious 'I'm at secondary now' know-it-all preteen, and I think the school structure plays a large role in this. And I get to see them for a couple of hours of chilling and chatting each day when they're still fresh, not all early-evening shattered and bent over homework whilst I'm trying to simultaneously nag them and prepare a meal.