4 weeks of extra school in the summer

[noblegiraffe]

Justine Greening (former Ed sec you’ve probably forgotten) has asked that every child get a guaranteed 4 extra weeks of schooling over the summer.

Practicalities of this aside (imagine it is a fully funded army of well-trained, eager and willing tutors, fresh and full of energy rocking up to your kids’ school), do you want this for your children? When you saw the thread title were you ‘yes!’ or ‘god no!’?

Personally I want my kids spending the summer taking advantage of lower restrictions to visit people they haven’t seen since last summer and doing outdoor, fun activities. Education isn’t the only thing they have been missing out on.

However, I know that others are very worried about the missing education and may consider the summer better spent catching up.

YABU: I want 4 weeks of extra school in the summer holidays

YANBU: I want my kids to have the summer off to do other things

I wouldn't send mine, but DC are at private school and their online provision has been excellent so I don't feel they have particularly fallen behind. I don't think DC's school would offer it anyway and I certainly wouldn't pay extra fees for it.

I think it would depend on ppls DC age tbh, mine is 10 (Y5) I'm happy with his progress his teachers have no concerns so no I would rather he enjoys his summer break spending time with family

4 weeks seems quite long. I would do 2.

4 is a lot. Might be better to just have 1 week annual leave at Easter, then an additional week at the end of summer term and an additional week at the start of the autumn term?

Either way it won't happen.

My child is coming up to GCSEs and has missed almost a year of school at this point. If they offered 4 weeks of schooling over summer I would bite their hand off.

Will this be where the catch up funding will be going?

If your DC have fallen behind and schools aren’t getting anymore more money to help going forward then it would be beneficial from an education point of view, even if not great for having time with family and friends (depending on how much we will be allowed to do then)

No, not for me. My three have been well educated during lock down and they need to have some FUN!

No. I would like them to relax. Lockdown schooling at home is not relaxing for any of us.

As much as I'm worried about gaps in education (my two are in Y9 & Y11, so a pretty important year for my Y11, and potentially some foundation gaps in prep for his GCSEs starting for my Y9), I also think they've had major gaps in a normal life. Their stress levels have been really high, and they need downtime as much as the rest of us do. And that's before even thinking about the poor teachers, who have worked throughout many of the school holidays for nearly a year now and had to make major adjustments on the spin of a dime.

No to an extra 4 weeks of school.

I would take it for my 5 year old. She missed over a term of reception and now what looks like a term of year one. I am homeschooling her obviously but I'm not a teacher so I'd love if a teacher would ensure her basics in literacy and numeracy are really solid before year 2.

Yes I would send mine. They are only little and have missed their friends so much. As well as the stuff they’d learn in school.

I have been doing ok with home schooling, but I’m very aware that they are missing out on lots of additional things that school brings, especially where I live, like cultural things.

I am trying to do it at home too, but it’s hard with trying to do actual core subjects.

I'd love that but it will never happen imo.

I'm still waiting for the catch up summer school Boris promised us last year....he did didn't he?! I didn't imagine that

Well I can see the sense in this from the POV of those whose DC are really suffering from the lack of contact with their peers (there have been so many threads on how it is directly causing a MH crisis). Thus is a logical way to put in restorative measures.

It would help educationally too

But there is simply no obvious way to staff it

Would this be RL face-2-face schooling?

I think a huge raft of summer school activities and excellent extra-curricular provision over the summer would be great. Run by voluntary sector organisations.

Children need as many opportunities to be stimulated, challenged and excited, away from online communication. And there will be many families where working parents have used up leave for home schooling, or are broke, or needing to catch up on work. This is not a summer when young people should be cooped up bored indoors.

I'd send my year 10

Who would provide this extra 4 weeks of education? Teachers are still working, teaching KW children, and delivering education to those at home. I can't see many volunteering to work an extra 4 weeks, and contractually they're entitled to a break.

Also a lot of maintenance to school buildings is carried out during the summer break, to minimise disruption in term time. This might not be possible if children were present.

(Not a teacher btw - you'd have to offer me a 7-figure salary to get me to do such a challenging and stressful job!)

Would this be RL face-2-face schooling?

I think so, they’d be in a classroom doing maths and English etc, possibly in a more intensive way as the intention is to catch-up on missed schooling.

No, we’re going on holiday (UK) and I’m pretty confident it will go ahead!

I want the option if this yes. Absolutely.

Lovely - where will all of the trained staff come from? I'm a teacher currently working 11-12hr days to keep up with everything (including all lessons live) and rapidly struggling. I, and I imagine quite a few others, will quit if they try to extend the school term to do this (taking my decade of core subject knowledge and ability to get consistently good GCSE results with me).

It is worth noting that sites like TES have had adverts for tutors to provide additional support to schools up since September. Our local area hasn't had nearly enough applications for either primary or secondary.

I am hoping that this summer it will be possible for DS to see family (he hasn't seen any for a whole year), to have a holiday and just go on the sort of day trips we used to take for granted.

I’m much less worried about any gaps in education than I am about their need to get out and about, see people (especially family who are not local) and just have a bit of fun.

My dc won’t be doing that. They’ve been working hard and kept up with lessons. I’m happy for them to do extracurricular fun stuff.

Not for mine.

I'd like some kind of voluntary, drop-in things, emphasising sociability and well-being.

And I realise that's probably not going to be possible/going to happen.

But this is a thread about what you/your child personally needs - and that's what mine could do with.

On a very personal level, I think - in the particular instance of my child - 4 extra weeks of compulsory school over Summer might actually break her. ☹️

Absolutely not. All my children have been doing their school work daily and I'm confident they have not fallen behind. We all look forward to the holidays.