4-day working week: would it be extended to schools?

[Anothernameforallthis]

Just reading in the Guardian about a big UK project to trial a 4-day working week in a whole range of different businesses / places of employment. The benefits are expected to be clear: “The four-day week is generally considered to be a triple-dividend policy – helping employees, companies, and the climate. Our research efforts will be digging into all of this.”

If it is a great success, wouldn't we want to extend these benefits to school children and teachers? Give them a less stressful life, benefit the environment (one less day a week of the school run), more time to develop interests / hobbies / skills away from the classroom?

No as it's difficult enough to cover school holidays as it is without an extra day each week. Breakfast and after school clubs might not be able to run if only open 4 days a week. Will not be able to afford to pay staff for 5 days if only generating revenue 4 days. There are many industries this will not work for. Kids have missed enough schooling as it is.

Edinburgh and the surrounds do a 4.5 day week in schools and have done for decades. Finish at lunchtime on a Friday. Works well for teachers and kids, not so sure for parents.

I can see that this can work well in many industries but not in education and health.

extend it to all nurses ,doctors, hospital emergency services, those working in retail. Schools , daycare etc etc . Great idea!

It won't work in leisure and service businesses that rely on having a certain number of staff working there at any time, especially if they see an upturn in business from all the people who have an extra day a week to go to the gym, museums, go shopping etc etc. Nor healthcare, emergency services etc.

Teachers are one of the professions most prone to burnout and leaving in droves so something like this would be really helpful. Of course that means we need more teachers to cover the 5 days a week that schools are open.

It wont work for industries with call centres, people will still want to call in every day so they wont be able to spread the staff thin enough

So they just have fewer people on each day.

We would adapt.

Just because staff are working 4 days doesn't mean a business is going to close. Lots of call centres operate 24 hours, or 8am to 9pm, I don't think it is the same people every day.

The only time I have worked in anything like a call centre we did 12 hour shifts and 4 days on, 4 days off.

Depends if you are talking about schools being shut one of the current 5 days a week, or the Government funding enough staff that they could operate 5 days for the dc but giving staff the benefit of only having to attend 4 day, covering with job shares / extending PPA etc.

I realise pigs are likely to fly before any Government decides on the latter.

One big issue with the former is it just widens the divide between those parents who are able to source, fund and provided taxi service to other worthy activities, and those that aren't. Widening the divide is not something we need any more of.

I don't really see how it would be appropriate for schools. Presumably the delivery of lessons can't be achieved in 80% of the time it is now?

In some settings it would work fine, but probably not those in which professionals deliver a service such as education and health care because demand wouldn't lessen and the gaps couldn't just be filled.

Yes it would be good.

dh and I shifted to 4 day weeks a while ago. It means you get less burn out and actually some time to do stuff as the weekend was always lost with chores, diy etc.

if your working 4 days, then it wouldnt matter if children only did 4 days either.

Although tbh school isn’t childcare. School where I live is 8am-11.30am, has been forever. So no one of any age has school in the afternoons. It’s plenty.

Would it create more job opportunities/vacancies/shortages if places that are open 7 days a week have staff working 4 days a week.
Although needing more staff and having or recruiting more staff are obviously totally different things!

Reducing the time available for stuff may focus the minds of those higher up to develop a leaner way of working.

I'd imagine lots of good quality teaching can be done in 4 days a week if the teachers don't also have mountains of evidencing, social work, meetings etc.

The point of this that they will still give their staff 100% of their pay, on the understanding that they maintain maximum productivity.

So for example anywhere that is open 7 days a week would have less staff working at any one time.

Yes I'd love to have them at home an additional day, we could put swimming lessons in so it doesn't have to be done after school and we could do music and art.

I think it would widen the social gap, some kids would be at home hungry, some would be doing lovely enrichment activities with their SAHP. Unless part of the plan was to reduce the holidays to make up for teaching time, which I don't think would be popular with the teaching unions.

I know school isn't childcare, but lots of families are set up around school being Monday - Friday, and it's already hung by a thread.

Many big employers in Edinburgh work (or at least used to work) a 4.5 day week too. You can only sensibly do it for schools if enough local employers follow suit.

Is this a true 4.5 day week (ie working 90% of normal hours), or is this working 4 slightly longer days and then finishing earlier on a Friday?

Can't see how it would work in schools, for a number of reasons.

• Presumably those moving to a 4 day week, would be doing 4 longer days, rather than just cutting a day? Children's couldn't really spread the 6 hours missed over the remaining 4 days, they'd then be very long days.
• Or if they were to stay in for 5 days, it would be very unsettling and unecessary (and probably very difficult to fund) to have 1 teacher for 4 days and 1 for 1 day.
• Education already get a lot longer holidays than everyone else (don't shoot me down, I know they still work very hard during their holidays) so I can't see it going over particularly well if they then got an 'extra' day off each week!

Might work, they could shorten the school holidays in the summer.

Yes I'd worry it was too long a day for the kids. Don't want to cram too much into one day. But if they shortern the holidays and keep the length of the days it might work

Sounds like a dream. I work 6 days a week with 4 days off. School finishes at 12 on Friday so we factor in who is home and can pick up.

I don't know any employers in Edinburgh that only work a 4.5 day week! It's a pain for parents and as result many who work part time don't work Fridays. I also don't know how they get the hours in at school as they don't seem to do a longer day or have shorter holidays as a result. Although it does make Friday evening rush hour quieter :)

I work from 8-5 by 4 i am shattered if I did an extra 2 hours a day it would be total unproductive
How about people who do hard manual jobs ?