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?

Selfishly I hope schools don't go down to 4 days!

The thought of getting one day a week to get "stuff" done unhindered by my DD sounds like bliss.

@newname12345 an example of school hours in Edinburgh, to me these seem short although they don't have an afternoon break so maybe that's how they get the hours in https://theflorastevensonprimary.com/school-hours/

My daughter is in Y1 in England and doesn't have an afternoon break, I was quite surprised as I remember having afternoon playtime at infant school!

I used to do 33 hours over 4 days and would recommend it. An extra free day is brilliant for work-life balance. And the working days weren’t so long that I couldn’t do things in the evenings, because I was always home before 6pm.

Not sure how children, especially preteens, would cope with longer days though.

They might do something like 4 days of regular school and then 1 day of, say, sports (or a morning of sports and then maybe a half day of art or music or something where it's easier to be a bit flexible). Could potentially combine several local schools so in one area the "sports day" is on a Friday and those who play football go to School A, rugby and hockey in School B etc. The coaches then go to a different area on the other 3 days of the week or something.

It's certainly possible, depending on the area.

Doubt it will ever take in hospitality. We don't even get bank holidays thet are worse :D

It isn't compressed hours, it is literally just working 4 normal days and getting paid for 5.

Only if they also decide it’s ok to cut the curriculum somewhere as well. There’s already barely enough time to fit everything in and children aren’t robots that can still be expected to learn the same amount over fewer, longer days.

In Edinburgh, the teachers' PPA (or whatever it is called in Scotland) is Fri afternoon but the school doesn't need to pay for cover teachers and in many cases doesn't pay to keep the building open. Staff are still doing a 5 day week (lots of teachers take their half day PPA from home in other areas, but the class is covered by eg an HLTA).

It wouldn’t be great for abused children to go more under the radar or the families who can’t afford food.

No.

l think this is a move in the right direction. Home schooled kids only study approx 3 hrs a day and still manage to do well in exams, there's a hell of a lot of time wasted in the school environment. Teachers should be given the same choice as other employees, parents will have to adapt.

I think it would work if it was 4 days of teaching and one day of enrichment, with different staff and not compulsory. I think shortening the school week for children could help them learn and we need to find some way of avoiding burnout in teachers and healthcare staff. No idea how it would work in healthcare but essentially we have to do something to stop people leaving the industry and need to start thinking creatively

Primary schools (or schools in general) are probably not the best examples, as their afternoons tend to be short anyway - less than 2 hours. I seem to remember that my son (England) only had an afternoon break in the first few years of primary.

You'd do 8-5 for four days instead of 5

You'd be less tired

Oh great, so state school children are to lose out on 1 5th of their whole education whilst being expected to attain the same standards whilst privately educated kids won’t lose out/ mummy and daddy will shell out on private tutoring to make up the shortfall.

It just gets worse and worse doesn’t it?!

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.

And the people who currently teach them at those times because it fits in with their childcare, would then have to give up work or find (potentially) more expensive child care

It's already a 4 day school week for kids here in France. They have a longer school day though.

No they can just spread it out so the holidays are shorter? And that will help working parents a lot. And so they'll still get the same time but have more time off through the week to be children.

For those of us who work shifts where are my children going to go on the 5th day? Will someone be paying for this extra childcare then?

Yes, but you would be expected to do 5 days work in those 4 days, which for a hard manual job would be impossible for many people.

I wonder how it would work for people already on a 4-day week and paid 0.8 FTE – if everyone in the company goes to 4 days as standard at 100% pay, do the part-timers drop to 3 days, or have their pay bumped back to full-time?

And I imagine in industries that need cover every day there would be competition over which day people got to drop – in industries that close on the weekends, Monday and Friday are going to be the popular days to have off.

But overall I’m all for it: work-life balance and working culture in this country is ridiculous, and so many jobs are just made-up silly nonsense (not talking about keyworkers here but, like, PR, branding, comms, celebrity journalism, loads of roles where it’s just, “I’m so busy! But if I stopped doing it the world wouldn’t notice” – my work included). We waste so many hours at work and so much energy, and for what?

I don't think the four day week will extend to more than a small proportion of the workforce, even if the trial is a great success.

I do a hard manual job for 4 x 12 hours a week - and so do many others! Warehouses and factories often do 12 hour shifts.

My point isn't the length of the shift, its about needing to be 25% more productive during that shift to make up for doing 4 days instead of 5.