how would you feel about year round schooling in order to reduce numbers?

[elmouno]

I see a lot of people bring up part time schooling, with a couple days on or reduced time, but I haven't seen any threads about shifting holiday.

Basically in a year round system, there are Tracks. Each student is assigned a Track (and families can choose to stay on the same Track). The Tracks are divided (Track A, B, C, D) so that the students and teachers assigned to that specific Track are allocated holiday. It's two months off, one month off continually with the one month off shifting according to the Track.

For example

Track A goes to school January, February and is off in March, then goes back April, May, and is off in June, then goes again July, August, then off in September, and back in October, November and off in December.

Track B, C, D is the same but the month off shifts throughout the year so that it reduces the number of students. Holidays for Easter, Christmas, and New Year's are still given, but are shorter.

This might help with the space in buildings.

I can’t imagine having a 19, nearly 20 year old following school rules personally.

In Ireland you can start school at any age up to age 6 so here it is very possible to have 19yr old still I school. And also they can repeat their final yr if they want so I had Ppl in my class who were 20/21 and repeating.

My ds will be 19 when he starts his final yr of school.

My dd has a girl in her class who is 8 since March and another who has only just turned 7 in July.

I can’t imagine having a 19, nearly 20 year old following school rules personally.

Year 14 is becoming increasingly common ime. It doesn't appear to be very unusual to have 19y in many state sixth forms these days.

Some of the ideas popping up on Mumsnet lately are pure comedy gold!

How about let’s just get back to school (I’m a teacher here who can’t wait to see my GCSE learners) and if we have to lock down again, which hopefully won’t be the case nationally, I can teach on-line, live, to the normal lesson time and the school can loan computers to those who need them.

Much simpler and hopefully we’ll be done with Covid sooner rather than later.

This sounds like a bit of a nightmare... and what about things like being able to hang out with friends in the holidays? Having time off at Christmas?

Spending their entire lives leading up to GCSEs to come out with a bunch of meaningless 2s and 3s that will get them nowhere is really demoralising for them, and they might be amazing at more practical things that they don't get the chance to do.

This is the end result of the fundamental flaw in the 70s which basically turned all schools into grammars, but call them "comps". The typical comp has more in common with an old fashioned grammer than with a "sec mod", i.e. compulsory GCSEs (O levels) at 16, A levels at 18. Subject range in comps is very similar to the old fashioned grammars. I still remember the "grammars for all" straplines that were in the media etc at the time. It was all one gigantic cock up and con job to make things "fairer" by giving everyone what amounts to a grammar education. Modern comps do nothing for the non academic pupils who are more suited to trades etc. The education establishment has had 50 years to fix it but have failed miserably and the subjects/school day today are really not that different to how it was in the 70s despite the World changing out of all proportion. We've had lots of re-arranging the deckchairs on the titanic, i.e. small scale damaging changes which are often reversed, but no one has the balls to make the fundamental changes that are required.

The OP has started an earlier thread where in a faux-naif style they knew fuck all bout teaching.

Now the posting style has changed to someone who suddenly has the the jargon.

Still fuck-witted and goady, though.

I'm a teacher for the county council and we are what's known as the 'envelope' - we are required to be available for support (SEN) for all the days schools can possibly be open within our county. So if schools choose to do twilights during the year and finish on July 18th rather than the 21st, they can, but I still have to be available and at work up till and including the 21st. I'm at work the earliest possible date at the start of term right through to the last possible date.

So how would these 4 tracks work for teachers like me? Take term-time holiday (because it would all be term-time) and leave some of my SEN caseload without support? Or try to juggle other members of the team to cover my holiday, and do that every time one of us is on holiday? What if two of us are on holiday at the same time? These children have EHCPs and are legally entitled to a certain amount of our support every week they're in school.

[quote elmouno]@Artesia

Teachers would be off according to the Track they are on. They would be tied to their students.[/quote]
Nope. I love my job but I refuse to be tied to other people's kids. What about my own kids?

So, how would the responsibility levels work? Would there have to be a head of subject for each track?