Longer school days to make up for lost learning

[StitchInLime]

Source: Various newspapers, give it a Google (admittedly with a right wing lean)

Apparently one of the options being considered, nothing set in stone of course but for the purposes of discussion...

AIBU to feel both joy and sadness at the prospect of this (joy for me so I can claw back work hours, joy for children so they can claw back some school time but sadness for my teacher friends and all teachers who will need to add more hours to already heavy workload).

I think if more focus was currently being placed on standardising the education that is being provided that would be more useful.
Provision is patchy from excellent to dire.
I can’t imagine schools and teachers who are working hard to provide a near normal standard at the minute will be too impressed at all these proposals aimed at those who are not.

I've taught for 20 years. I can't imagine getting paid to do extra! In fact, I dropped hours so I could get work done and some weekend time. Sadly, dropping official hours so you can work a 50 hour week is ridiculously common. The marking and prep and data entry and data analysis and working out intervention and teaching interventions and liaising with parents and attending meetings and keeping up with new requirements and teaching yourself new technologies never, ever ends.

More media rubbish

@Newpuppymummy

Teachers don’t work from 9-3.30 anyway so adding an extra half hour til 4 wouldn’t make a huge difference. Schools vary in hours anyway

Really? No extra marking, no extra planning, no longer hours at home to make up for the time they aren't spending planning other lessons because they are teaching catch up?

Why are there countless threads, where parents expect teachers (who already work 50+ hour weeks on average) to spend extra time in school after hours or in the holidays doing catch-up work?

Is it just because people don’t actually think about what that means or why it’s not feasible or reasonable?

I need to mark today, because I knocked off at 430 yesterday. But after spending all week at the laptop, I can't quite face it yet.

Children will not learn more with longer hours, they will be tired and bored and waiting for it to finish. I remember how it was in the last lesson in the schools I went to. It must have been terrible for the teachers.

Unions or teachers unwilling to co-operate should be subject to termination and the imposition of new contracts.

My new contract would be in a different sector.

Good luck replacing an experienced maths teacher.

The school day is already long enough, especially for young children. Not sure anyone would really fancy volunteering for a 4pm catch up of fronted adverbials with a bunch of over tired and unwilling eight year olds.

It won't happen.

@CrackOpenTheGin

This is again where private school children benefit and something we should be looking to replicate in state schools in my opinion.

The school day starts at 8.15 for all children. KS1 finish at 3.30 and KS2 finish at 4.20. KS1 clubs(mainly sports based and run by outside experts) run until 4.20 so if you have a child in both key stages you can pick them up at the same time. Every KS1 child with a sibling stays for this extra session of sport so they have 3 1.5 sessions of PE a week in the curriculum and a sessions after school everyday. Interestingly, there is not a single overweight child in the school.

KS2 clubs run from 4.20 to 5.40 including an extra playtime and healthy snack from 4.20-4.40. These are clubs, again mainly active ones run by professionals.

By doing the longer day, the children do an equivalent of an extra day a week at school. They all cope with these hours fine and they have more time for the creative side of the curriculum. And the way that the clubs are run encourages lots of extra sport.

I honestly think that an extended school day like this would give the teacher more time to cover the maths and English basics in the day and more time for active and creative learning after school.

Some private schools do longer days but by no means all. Some are very similar to the local state provision.

My DD's private school days were:

Ks1: 8:30am to 3:30pm, two playtime's of 15-20 minutes each plus 1H15 for lunch. Childcare included from 8:15am. Childcare to 4pm inc in fees, some clubs including til 4:15pm. Other childcare paid for.

Ks2: 8:30am to 3:45pm; lunch reduced to 1 hour. Rest same.

Secondary: 8:45am to 3:30pm, could go into school from 8:30am. Childcare not included. Some clubs included in fees, not all. One morning break of 25 minutes, lunch was an hour, early years a bit longer.

My state infants:
8:50am to 3:20pm, but doors open from 8:40am, was 8:30 during covid times and pick up was 3:00-3:30.
2 x 15 min breaks and hour for lunch.
Most clubs at lunchtime or after school were free, until 4pm or 4:15pm if provided by school, external agencies paid for. Breakfast club £2 a day from 8:30am or free for disadvantaged or pp children. External agency provided after school care til 6pm, paid for.

Local independent/private schools had 3-3.5 weeks additional school holidays. Extra. Week in Christmas, Easter and extra 1,5 week at summer.

& re community or volunteers
First they will need enhanced police checks - which are never 100% because only those who have been caught are on there - & whilst I am not suggesting all people who want & able & have qualifications that might be able to support are paedophiles - there is always the risks that this, if used widespread, could lead to an incident

@WombatChocolate

Why are there countless threads, where parents expect teachers (who already work 50+ hour weeks on average) to spend extra time in school after hours or in the holidays doing catch-up work?

Is it just because people don’t actually think about what that means or why it’s not feasible or reasonable?

Because its always someone elses responsibility and the people who think this is a good idea don't want to look at the logistics because that raises difficult questions. They just want a magic bullet and it to be someone else's problem.

Why are there countless threads where teachers claim that every single teacher in the country works 60 hours+ a week?
When so many if MNers who are teachers, married to teachers, closely related to teachers, best mates with teachers know that it simply isn’t true?
As I always say on these threads, there are excellent teachers. Motivated, enthusiastic and caring. There are others who are currently doing the absolute minimum. And there is NOTHING that repeated threads on MN claiming the 60+ week will do to persuade those of us who know different.

@storminabuttercup it won’t be just a bit extra though. Working hours are already very high in teaching (50 hours a week is not unusual in normal times) never mind the extra time it is taking at the line to prep and deliver online teaching. (Disclaimer - other jobs also have long working hours too.)

The DfE won’t make any allowances to other staff duties to allow catch up to happen so this will be a huge amount of work added on. Case in point - many schools are now observing online lessons during this lockdown as the DfE wants the quality of it tracked. Due to Ofsted, many schools are still running deep dives for subject leaders, book scrutinies and drop in lesson observations from the classroom door during this lockdown despite all the extra work required to teach children in person and those working at home. If we ditched some of the excessive scrutiny and paperwork it would free up so much time to actually focus on things to benefit the children.

Also, the more people freely give, the more it will be taken for granted. This has been happening for years in education. Things like teachers and TAs buying basic equipment for their classes as the funding is so woeful.

I know I seen like I’m just moaning but the people I’ve seen around my school are working so hard just to keep things together. Proper investment from the government and ditching unnecessary demands on schools is what is needed here.

It's pointless adding additional academic work onto a school day that already leaves kids knackered. Friday afternoon lessons are far less productive than the rest of the timetable as it is.

What would be useful would be more after school sports and fitness options, it's been incredibly difficult for children to maintain regular exercise over lockdown. Some social or arts education would also be welcomed. The research doesn't suggest that extra academic hours equal more attainment, it does however support that extra music, arts and sports provision improves academic attainment.

Kids are doing maths and English and book based subjects now, what they aren't doing is socialising, visiting places, exercising... The residential trips missed have surely had an impact on kids development and education?

For primary schools the only way it could possibly work is if the normal school day is taught by teachers and the volunteers come in for an extra hour at the end of the day. PE, Art and Music could be taken out of the normal school timetable and moved (temporarily) to the extra hours at the end of the day, freeing up timetable time to increase Maths and English lessons during the day.
That said, I think it is still too much for the children to cope with. When I taught primary most of the children (of all age groups) were flagging so much by the end of the day that you could write-off any "serious" learning in the last half an hour to hour. Absolutely no point in trying to teach Maths in the afternoon.

As usual it's just a load of hot air from the government who have to be seen to be doing something. They'd be better off coming up with some properly thought out plan of how to target support at those children who really haven't been able to keep up due to online learning and have fallen behind.

@81Byerley

Children will not learn more with longer hours, they will be tired and bored and waiting for it to finish. I remember how it was in the last lesson in the schools I went to. It must have been terrible for the teachers.

That’s not true. My children have always done longer hours (private prep). Most children are a year ahead, some 2. They do a massive amount of sport and creative activities too. A longer day can be a good thing if it’s not just maths and english.

@Doublefaced

Why are there countless threads where teachers claim that every single teacher in the country works 60 hours+ a week? When so many if MNers who are teachers, married to teachers, closely related to teachers, best mates with teachers know that it simply isn’t true? As I always say on these threads, there are excellent teachers. Motivated, enthusiastic and caring. There are others who are currently doing the absolute minimum. And there is NOTHING that repeated threads on MN claiming the 60+ week will do to persuade those of us who know different.

Probably for the same reason that there are countless threads claiming that every single teacher is workshy and only works 9-3. Because we all know teachers who work incredibly hard and teachers who don't. There will be teachers at the moment who are doing very little by virtue of the subject they teach. And teachers who will be doing more than they do when only doing f2f teaching.

"Why are some school staff so reluctant to do that bit extra?"

Well, I think it's a combination of reasons. One main one, might be burn-out from the "can you just?" thing. Individual requests that might seem reasonable on their own, like "just" another half hour on the day, have to be seen as part of the whole, whereby school staff are absolutely inundated with unquantifiable "extras" all day long, plus evenings, weekends and holidays,
Plus, of course they wouldn't be paid. Which of course, ultimately means it won't happen, even if they could find sufficient numbers of staff (not just teachers but on-site support) who were willing to volunteer their precious free time.

And don't underestimate the damage organisations like UsforThem (including, I'm afraid, quite a few MN posters) have done in crushing teacher morale and goodwill. When we're seemingly constantly berated and accused of being lazy so-and-sos, during a period of intolerable pressure and intensive workload (yes, like many other, although not all, professions) why on earth would anyone want to volunteer to do yet more?

I'm not sure how that works for age 13+ kids who often have PT jobs.

I should think it will be supply teachers.

This is all a distraction from the fact that the government put millions into a national catch-up tutoring initiative that has failed to take off.

The same threads popped up at the end of the first lockdown. I'm a teacher it won't happen. There's no money. At best it's kite flying and the idea didn't win approval from the public like last time. Or it's the right wing media making up stories. It won't happen

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

‘Lost learning’ is a fallacy.

It’s about meeting government targets/ league tables. And that is all it’s about.

25 years a teacher. I hope this resets education instead of destroying the mental health of teens

Yes!