Longer school day and shorter holidays, proposes Gove

[Morebiscuitsplease]

I cannot understand this man. Children need time out, teachers also need time to prepare and mark work, when do either get this with such proposals? We complain our children are obese yet suggest more time in school. I do not want any child of mine going to school for 7.30 and finishing at 5. They need time to play, pursue other activities and do homework. Your thoughts please!

A proper review wouldn't start with the premise that children needed to spend more hours in school.

If we're going to do things differently, then let's figure out what we want schools to do and how we can best achieve that.

Starting out from the premise that what we need is more hours in front of the books seems pretty Luddite to me.

That's not really embracing change, it's refusing it in favour of more of the same.

Cailín - you seem to have a very low opinion of parents.

Is your experience really that most of us are utter philistines?

I don't think all that prescriptive bollocks about learning objectives came from parents.

chibi - I woudl like children doing a balanced range of academic work (ie sitting at desks), sport, drama/music and their homework at school with school physically open 8.30 - 5.30 every day.

I don't want children sat behind desks for any longer than they already are. I want all children to have what my children have at their school. OK, my children are at a private school but what my children have is what I have desribed on thsi thread. It is delivered by normal teachers who trained in the same way as state school teachers.

Some of the outcomes of the English curriculum include speaking and listening. I once did a lesson that involved debating the merits of living in a particular area, based on resources based in that area. The children were very involved, they came up with fabulous ideas, and I was pleased that I had covered part of the English and Geography curriculum in one lesson. I was also delighted that I was observed during the lesson by the Deputy Headteacher. She complimented me on the lesson, pointed out all the positive parts of it etc. But at the end she said sadly "It's just a shame it doesn't really count." When I asked her what she meant she said "Well they just made charts (which were fantastic) and OFSTED don't really look at those. It's not in their books so they won't be interested." So I had to spend another hour photographing the charts and putting them into the children's books so bloody OFSTED would take it into account. Teaching wise it was a complete waste of my time but I had to produce a result in black and white, regardless of the benefit to the children. When you are working under that sort of system it's easy to get disheartened.

Cailin - my children spend quite a lot of time outside the classroom. Not always on formal school trips but just going outside on the school field to learn about nature, going into town to draw historic buildings, the local museum, etc.

i don't know how you prescribe that, tbh

at my school, there are just such activities as you describe, where teachers willingky and freely give of their time to do afterschool stuff, whether twilight lessons, academic support, drama, dance, music, debating, sport etc etc etc and it frequently runs until 5:30

this is by no means uncommon; i know many schools, with very different intakes who offere similar

it is true that not all schools do, perhaps because it all runs on goodwill

people get mightly reluctant once that goodwill is abused

So what matter is not what you do, but what you are seen to do?

Gosh, how demoralising.

Sounds like a fun lesson.

I hope all the teachers on ths thread can tell I am really happy with the teachers and the school my children are at.

I am not bashing teachers here. I just want all schools to work like my children's school - it most certainly is not Eton and it is slap bang in the middle of a town. It can be done.

You want to force all children to have have what you have chosen for your own?

Nice.

So other parents who might choose otherwise can just sod off then?

I definitely don't think parents are philistines at all, AThingInYourLife. I'm just very frustrated because I absolutely love teaching but I can't engage with the politics of it. As you said yourself, the proposal to lengthen the day has been made without asking teachers whether it's feasible or not. I perhaps take it more to heart that I should when parents then go on to criticise teachers without really understanding what the job involves and there seems to be an attitude that teaching is a job any idiot can do and that reluctance to accept change is just stubbornness rather than a professional judgement call.

I read so many threads from parents on MN mentioning OFSTED results - it's due to parents' preoccupation with OFSTED that teachers have become a slave to it, and it's because that slavery that we feel under constant pressure to produce OFSTED -acceptable results which involve getting the children to sit down and produce written work at all costs.

Changemorethan

Inde school manage all this and a longer day mainly because of the small class size. In the state sector 1 teacher does everything for 30 kids. If classes are 15 for academic subjects in a prep then it obvious that 1 teacher can take PE or whole year singing with 2 classes and free up another to do marking etc.

Private schools also the last 90 mins or so of the day doing prep- supervised homework. It's not being "taught" as such. They sit in silence at do work set by subject teachers. Supervised- again at a lower staffing ratio. They shouldn't then have to do more work when they finally get home.

Well if they are going to cut down the holidays- they will have to pay teachers more...

Teachers are not paid for holidays- wages are just spread over a year so they get 12 pay packets.

Hmmm, I must admit to being very sceptical of Ofsted's judgments on anything.

I have just applied for a primary place for DD1 and I made my decision entirely on talking to parents of older children in the town and what they thought of the schools.

IMO communities know whether their schools are good and you can tell a lot by doing a bit of word-of-mouth research.

DH looked up the Ofsted reports for the schools and apparently the one I chose is "the best", but actually I don't put any store by that assessment.

It makes me so depressed to think of teachers wasting their time proving to a bureaucracy like Ofsted that they are good at their job.

The opinion of your deputy principal and the reactions of the children are far, far more important.

I agree with you, all this prodding and poking and standardisation just sends the message that teachers are idiots who can't be trusted and need to be monitored constantly like bold teenagers. I couldn't deal with that level of disrespect in my job.

MoreBeta, independent schools tend to be much better funded, have higher staffing levels, and lower staff/student ratios than state schools. It is for those reasons that the system you describe works in your children's school. If Gove was willing to provide specialist PE and drama teachers to cover extra classes while teachers did preparation, or were willing to provide staff to supervise the homework sessions in the evening, then that would be fine. Instead he's saying to already overworked teachers that they have to do more work, probably for the same pay. I don't think anyone would be happy about that, no matter what their job was.

Even if all schools were staffed like independent schools, I STILL wouldn't want enforced longer hours for all pupils.

Reducing discretionary free time for children is not a positive step IMO.

AThingInYourLife - I think the main problem really is that there's a very odd general attitude to teaching, which is displayed quite a lot by MoreBeta. Teaching isn't something that automatically produces a product that can be measured and tested. Yet, the attitude towards schools now is that they should produce results, constantly, as though they were a bank or a factory.

Like you say, what actually happens in the classroom is the important thing, and that's something that's usually only witnessed by the teacher and the students and perhaps a TA or other teacher if supervision is going on. Yet, that fleeting hour where the children are involved and interested, where they're expanding skills that aren't immediately obvious, like their ability to argue a point or their confidence in a group, isn't down on paper and isn't measurable so it's not counted. Instead the teacher has to waste valuable time producing results on paper so people who don't know how the classroom works can tick and box and say you're doing what they want you to do. It's incredibly frustrating and leads a lot of teachers to focus entirely on the written result so that what they do can be counted. It satisfies OFSTED, but the children lose out.

This crap idea of Gove's would cost a fortune to implement. There is no money.

Relax everyone!

"Yet, that fleeting hour where the children are involved and interested, where they're expanding skills that aren't immediately obvious, like their ability to argue a point or their confidence in a group, isn't down on paper and isn't measurable so it's not counted."

Yes, we're back to the technocratic problem of only assessing that which can be measured and the well-known ways that fucks up incentives and loses the entire point of many tasks.

The thing is though, those things that aren't measurable, are perceptible, so parents and children and other teachers do KNOW how children are doing.

I would have thought parents would be your allies in this. I couldn't give a crap what Ofsted scores a school has, but I will care very much about whether my child learn to argue a point well, gains confidence in a groups, etc. And that is something knowable, even if not measurable.

Sorry, I know I'm preaching to the choir here. But the main thing I would want changed about schools is the obsession with measuring the irrelevant and the way that is skewing schools towards gradgrandian nightmares.

OFSTED is a huge bugbear of mine, so you may regret me even starting to talk about it! The underlying idea of it is great - monitor schools and improve their effectiveness - nothing wrong with that. However, when it comes down to it, the way they actually assess schools is just ridiculous. Take the last school I was in for example. It was by far the best school I ever taught at. Wonderful, committed staff (apart from one, there's always one!), amazing headteacher who had his head screwed on and a great relationship with his staff, very very hardworking TAs, and lovely, interested, well-behaved children. However, it was located in an area with a high proportion of immigrants so a lot of children started school with little or no English. I was beyond impressed at the way the school dealt with this problem - a large number of children went from one or two words of English to being almost fluent in two years. That is an incredible achievement, given the fact that a lot of the parents spoke other languages at home so the children only had the opportunity to learn English at school.

Yet, according to OFSTED, we were one step away from special measures. Why? Because the children had to be at a certain literacy level by year 3 regardless of how long they had been speaking English. So a child who had literally just started reading and speaking English at age 7 had to be on the same level as a peer who'd been speaking English since birth by age 9. Can you imagine how disheartening it is to put hours and hour and hours of extra work into helping children to learn English only to be told by OFSTED that your efforts don't measure up to their tick-box agenda and so you're under review and will get more visits. This isn't a case either of a benign, helpful authority trying to guide a school struggling under difficult circumstances. This is a case of OFSTED completely ignoring the unusual circumstances of the school and basically heaping pressure on an already pressurised staff. Thankfully the head was just brilliant and found ways to meet their criteria. I'm not at that school any more (SAHM now) but from what I hear they're going from strength to strength. That headteacher deserves a medal.

I think that most of the people who are against this are unaware of the realities of life for the 'bottom' 20% or so of children. It matters to all of us how they do, because just now they ate on a one way ticket to the scrap heap. The children who do nothing after school, the children who's patents can't help with homework, the children who's only meal is their school dinner. They need this. If we don't change things they will be unemployable and a burden to everyone else. The best way to implement a plan like this is universally, and if middle class patents don't like it they can opt out. They have choices, unlike the children at the bottom.

Victoria, children are already at school 6 hours a day 5 days a week. If schools could really solve the ills of those bottom 20% they would already be doing it, believe me. Generally that bottom 20% you're talking about find school difficult and come from families that give the child the message that school is pointless and teachers don't need to be listened to. They are the children who spend large parts of the week in sanctions. Having them in an environment that they are clearly not thriving in for even longer is not going to help unless the extra hours are spent on emotional and behaviour interventions - something I am massively in favour of, but which is never going to happen.

Implementing expensive needless policies universally rather than making it easier for schools to serve the pupils they actually have.

That sounds like a wonderful idea.

Making life difficult for middle class parents so you can try (and fail again) to raise standards at the bottom with hamfisted one-size fits all initiativitis.

well i guess we count as middle class from an education point of view and from mine and my dp's parents pov, but the job that my dp does certainly doesnt pay enough to send our children to private school, so what choice is there exactly, i know loads of people who wouldnt be happy for their kids to go to school for longer hours but wouldnt be able to afford to 'choose' to do differently.

my eldest son could have got a bursary to go to a very good private school, we actually chose to send him to the local high school instead as i would rather he got a more rounded education and mixed with people from a wider variety of backgrounds, i also didnt want him to have the long day or to have to go to school on a saturday like he would have had to at the independent school.

i think learning is a life long process, its not just about what they do in school and if children arent inspired to learn by their parents firstly then i dont think it would matter how many hours a day they were at school, unless you send them to boarding school and take them out of a negative home environment they will still fall back to the default that they know.

Made the mistake of reading the comments section at the bottom of the Mail story.

How depressing. Serves me right though!

Now that's a policy I could get behind 4mad - forcing the nations boarding schools to accept educationally disadvantaged pupils who are struggling to make the grade in their special measures comps :o