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!

You'd set up system in which paraprofessionals did the childcare side of things, and the teachers did the teaching. Core hours would be something like 8-4, with timetabled classes, and before and after that you'd have meals, sport, music, recreation and so on. Like what they call 'home boarding' in boarding schools.

The 1265 hours is directed hours - the hours the head can direct teachers to do. But they also have to work "such reasonable additional hours as may be necessary to enable the effective discharge of the teacher?s professional duties".

Gove will think he can get it for free under the additional hours clause.

Also agree with bonsoir!
One size doesn't fit all.

Tories always have scraps with teachers when in power.

WRT to faceless institutions, if it were down to me, schools would have no more than 400 pupils and everyone would know everyone else properly. Plus the human face of education would be more prevalent.

Even if your school only had 400 children max, being there all day, every day is an exceedingly limiting sort of childhood.

I suppose we would need to factor that in and make sure they didn't turn into ghettos designed at keeping kids out of sight and out of mind.

I think there is a confusion here between schools being open longer and those hours being compulsory. School itself isn't compulsory. There is always home-ed.

Wouldn't it be better if more clubs were run on school premises rather than DCs being ferried around all evening?

I don't imagine that these extra hours are going to mean extra academic teaching hours. There could be extra sports and homework supervision. Surely it's better to do 'homework' at school between 4 and 6 rather than after 8 at night?

I think it is better to do homework at home. Home is an important place for all of us; the modern world encourages us to use home as a place to eat and sleep, but not as a place for intellectual or creative pursuits with those we love. Domesticity is becoming a lost art and human civilisation is all the poorer for it.

Surely Boffin's model is already being done in school with out of school facilities? Our OOSC opens at 8:15, the children are taught between 9 and 3.30 with lunchtime clubs, and then the OOSC runs until 6.

It is but there is a shortfall of places - in our area there are only sufficient OOSC places for about 15% of pupils at best.

Victoria - as it stands a lot of schools do homework clubs, although in my experience the uptake of these tends to be quite low. Schools can't really be used for after school clubs for a number of reasons. One is that teachers don't leave when the children leave - they use the school for meetings, marking, getting classrooms ready, putting up displays etc. If the school was constantly full of dance troupes and drama classes teachers would never get space to do non-teaching work. Plus, to have the school open late the school would be required to pay the caretaker to stay and look after the building. My old school couldn't even afford to do this for the teachers - we were allowed to stay and work until 5:30 but after that we had to go home as the caretaker was leaving. The school would also have to pay the cleaners extra to clean up after the clubs, and their insurance costs would skyrocket. Any clubs that run when parents' night, art display night, the nativity play etc were on would have to be cancelled, which of course would annoy the club owners a lot. In the end it's all about money really.

I hate to sound like a mad conspiracy theorist but this sounds like something Gove has cooked up so that, like ravenAK said, teachers can be made to look bad. It's the perfect opportunity to point the finger at teachers and say "Look at the lazy sods, they're not even willing to work extra hours in spite of their holidays and short school day." That's the perfect way to turn the tide of opinion against teachers in the pensions issue. I mean why on earth is he proposing something that the government clearly cannot afford to implement?

The other thing that will happen is that those teachers who don't support the longer hours will get accused of not supportingthe school and will; get fired under the new easy to get rid off measures.

It's true. Why else would he say something as stupid as if we love our jobs, then we won't mind doing it for longer? i.e. if you're not willing to be a mug, then you mustn't really like teaching kids anyway.

Ffs, the man's a total dick.

I don't think that it makes any sense to use independent schools as a comparison. Not only because of the smaller class sizes, but also because of the different demographic. Parents who pay a fee for education have a very different sort of investment and commitment and this rubs off on their children on the whole (fundamentally the children who do best at school have parents who support them).

I went to a selective day school and whilst we had children who didn't want to be there they all knew that getting good grades mattered. School fees paid for better sports grounds and equipment, so there were lots of extra curricular activities, but they were for us to choose to do, so only the children who wanted to play music, or athletics, or art or electronics or whatever else did them. I can't imagine they would have been half as enjoyable if the majority of the children felt they had been forced to be there. Certainly when I went to boarding school and such activities were compulsory it really changed the atmosphere.

We should just be thankful our children don't attend schools in China where lessons can last around 12 hours each day! I think children do enough as it is at state schools (cannot comment on private schooling).

Agree very much with Bonsoir. Well said :)

Really, I think teachers have a cheek wanting to be paid at all.

Looking after our precious children all day should be reward enough for them.

He shouldn't be trying get the vote of working parents he should be doing what's best for children

And longer days is not it

Longer school day sounds fab,good idea
Good for working parents

I would certainly support some sort of shift arrangement. I would like to start teaching at, say 8am, til 2. Then could either stay and work, or work from home., maybe logging in or something if that makes people happier. I could not teach more though. Each extra lesson of 1 hour probably generates one and a half to two hours of planning and marking. So, each extra lesson, means two and a half hours work. So even five extra teaching hours, means 15 hours a week extra.

but not all parents work, if they do then they can arrange for their children to go to before/after school, clubs or find alternative childcare. i choose not to work and dont see why my children should go to school for longer hours just because its easier for working parents.

I imagine govt wants to support working parents and encourage more parents back into workforce to be economically active

Or coerce parents into working to pay into state coffers?

I worked in a school where they used to invoke the word 'vocation' whenever we questioned why our hours were being ratcheted up willy nilly. Towards the end of my time there, I was working from 7.45am to 6pm every Thursday, for example, with not even a legitimate toilet break factored in, as I had to supervise playtime, lunchtime, and homework club non-stop on top of a full teaching timetable. On other days, I was required to work 7.45am to 4pm without a break, as we had to sit with the children at lunchtime and supervise them while we ate, and supervise kids who could or would not go out to play at other times, for whatever reason. I also had to coach sport, despite not being qualified to do so or knowing or caring about the rules of things like football.

I would have a quick cup of tea at 4, and then I would either attend a staff meeting until 6 (every Wednesday), or put up displays, repair school instruments, and/or prepare my classroom for the next day. On top of this I had to do all my lesson planning and marking, drive children to music exams and accompany them, drive the school minibus on trips, and take part in staff training at the weekends and during the school holidays. I was also required to babysit children when their parents couldn't be bothered to pick them up. I had a reputation for being 'difficult' as I would question all this and wonder why only certain teachers were being required to give this level of effort while others had much lighter loads.

This was all for the absolute minimum they were legally allowed to pay me, was not the terms and conditions I had thought I had signed up to, and left me and my DD absolutely exhausted. For that and other reasons I resigned. Meanwhile the head sat in his office drinking coffee, sleeping (we caught him a few times), and writing raving religious and philosophical tracts for self-publication.

If Gove thinks there is slack in the system for introducing extended schooling on this basis using existing resources, then I think he doesn't spend enough time in schools these days.

I'm a working parent. When we lived in the UK both dh and I worked, but I don't think that's a good reason to make children work the same hours in order to make our lives a little bit easier. In fact they would have had to have longer hours in order for it to really help: 8-6 minimum. I can't imagine that would be good for very many primary children unless schools are going to convert en mass to a more nursery style set up with rests, meals etc. Plus having lives that are so planned isn't very good for you (no opportunities for getting bored) and what about the children who don't like school; haven't made friends in their classes; prefer to spend their time with their families or have specialist interests?