Gove says lengthen school days and shorten long summer holiday

[juneau]

Here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22202694

I think it's a great idea and I'm sure working parents will welcome it. I also think it's bollocks that teachers need the six week summer break to recharge their batteries. Do they work harder or longer hours than other workers who only get four or five weeks a year then?

Having just endured a bored DS1 over the Easter holidays I think any break of more than two weeks is actually pretty dull for kids and I'm sure poorer kids really suffer from lack of stimulation and/or money to do stuff.

BoneyBack, I am in training for NQT. Not finished my PGCE yet, but n comparison to my last job teaching is not that hard.

Then you are doing it wrong. And if you are not prepared to work your arse off you will be of very little use to the children, who deserve better that someone tossing it off.

They should cut the parliamentary summer recess, too, in that case.

www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/michael_gove/surrey_heath

he "works" for us

So Gove only has to be there for 150 days, and he can only be arsed to do around 80 of them?

Lazerus

As others have said, enjoy it now.

My ITT year was a breeze, my NQT year was much harder.

Ha ha Lazaruss. So funny! dickhead

NQT year and the two years after that were the hardest years of my working life.

Good luck.

Feenie that's why if you sign up for his email updates you only get 1 per day...he's obviously not that busy, don't suppose you can report skiving parliament really. Bit inappropriate.

that should have
when compared with my NQT. my NQT year was much harder.

not sure what happened there.

Ooh I'd like a job in your school, too, Lazaruss.

When I was doing my PGCE I was up at 5.30am and not finished work until gone midnight. And that was before I was on a full timetable.

I need my holidays. The children definitely need their holidays.

Juneau.

I think its sad that you weren't able to entertain your own ds and felt the holiday was something you had to endure.
I always hated it when my dc went back to school. The day is long enough and both children and teachers need the holidays.
If we are not careful we will become a nation that hardly spends any time with our children and that would be sad.
Also many people look back on school holidays with fondness and remember the fun they had. Why should we deprive children of this, just because we can't be bothered to entertain them, or better still equip them to entertain themselves.

I don't think kids are worked hard enough. I certainly wasn't. Having lived in Asia, I think we can learn from their models, although I do think their hours are too extreme.

NQT here when I had my own class I was in school between 7.45 and 8.15 and there till at least 4.45. More than twice a week I was there till the cleaners kicked me out at ten to six so they could go home then I would have a day off on Saturday and do ten straight hours on a Sunday.

My school is a big school and a fair few teachers do go home at 4 BUT these teachers have years of experience and are going home to their families, and then will continue work for at least three hours once their children are in bed.

Please stop making out like teachers are work shy and lazy.

He's a tosser. Reasons why this idea is shit include:

1. As a "Working parent", I feel my kids spend long enough in school anyway. I drop them off for breakfast club at 8 and pick them up about 4.30, by which time they're exhausted. I think it's great that they can go to breakfast club and after school club, and I am very happy to pay for it. I feel it's my responsibility to do so. They PLAY at after school club though, and are looked after by people who have chosen to work there. They do not need more formal education.
2. I quite like my kids. I like spending time with them and doing stuff after school and in the holidays. I do not want them in school more.
3. They are exhausted by the end of term, without fail.
4. I like my job but would not do it for longer hours without more pay.
5. Fond as I am of the teenagers I teach, I am much fonder of my own kids and do not want to trade less time with my kids for more time with someone else's.

The other thing is that I teach drama. I don't see why my subject should be sidelined to an after school/extra curricular activity.

I think comparing ourselves to "Asia", though Asia is pretty big, is futile. They are a completely different culture. Imposing their educational system on our kids, just because some Asian countries have faster economic growth, would be spectacularly wrong headed.

This is an awful idea. I love the long holidays with my kids...this is the time when we get to reconnect, hang out together, enjoy the all-too-short-as-is English summer! I love that they play out in the garden all day every day, even on rainy days, that they get filthy, are constanly hungry because they are running around all the time and end up in september brown as berries and half savage. :) What u love most is that they are free from the confines of the real world. this is the only time I can really offer them when they will be free of the bullshit that life has to offer most adults. The peer-pressure-filled, consumerist, highly pressured life that they are squeezed into far too early IMHO.
They will be adults for long enough, let them stay children whilst they can and let us enjoy their childhoods too. I want to have those memories to sustain me in my old age, because god knows I'll be piss poor by then after a lifetime of being bled dry by successive governments and will need them! ;)

I remember travelling in south east asia in 1988 and the outcry at the amount of students committing suicide die the pressures of schooling - not what I want to see for our children in the Uk as there is enough pressure on them already.

My dc have never been bored in the holidays to much sports and playing to do to get bored.

I really enjoy the six weeks summer holidays and really wish it was a couple of weeks longer as it is such a short time to be free and relaxed.

Life isn't just about schooling from 4 - 18 but it seems as a nation we are obsessed with school and the rules that surround the school when we can do this when and how we can do that. MP's need to leave children alone to be children

I would be gutted. When exactly are we supposed to spend any time with our children. And when do they get chance to be kids? Awful idea imo.

A horrible idea like most of Gove's Gandrindian mixed with privatisation ideas are. Altough tbh I could do with ds's school not chucking out quite so absurdly early - 3pm seems ridiculous. It got pushed back because the secondary school next door decided to clock off at 3.30. FFS. They make teenagers start at 8.15 (which is completely against everything science is showing us about adolescent brain development) and finish at 3.30. Madness.

'Terrible idea.
Why should my child be compulsorily stuck at school longer just to help out with other people childcare arrangements and lack of imagination for activities.

There are always after school and holiday clubs if need be. Gove's efforts would be better placed ensuring that all schools have the facility of offering extra cuticular activities to those who want it.'

racmum totally agree.

I'm a single working mum so I have to pay for holiday care for my dc in the holidays. They are at holiday care for the same hours as they do at school/after school. Most working parents I know do the same.

My dc wouldn't notice the difference but it would cost me less. I spend £10,000 a year on childcare roughly. I only earn £30,000. I get no child tax credits. I would support it

In a way, that assumes teachers are glorified childcare providers though.

My school car park has greatly thinned out by 4pm. I wouldn't presume to know why people have gone though. They may have come in an hour before school starts, thus working the equivalent of a 9-5.30 day. They may be off to collect children, feed, play, bed and then bring out their laptops to write a new course. They may not be going home, but off to a meetings with other HODS, or other training. They may just want to get away fast to escape another arrogant, know-it-all student who is bugging them.