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.

I think it's a crap enough idea that if it became mandantory I would homeschool. Mine LOVE their holidays and are exhausted by the end of the week. The days should be cut and the holidays are extended in my view.

Ditto bored comments above: my children very, very rarely say they are bored. And within five minutes they've found a way to entertain themselves.

It's just child-care.

And it has zero educational value: private schools have far longer holidays and they kids all excell - because of the extra, time money attention and small classes...

And since when did we all want to be Chinese?

Gove is a F*ck Wit.

I'm Chinese. And I quite like being Chinese. But I will not have my children "educated" to within an inch of their lives. Being Chinese is quite different from subscribing to Goveism, you know.

I think there's a case for having longer lunch breaks, and encouraging staff and pupils to linger over their meals a bit. I also think there's a case for homework clubs after school for those pupils who want to attend. Other than that, I think they are in there quite long enough for what we are trying to do.

It's one thing thinking out of the box, it's quite another more or less declaring a fatwa on pupils, teachers and parents - in fact anyone that is actually involved with school on a day to day basis.

He needs to shut up for five minutes and stop haemorrhaging money on mad schemes.

It was a reference to the Chinese educational system ... the suggestion that the Asian educational systems were better because of longer hours and shorter holidays (and that this was what Gove was referring to when he was talking about competitiveness, specifically China). I think 'Goveism' is a Toffs view of education - he is making rules for institutions that people like him will never need to go near and about which he seems to know nothing at all. Sorry!

I agree Hulababy. I also think if money was spent on very high quality early childhood care/education (not formal instruction at earlier and earlier ages) the good results would be felt later in the school careers of many children who currently do not seem to benefit much from their years spent in school.

Back in the early 90s the buzzword was Japanese education, how brilliant the Japanese were, how fast they were getting ahead, how they were going to have the west for breakfast one fine morning soon. Where is Japan now?

Today it seems China has replaced Japan. And Finland remains a highly successful anomaly, with local control of schools, teaching profession highly valued and respected and autonomous to large degree. Behind Gove's proposals and mad schemes is nothing but anxiety and the impulse to control. All of the 'competition' built their successful systems on their strengths. I see no attempt to identify the strengths in the British system and no attempt to tackle the real weaknesses -- there is no methodical or statistic-driven approach here; it's dictated by financial considerations, choosing rhetoric that will appeal to certain slices of the electorate, and sadly by fear.

In other words - knee-jerk policies.

Can't think of anything worse. My DC are at primary school (well, 2, one in preschool) are shattered by the end of the week as it is and when would they fit in afterschool stuff like cubs etc?
We also love the 6 week summer holiday and as a family I find it helps everyone as we get to spend much more time together than in fleeting evenings after school.

As for teachers getting too much holiday etc the friends I have who are teachers can end up working crazy hours at times and fully deserve the respite of summer holiday.

BoffinMum Slightly off topic, but I'm totally up for the longer lunch break idea! I feel so sorry for children who have to hoover up their lunch in 5 minutes flat because the dining hall's tiny and there are five or sittings to accommodate in an hour. When I briefly worked as an MSA (while doing my PGCE) it was my job to hurry up the stragglers (basically anyone who didn't finish within 5 minutes) so they were done before the next lot came in. Many of them had poor motor skills and simply couldn't go any faster. This really isn't conducive to learning table manners or developing a healthy relationship with food!

As for the rest of it, I really do think Gove composed this idea on the back of an envelope. I simply don't buy the 'We need to be more like [insert appropriate East Asian country here]' argument. Forcing children into school for longer is not going to turn us into China because our demographics, culture, labour market and value systems are all completely different. As Mathanxiety said, we should build on our existing strengths, like creativity and cross-curricular learning, rather than trying to compete with countries whose outlook and population differ profoundly from ours.

Finland has slightly longer school days and a week less of lessons than Uk.

My child is shattered enough after a day at school.

Whoever slags off teachers has no idea of how they work. They and the kids need a break otherwise there will be no teachers left.

But Finnish kids don't start school till they're 7. Also, they only go to school part-time for the first few years. They often start early but finish by 1.30.

My SIL is Finnish and she is home educating her kids for the first few years of school because she really disagrees with them starting so young over here.

I'm expecting my fourth baby on 1st August. DC will have to start school full time when they're just over 4 and now they'll have to do even longer hours?! Crazy!!

Your SIL doesn't understand why it is important for English-speaking DC to start school earlier than Finnish-speaking DC. Unwise decision.

I haven't read the whole thread but I would be in favour of a longer day for secondary school students. I had school from 9-4 and I think that days that finish at 2.30 are just too short at this age and for those who have parents who work (which most are I guess by secondary if they can get work) they are basically too free.

Other than that, I would keep it the same.

Bonsoir, what do you mean?

However, I think the school day has got shorter. I was in school till 3.45 at primary and 4.05 in seniors.

I was quite shocked when mine finished at 3.10 in infants and then 3.15 junior. The secondary school finished at 3.10 where i used to work and started at 8.40.

My own DC finish at 3.40 in secondary which is late enough as they have a train journey on top.

I agree about the shorter lunchtimes. Often the canteens aren't big enough for everyone to get through which leads to rushing in secondary school. My own son complained about this.-

Our school day starts at 8.25 and ends at 3.00 (for pupils) with a 20 mins morning break and a 30 min lunch break. That's 6 hours 15 mins.

When I was at secondary school we started at 8.35 and ended at 3.35 with a 20 min morning break, and hour for lunch and a 10 min afternoon break. That's 5 and a half hours.

Yes the reason that schools often finish earlier is because lunch breaks have got shorter.

I do think he is dissassociated from RL.

I noticed his DD was an Icelandic Princess in the Cinderella show her Notting Hill ballet school put on in 2010. Now that is lovely for her and all that, what little girl wouldn't want to be a princess in a ballet, but if you look at the names in the list you start to get an indication of the types of children she is spending her spare time with, and one thing it ain't is representative of the experiences of the vast majority of children in the capital.

I think this is a large part of the problem. He has a beauty journalist wife who periodically writes 'look at our home life, aren't we bonkers and amusing' type articles, and they live a very affluent family life in an affluent part of the country. I think they actually live in too much of a charmed group. That isn't meant to be a personal attack, I am just commenting on the Westminster bubble and the way it skews viewpoints.

Cast list

Then there was the house flipping scandal.

Expenses scandal

Hope I don't get flamed for that.

personally i would like to see more school holidays
a good 4 more weeks

This document makes a comparison of school hours and how it is spent, across key stages, for a range of developing countries

www.oecd.org/education/skills-beyond-school/48631122.pdf

Of all the jobs I have ever done, teaching was the hardest and most stressful. I think the breaks are well earned. We also all love our school holidays. Education is more then being in school.

This could be bad even for working parents. If you have to negotiate annual leave during summer hold with 15+ other employees it'll be even harder to book trips away.