Primary education for the modern world

[ThinkingForward]

Discussion on how to reform the primary school offering to make it suitable for modern britain

> benefits of having more directed hours of experiences and learning
> more diverse educational offering
> societal benefits: broader opportunities for parents, families an the economy

I am a father of a 6 yr old dc, and both my wife and i work full time, she works for the NHS and i run my own business(es). We have elderly parents, who also require our input and limited family support (our son gets picked up by my mum 1 day a week and she has him for 2-3 hrs).

The need to better provisioning of early years childcare is often highlighted, however there is little public discussion about the effects of a Victorian timetable on modern society, especially at primary school level.

This touches nearly every aspect of society,
a) educational regression of pupils after long summer holidays
b) lack of holiday provision for students and family's that receive pupil premium (from school meals to welfare checks)
c) discriminatory effects on women's earning, career progression and pension provision. Furthermore the effect on families/ relationship stability as a consequential outcome.
i. on breakdown of relationships this can lead to loss of homes and employment, in some case lead to problems of homelessness and addiction for the parent without the children
ii compounds disadvantage, for children especially if extended family support isnt available.
d) environmental impact of a 5 day vs 4 day week for example (additional heating, travel etc), if the current level of funding was capped then a shorter week with longer days may provide additional opportunities for parents to gain good quality employment
i. economic impact of the mismatch between typical holiday allowance (4-6 weeks for full time adult) and 13 weeks school holiday.
f) impact from unauthorized absence due to rigid holiday patterns and consequential high prices of travel

Forster introduced the education act in 1870, even at this stage the need for continuous evolution was recognized in the introductory speech. The timetable is probably one of the only recognisable elements of the schools system from 150 years ago. So much of our society has changed and the persistence with this timetable reinforces discrimination and could be seen as a root of many negative outcomes especially for women. Impacting short and long term earnings as well as pensions in retirement, but this also changes the dynamics of the economy, family life and even the environment. The academic literature indicates that long holidays are not to the children's benefit, with the loss of skills over these longer breaks. The travel industry becries the seasonality of holiday, and justifies its crazy pricing as a result of this.. So who actually benefits from a 150 year old timetable?

Almost every section of society would benefit from reviewing the school timetable, it would be ideal if there was more funding for more provision, but there seems to be almost no loosers from having a more fit for purpose timetable. Different funding options for the short, medium and long term could be considered. For example use of the tax free childcare allowance. As schools provides good quality educational options and childcare at a lower cost than the private provision (typical outside funding rates are around £4.20/pupil per hour with most priviate provision being 25-50% more for "just childcare"). Furthermore the marginal cost for increasing this provision would be modest as there would be mainly variable (additional direct staff and minimal additional overhead).

Working patterns have been brought into sharp focus following C19 and the working from home revolution. There are plenty of opportunities to look at different school and working patterns, for example a 4 day school week with longer days. This might allow those that work around school drop off and pick up to improve their employment opportunities, cut there travel costs and the school to only heat the school 4 days a week . Similarly a 45-46 week schedule then most 2 parent families could manage childcare with their normal holiday although this would be a challenge, but would not create such dependence on family friends, private provision etc to be able to manage the holidays.

So what problems do people see with changing the current victorian timetable to one which fits with modern life.?

@ThinkingForward here's a question for you. How much time do you plan to spend with your child every day and what kind of things will YOU be teaching them?

So who made the tea and cleared up afterwards? Who organised , planned and ran the clubs? You were paying for those extras through your school fees, which is fine, but please recognise the school wasn’t doing it for nothing out of the goodness of their heart.

State schools are running on fumes, there isn’t enough in the tank to pay for three hours extra every evening, or Saturday school, even if they could find the staff to cover.

Hmm so you have issues with the quality of activities at after school so you want to force schools to cover this and do childcare instead rather than a) voting with your feet b) getting these organisations to improve their quality.

I suspect you will find that they can't provide more within the limits of their budgets.

But you keep pushing this with regards to schools instead.

Your issue is childcare not schools.

You have the wrong solution to the wrong problem.

Why does after school club have to be anything more than crowd control anyway? There is no obligation to do more. It sounds like you have a mismatch of expectations which they aren't obligated to say yes to. If the answer is no, then the onus is on YOU not them to find alternatives.

It does sound like going private would be a much better fit for you on a number of levels.

You can’t compare state and private school. State schools have no money. Literally nothing. We are running on a skeleton staff and staff wages take up 90% of the budget. Out of the remaining 10% we have to fund everything. Books, paper, paint etc.
But more than that private schools can refuse to take children they don’t like the look of. State schools have everyone. Out of a class of 30, 5 have significant SEND but there is no extra support for them.

I don't think increasing the school day would be helpful. Nor do I agree with shortening the holidays - childhood only comes once. I would think it would be nice if schools could fund more extra-curricular days.

No, you think you've covered the funding. How will it be funded beyond a trial? And as you've just said, £6 per hour gets you provision that's not great, so how will £4.50 get you better provision?

We have two classes where nearly half the class (11/13) are on the SEND register and some of them have medical issues too. There is support, but if I'm honest, with the best will in the world, it's inadequate purely because of the extent on those needs.Fun times.

I would think it would be nice if schools could fund more extra-curricular days.

Swap the word ‘schools’ for ‘government’ and I completely agree.

@viques Parents paid! Both state and private. We had private individuals run clubs at state schools. Never teachers. There’s a booking fee for a school snd this includes caretaking. Not much cleaning up for French and a pe type class. Depends what you offer. I don’t understand the angst about this. Other than some parents cannot afford it. The Heads were still in school. State didn’t offer tea. Only prep.

All your changes seem to be about supporting parents in their working lives, rather than about what's best for children's learning.

This (again). I think those proposing these types of changes should volunteer to work in a primary school for a bit and see how children actually develop and learn. Most young children would be fed up and burnt out within a couple of weeks of following the schedule you propose.

I’d also want an opt-out for those of us who don’t want/need the additional childcare or shorter holidays. I don’t feel that adult-style working hours are at all optimal for children; I want to spend this time with my own child, with her eating meals and having plenty of down time at home. I want DD to be a child, not an adult in training. And I want her school to be a place of education and socialisation, not a holding pen staffed by overworked, frazzled and resentful teachers (which would undoubtedly be the reality of your proposal).

We already have among the shortest school holidays in the developed world. Let’s shift the focus to employers instead and look at how other countries manage flexible working, and what we could seek to emulate.

Sorry that is what I mean. I would be happier to pay more taxes to fund extra-curricular activities for children.

The purpose of schools are to provide education and not childcare. I am not opposed to reforms in school but it should be done primarily for the benefit of children. I do agree that is difficult for working parents particularly with the 6 weeks holidays. I think the government should support working parents with good quality childcare but that is separate issue from school reforms. I strongly disagree with shortening school holidays because of the childcare issue. Children need a rest and a break. They will spend the rest of adult life working. I think children should be allowed to enjoy their childhood.

OP, you have been all over the place on this thread.

If what you actually want is a school that starts at 7am with sports clubs, and runs through to 6pm with organised afterschool activities baked in (sports clubs, music lessons, drama), what you are describing there is a prep school. And not a standard independent, but something like Alleyns or Jags (which still don’t have most of that stuff in their lower school, because children don’t thrive with that amount of scheduling).

You are not going to get all of that for free in a state primary, partly due to cost, partly due to staffing, but also because the majority of parents don’t actually want it.

We have excellent ASC provision at DS’s state school. In KS1 he has the option of football, art club, gardening club, cookery club, yoga, film club, Lego club, and standard ASC playtime. It’s cheap - £7 from 3:30-6pm including a sandwich, drink and piece of fruit. There are 8 children in KS1 football club. Out of 120. Maybe others are doing it out of school, but there are always places in all of the clubs due to lack of demand. The same is true in other local schools, and it is a famously pushy MC area of London.

DS does ASC two nights a week, and I genuinely do not want him to do more, partly because he does other things on the other 3 nights, and partly because I want him home before 6:30 some nights of the week in order to actually see him, and spent time reading, practising times tables and spellings, and letting him play and watch some tv, all of which is important (we are watching Pokémon this morning because some of his friends are into it and I want him to be able to join in the conversation about it on Monday).

I am going to assume all the rubbish about compressed four day weeks, abolishing school holidays and bringing children to school in shifts was just random rambling - there is absolutely no parent aside from you, in state or private school, who would want any of that.

Lunch time handovers 😂
In between covering for absent MSA's, phoning parents about a head bump and sorting out a squabble over football and prepping for the afternoon art lesson.

Teachers who are already striking and leaving in droves suddenly working much longer hours (I already work nearly double my directed time thanks!) and less holiday - which we are not paid for incidentally and then less time to spend with my own family.

No thank you.

@RedToothBrush I don’t have an issue with quality of activities in schools, where did I say that?

If you mean parking kids in front of a movie every Friday in school hours (not after school) then what parent who cares about education wouldn’t have an issue with that? Weekly movies in school hours isn’t a quality activity, its downright lazy.

What I do have an issue with is anyone insisting that the DC are tired at 3pm when parents know that they aren’t, because you can’t pick DC up from school mid afternoon and take them off to eg. swimming lessons or footie practice if they are too knackered to participate. In my experience its never the teachers teaching an 8 to 5 day who say this about tiredness, its been the teachers in the 9 to 3 system - why? I don't have the answer but could it possibly be because it isn't the DC who are tired, the tiring bit is for teachers having to frantically cram everything they need to do from PE to art to maths and swap rapidly between each into just a few quality hours of classroom time a day?

I said this clearly the first time.

I never implied that you had an issue to quality of activities in school. I was talking to another poster.

I also said you can no compare private school with state school and exhaustion levels because of staff ratios and how this impacts on kid - particularly SEN kids. I also said the needs of your Sen kid are not necessarily the same as any other sen child and this is excaserbated by the number of SEN children in a class and whether their needs are met and therefore under appropriate management.

If you have one or more child who isn't being managed this has impact on the whole class.

Being able to concentrate in a class of 30 where it's exceptionally noisy and behaviour isn't fully managed is totally different to a class of 15 with a better staff ratios and managed needs.

You only have to do a few children's parties where it's a large group allowed to run riot versus a small one with lots of adults to work out the difference. You know which one you are exhausted by mentally and physically - it's definitely not the same.

@ThinkingForward I hear you.

When we joined state primary there were a small bunch of local people who came in and volunteered, they ran a gardening club, taught music, had an art club and a science club too I think, there was even a latin group. Some were retired but not all, they had the time and gave it freely and the place was happier and livelier for it. A new HT booted them all out and so much was lost. Now the place is all about attendance records and sat scores and undermining teachers so they can be replaced with NQT's, but their pupil numbers and results have dropped. The garden is off limits to DC who used to grow fruit and monitor rainfall and bugs in there. So there is a way, its just some people are too institutionalised/blinkered/spreadsheet orientated to think outside the box.

There is a shortage of volunteers locally. There are so many things that are running and people are heavily invested in those things. They can't get volunteers for those things never mind an activity which can't just be easily be cancelled if a volunteer doesn't feel like it today (this upsetting the parents). If there wasn't this issue 'Id hear you'.

Bottom line is the expectation of someone else to do all this volunteering so that 'busy important parents' don't have to.

And it's always the same parents. The ones who then decide to buy their way and eventually go private looking down their noses because their idea was brilliant but they expect everyone else to action and run it day to day.

Jackiewoo. From the perspective of being a tutor for over 14 years and therefore regularly teaching children after 3:00pm I, maybe rather counterintuitively, have to disagree with you.

When I started working, I very quickly realised that it was pointless trying to schedule any lessons on a Friday after school as even the brightest child would tell you that 2+2 =5 at that time. Even secondary age students didn't cope well with this time.

I soon discovered I had to start to offer Saturday lessons specifically to the younger children and some of those with ADHD and information processing problems as they just didn't cope after school.

Where I was able to offer after school lessons on other days to students, particularly those of primary age, I had to time them quite carefully, allowing enough space for some downtime, food, drink, before the lesson. I was still aware sometimes that this was less than ideal and children weren't learning at their best, something that I would need to discuss with parents regarding the relevant benefits of the less than ideal vs not getting the additional support at all.

I remember teaching a very bright 7 year old. His normal lesson was on a Saturday morning. One week, it was rescheduled for an after school session because of a family event. I was completely astounded by how his seeming ability dropped so dramatically. He just couldn't do work, even things that he had already been taught and done competently on a Saturday. If I had only ever taught him after school I would have thought he was a child with considerably more cognitive issues and a much slower pace of learning than he actually was.

Things like swimming and footie practice are rather different to academic learning.
I don't think there is as much problem with doing this type of thing later in the day as it is very physical and requires a different type of brain activity although even then, a child whose week is packed with this type of thing until 6:00pm every day may well still become pretty exhausted by the end of the week.

These activities shouldn't be done by classroom teachers though who are working long enough weeks as it is and probably don't have the correct training anyway ( I could teach maths, science and primary literacy until the cows came home but would not consider myself competent to teach a children's swimming lesson).

In an ideal world there would be funding for specialist after-school clubs to offer this, but this is essentially a funding and childcare issue not an educational one.

If you were to extend the school day to extend the time children were spending on academic learning (even with all the positive interventions you can do around pace, style of learning, change of activity etc that teachers will automatically in their classes anyway) the children would be flagging, especially the younger ones and those with specific learning issues that make focus and concentration more exhausting! It would lead to lots of very tired children, frustration and tears about not being able to understand.
I know, I have experienced it and had to change my work practices accordingly.

@RedToothBrush my DC are in a class of 30 (although there's a bit of flux depending on subjects now we're in the exam years). State primary was actually smaller. The expectations of good behaviour where they are now are much higher however and it really shows.

We're talking at cross purposes and I'm scanning this thread in a hurry while sat in a hospital so its probably my doing, but there's no doubt we all care about this to even bother posting on here at all regardless of difference of opinion so that's not a bad thing.

Please stop tagging. It's rude.

I've been on MN since 2005, never been scolded for tagging before. And you started it by tagging me.

Every day truly is a school day. Arf arf.

Quoting is not tagging.

@Jwhb the @£4.50 per child per hour is above the the current fund rate for the school ~£4.30 per child per hour for its day to day activity. There may be a configuration where its funded at the lower pupil premium rate ~£1.25/hr . National average is 25% pupil premium. DfE/NAO publishes this data so you can go and check it.

As previously discussed to make a successful pitch for more funding then this requires evidence, that is the point of the trial/pilot. As with all UKRI projects like this you would start the bid process for more funding about half way through to try to keep it funded longer term.

@AngryGreasedSantaCatcus i spend about an hour in the morning with helping getting him dressed (buttons and socks are an issue), breakfast etc, then normally walk/ cycle with him to school. When hes home we do some work book and drawing/ dancing / music . Dinner bath/shower, tv, bed (i read him the story,) he wants his mum to sit with him. At the weekends i take him swimming, then to the park, lunch, lego, kids party normally with mum but i went this time (almost every week- i do the grocerys shop). Then something new (clip and climb, museum).

If DC learn best in the morning and are done by 3.30pm what's the point of homework?