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.?

I think I'd start by not giving millions to my cronies to produce unsuitable PPE or to Ruanda to take asylum seekers or on asylum seeker barges that cost more than the usual way of housing them or on huge MP expenses and pay rises etc.

@ThinkingForward
"We are probably moving house and school next year. I dont want to have lots of negative schadenfreude ppl around like @Foxesandsquirrels. Only way stuff gets better in general is to advocate for it, sitting on your rear moaning and expecting things to change or thinking it is someone elses problem doesnt get you anywhere."

If you don't want lots of negative people around you, I suggest you start with yourself and reflect on your actions. The school said no, you still insisted on going through with a plan and wasted lots of people's time. You were so negative you ended up destroying WhatsApp groups and a PTA. These are things you're proud of. You have come onto a forum for mums, and have called women who disagree with you bitchy. You have called me a schadenfreude person. That's a person that derives pleasure from other people's misfortunes. You have very openly admitted to doing just that. Knowing the school doesn't want your help, knowing how stressed and underfunded they are, you still pushed through with your idea. You probably lied to the university saying the school is on board otherwise I can't think how they would've been on board.
Yet you have the cheek to call me that? You show no compassion or empathy towards the situation schools or staff are in. Advocacy does not mean forcing people to accept your ideas. I do not sit on my rear and moan and expect others to change things for me. But you obviously know everything about me. Is this the level of assumption you also made about the school? Is this why you think your idea is the best and they must listen?
I volunteer for an SEN charity and provide free legal representation to many parents. That is advocacy. What you've done is bully, elbow and by the sounds of thing, ruined a previously well functioning PTA and WhatsApp parents group. That is not advocacy. That is being an irresponsible tyrant.

By magic.

Like recruiting all the additional staff with the magic money that's down the back of the sofa.

Think the OP missed the memo about there already being two days strike next week and how in the Autumn the rest of the unions plan to join the one striking.

Ive lost count of the additional days DS has lost. More reasons to strike are just what he and his peers need...

How about a model where one teacher worked 3 days per week and the class had a second teacher for the other 3 days per week?

3 day per week teachers would teach the same hours as now, because days would be longer (eg. 8:30-5:30 x 3 days, minus lunchtime and two playtimes = 23.5 teaching hours, similar to current hours). Planning and marking could be done on the non-teaching days.

2 day per week teachers might be paid 2/3 current pay, or they might spend their third day teaching a different class (so some classes would have a main teacher and two 1-day teachers), or teaching small groups or fulfilling additional responsibilities on the third day.

TAs would have the opportunity to work full time hours and earn more than they do currently, or could still work part time, following various models. Childcare workers could access some of these jobs.

Who may be positively affected?

• Parents with 9-5 jobs, who won't need to pay for childcare
• Children in neglectful or very deprived homes, who may not get sufficient stimulation at home
• Some teachers would prefer those working patterns
• Children who have limited life experiences would be able to spend more time trying new things eg. Forest school, as the curriculum would be less packed
• Sedentary children (I would think with longer hours, one hour of physical activity every day would be a minimum)

Who may be negatively affected?

• Children who would otherwise be doing sports, music etc. after school
• Children who would otherwise be doing stimulating activities with their family or friends after school
• Children who struggle with being tired or overwhelmed by socializing by the end of the current school day
• Families with other working patterns, which would include many parents who are on lower incomes (especially those parents who may end up hardly seeing their children because they work weekends)

I don't like it from a society perspective, I don't think it's likely to be financially viable, and I think there would likely be significant problems of a sudden change like this to all sorts of workforces and other things, but it would fulfill OP's requirements in a way that may actually be feasible for a primary school. It's kind of like what private schools offer, so maybe OP should try one of those.

@Jwhb from an implementation perspective then phased implementation one year group at a time?

It's more expensive. Where are the staff coming from and where is the money coming from.

Job sharing creates massively more work as everything needs to be shared, passed on etc. Also marking shouldn't be saved to the end of the week. It needs to be immediate to inform the next lessons.

Does anyone with these bright ideas actually have experience of working in a teaching role?

Am I right in thinking schools in the (much revered) schools in Singapore have teachers teaching everyday till lunchtime and then they spend the afternoons planning/marking etc

If I’m right here, what do the children do in the afternoons? What does that model look like?

@Sherrystrull surely that depends on how things are split. If this was down subject lines as with high school then this would seem to minimise additional effort. As @Shinyandnew1 said then may be you could have one teacher in the morning and another in the afternoon. The morning teacher could then do there prep in the afternoon and vise versa.

Practically all children under the age of 8 or 9 ( and many who are older) would struggle tremendously with learning after 3:00pmish and it would have a cumulative effect as the week went on and they got more and more tired. By the time you got to Friday half the class would be having strops and meltdowns due to sheer tiredness and their ability to learn anything would be seriously impacted. If you have ever tried to teach a tired child you will know how hard it is for them to learn anything, even concepts that they grasp quickly and easily when rested

Children are not machines that learn at a steady pace continually. The ebb and flow of concentration and down time needs to be integral to their learning experience. A lot of their integration and processing of concepts happens during the down time when they are just chilling etc. You really can't force more active learning/concentration time into a young child's week. It would be totally counterproductive.

High schools have subject specialists which they already can't recruit. Primary schools have one teacher per class. There's no subject lines. It's English, maths, topic. Taught by one teacher unless you're at an expensive prep where they get specialist teachers from roughly Y5.

Not at all. It's information about the children. Which have fallen out, which have had a safeguarding concern, who needs monitoring for dyslexia and how that is going. The academic side is only the beginning. It worries me you don't know this.

I have taught sharing my class with another teacher as a subject specialist in secondary school. It creates much more work due to handovers and creates points of failure that otherwise don't exist. It's not a situation you'd engineer if you could possibly avoid it. Teachers are not robots that are interchangeable with each other.

Exactly. Are the fact that Harry stays at hid dad's on Sunday and Monday and he's always withdrawn and has a measly packed lunch. However on the other days he's at his mum's and he's happy and full and the teacher who happens to teach on those days won't put two and two together. It'll seem like Harry just doesn't like the teacher at the beginning of the week.
I'm not saying job shares aren't ever successful, but OP you really have no clue what the reality of schools look like. Just how much of the extra stuff there is. This is why you come across extremely naive and arrogant. You want people to educate you and prove to you why your idea won't work. How about you actually educate yourself first?

@Foxesandsquirrels

Are the fact that Harry stays at hid dad's on Sunday and Monday and he's always withdrawn and has a measly packed lunch. However on the other days he's at his mum's and he's happy and full and the teacher who happens to teach on those days won't put two and two together. It'll seem like Harry just doesn't like the teacher at the beginning of the week.

what a surprise you made the dad the bad parent here.

"you come across extremely naive and arrogant"

Seems that this is something that we have a shared perception of each other.

@Sherrystrull

We are back to femsplaining. Points were made that learning in the morning was the best time for "sit down subjects". So your current teacher could pick this up with maths and english in the morning, and PE, music, drama, dance, art, cooking in the afternoon.

As you are all aware being SEN experts, many with dyslexia for example are more likely to excel at one of these "afternoon" subjects (in this example). These subjects and associated learning approaches provide opportunities to develop coordination, organisation which many dyslexics struggle with. It would seem that the different groups of activities and associated teaching styles might attract different teachers for each. Different teachers might and associated variations in teaching styles makes learning more accessible for a more diverse range of learning styles. This is well documented by a number of researchers and educational psychologist.

@Foxesandsquirrels

I didnt destroy anything, school prospectus promised a level of ASC and HC then fell seriously short. Parents werent happy, HT closed down the discussion, frustrated any alternatives or discussion about any other options. It was tough jog on. This doesnt sit well with alot of people, we worked to resolve the issue and bring it in house, and then the head has now privatized it and made it more expensive and worse, cut the hours back and the staff cant afford to stay. So if holding HT to account on making several hundred peoples life more complex and many having to look for alternative employment, is narcissistic then yeah im guilty.

Group as it states on the banner, "by parents for parents", may be selective reading? It does seem to be 1950's in your universe with strict gender roles and children arnt a thing which men can have an opinion on, or bow to the matriarchal othodoxy of primary education.

Lie, i didnt even mentioned a school when i made the pitch to the academics and govt departments/ UKRI, they will find schools to take this on, if it doesnt run in the next academic year it will likely run the year after somewhere. I will skip the why as this is "mansplaining".

and i did try to post the links to the evidence... but it seems links dont work on here.

What on earth is femsplaining? I'm sharing my experience as a teacher of 20 years. Whether I'm a woman or not is completely irrelevant.

How does doing English and maths in the morning with one teacher negate the need to share information about safeguarding, SEND and parental conversations with another teacher in the afternoon?

A child with learning delay, fine motor skills etc will struggle with writing but also with cooking, music etc. Children don't fit into neat little subject specific boxes.

For someone who is working shifts at McDonalds doing a 50% share in the house work (were you expecting a medal for that?) you don’t half have a lot of time on your hands to be spouting poorly thought out nonsense online.

@Sherrystrull

I would really agree with you about the gender point but @Foxesandsquirrels (and some others) seems to be extremely keen on creating some kind of gender agenda.

The handover is important, but it doesnt have to be that long winded. As there is an overlap in the school day one crazy idea is that the staff talk to each other in the childrens lunch break. The afternoon staff could have there lunch before that and the morning staff after that (to avoid working in breaks). The same issues occur with ASC handover. Teachers mainly email atleast what we see at school, if you want to talk to them about any kind of subject then its book an appointment probably a couple of weeks in advance. (im sure there will be some snippy remark)

Children dont fit in any neat boxes, which is why having more options to learn things in different ways is likley to hit on a learning style that they can more easily engage with. Some will find drawing and art frustrating, others will find sport difficult, some will love to read.

It’s mansplaining when a man who knows nothing about a subject ignores the opinion of women who actually know about it.

The handover is important, but it doesnt have to be that long winded. As there is an overlap in the school day one crazy idea is that the staff talk to each other in the childrens lunch break. The afternoon staff could have there lunch before that and the morning staff after that (to avoid working in breaks).

Do tell me more about your experience of being a job share teacher?
Also, if there is a morning and afternoon teacher who are doing a job that is currently done by one teacher then you do see you will need double the number of teacher? Where are they all coming from?

Children dont fit in any neat boxes, which is why having more options to learn things in different ways is likley to hit on a learning style that they can more easily engage with. Some will find drawing and art frustrating, others will find sport difficult, some will love to read.

All these years of teaching and I’d never realised that until you turned up to point it out 🙄

Seriously. Handovers need to be long winded as classes of 30 children have lots to be spoken about. Have you worked as a teaching job share? If you had you'd know that suggesting a quick chat over lunch is insulting.

I have worked as a job share for many years and have significant experience of this. My job share and I are never in school together. Overlapping time is unaffordable for schools.

We never have any time in school together so spend hours on the phone. This is what a job share is like. Discussing seating plans, reports, parents evening notes to make sure we are speaking from the same place, sharing experiences with support staff and parents, completing the diary, setting homework, sharing who hasn't read at home for two weeks, who had broken shoes.

You continue to make suggestions as if little women doing the job simply haven't considered the best way to use time effectively.