As a teacher, I’m sick of the regular holiday jokes: ‘What, you mean you have to work 70 hours weeks? That must be hard with 13 weeks of holiday!’ Before I started teaching I didn’t realise how genuinely exhausting it can be and the holidays are needed as a way of recharging batteries and staying on top of marking.
But school holidays and the school year is a bubbling political issue. Parents want their children in school for longer so they learn more and as a way of reducing childcare costs. Many of Gove’s new free schools are also offering attractive extended hours. Added to this is a report that the government is considering shortening the summer holidays as a way to ‘woo women voters.’
Labour should be fully supporting calls for a longer school year. In fact, we should make it a main plank of our policy platform and we should be the party arguing for it most strongly. By 2015, one of Labour’s recognisable policies should be to increase the school year by 100 hours. Yes, it will cost billions of pounds but it is a distinct and important policy offer that matches our values to manifesto promises.
Many schools that are boasting excellent results – whether they be academy, trust, or free – are already extending the school year either with longer days or shorter holidays. The JCB Academy in Staffordshire runs from 9-5 like a normal workplace. Thomas Telford School has incredible results and has pupils learning from 8.30am until 6pm. We have evidence of the benefits of more teaching but even if we didn’t it would be obvious. The more flexibility schools have with the school day the more they can do to stretch and inspire children with a rounded education. Labour should fund a plan that offers schools and teachers extra money for teaching 100 hours more over the school year. The reality is we have 21st century children learning on a 19th century timetable.
A longer school day or year would give schools an exciting opportunity to improve what happens in the classroom. It would give teachersmore flexibility over the curriculum and it would hopefully reduce ‘teach-to-test’ pressures. It would give students and teachers a chance to cover subjects that are inspiring and socially valuable but that don’t necessarily fit into the national curriculum and GCSE courses. Most students no longer read the diary of Anne Frank or learn about Apartheid South Africa. In other areas, pupils struggle to get the quality careers advice they need or have the opportunity to improve skills that they need for working life.
Other countries are already out-educating Britain. Korea, Japan, France and Sweden all teach more than 100 extra a year than the UK. These are countries that have continued to climb up international league tables. Labour needs a policy that ensures young Brits can compete in an ever more competitive global economy.
Extending the school year would also be a great way of further professionalising teaching. The main cost of the policy would be an increase in teacher pay and an expansion of the school workforce. This could be a way of boosting teacher pay to recognise excellent practice in classrooms and as a way to attract the best people into the profession. Of course, getting union support would be important and they would rightly insist on a wage that matched the extra work.
This policy would say something wider about public expenditure and the debate over the economy. If growth does pick up there will be a major argument about the level of public spending in the future. The Tories will argue that any government surplus should pay for tax cuts. What will Labour’s argument be? And here is our problem: how could we reasonably defend public expenditure unless we are offering taxpayers something tangible for their money? Labour must have policies that can restore faith in government spending and offer a vision for public services. Limply defending higher levels of public spending will not be enough- a lesson we should learn from 2010.
Our vision for education must be about more than the governance models of schools. Political debate about education has been relentlessly concerned with how schools are governed rather than what happens in the classroom. Of course there is a link but we are in danger of missing a bigger and more important debate – how do we make children smarter, more confident and give them an equal chance? If the Conservatives want to spend the rest of the parliament press releasing free schools and rewording the national curriculum, that’s not for us. We should have something more meaningful to say.
We need compelling, distinct and realistic policy proposals that will capture public attention and reflect our values. Having a plan to make Britain’s schools the best in the world might just give our party a reason to be listened to and, more importantly, it would give us something positive to fight for.
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Josh MacAlister is a member of Progress
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Just the sort of radical ideas Labour should be lo0king at. Really like the key proposition of extending the school year, but there are a few themes here that should underpin our approach to policy making:
‘…how could we reasonably defend public expenditure unless we are offering taxpayers something tangible for their money?’ – spot on (and about spending money more wisely)
‘Limply defending higher levels of public spending will not be enough- a lesson we should learn from 2010.’
‘Our vision for education must be about more than the governance models of schools. Political debate about education has been relentlessly concerned with how schools are governed rather than what happens in the classroom.’
This is one of the most pathetic reports I have had the misfortune to read for some time. You describe yourself as a teacher but you clearly have little understanding of education or learning. Assuming that extending existing term-time would produce improved educational achievements is both illogically infantile but educationally unsupportive. Furthermore, what is morally reprehensible is your implicit approval of Gove’s ‘Free Schools’ as a justification for extending the ‘school day’.
Why are you not expending all of your energy in attacking Gove’s ‘amateurisation’ of our education system and his aim to subsidise Private Education from Public Funds?
This is one of the most pathetic reports I have had the misfortune to read for some time. You describe yourself as a teacher but you clearly have little understanding of education or learning. Assuming that extending existing term-time would produce improved educational achievements is both illogically infantile but educationally unsupportive. Furthermore, what is morally reprehensible is your implicit approval of Gove’s ‘Free Schools’ as a justification for extending the ‘school day’.
Why are you not expending all of your energy in attacking Gove’s ‘amateurisation’ of our education system and his aim to subsidise Private Education from Public Funds?
Not to long ago I was asked being disabled to pop down to a workfare so called employment return to work contractor, I went in sitting in my wheelchair and I counted three teachers from my grandson school.
Before my accident I use to be a supervisor every school holiday we have teachers knocking on the doors asking do you have any work for six weeks mate, do you pay cash in hand.
For about ten years we use to employ these teachers until the tax man stated we have to pay tax and NI for these teacher who are so over worked.
I doubt these teachers would know what over work really is, I saw doctors working 40 hours in one go without sleep nurses working two three shifts, sadly none of them need six weeks off.