Shorter holidays and more time in school! Keep up with the times!

17 Jun

This summer 2024 politics in Europe, USA and the UK is changing. Education is always a political football that gets kicked around and this year is no different. Curriculm changes, teachers pay and building infrustructure have all been in the headlines in the last few years, but also in the shadows is the talk of the extension of the school day and term.

In this blog post I want to explore what some parties are suggesting to do in their manifestos, what history tells us and what I think will happen? We have readers from the US and all over Europe so even though this explores the landscape of the United Kingdom, there will be comparisons to the EU and the US throughout. After all, education is the same everywhere right?...

This blog is structured as follows. We will look at these three questions to get an understanding of the landscape.

What do we have now?
What is the history of school times and days and where did it come from?
What are the governments proposing to change?

Then I will share some of my overall thoughts and observations without trying to lean in any particular directions.

What do we have now?

These are taken from the government guidelines (2022) of what the requirements are for schools:

‘...minimum expectation on the length of the school week of 32.5 hours for all mainstream, state-funded schools.’

‘The 32.5 hour minimum includes lunch times and other breaks as well as teaching time and any enrichment activities that all pupils are expected to attend. It does not include optional before or after school provision.

‘Regulations 1999, schools must meet for at least 380 sessions or 190 days in any school year.’

‘ Every school must normally have two sessions divided by a break in the middle of the day. The length of each session, break and the school day is determined by the school’s governing body’

(Length of the School Week 1)

It is worth noting that the 32.5 hours a week is relatively new. Only in March 2022 did this guidance come in so some schools recently have had to find the extra time. Here is a case study:

Monega Primary School – Extended the school week to 32.5 hours by having an earlier start time of 8:30am. This provides pupils with access to 20 minutes a day of intensive reading development. On a weekly basis, this equates to 1 hour 40 minutes extra reading time for pupils.

Comparing the English Summer Holiday to the EU.

Each local authority can choose the dates for their school holidays however, most schools have approximately 6 weeks for summer. If you compare this to the EU, this puts the UK at the lower end of the spectrum. From the map below some southern EU countries have more than 12 weeks, double the UK’s amount.

Eurodice 2

Now, before I go further it is worth noting that not all countries run the school term the same. Spain for instance has no half terms, they run from September until Christmas without any breaks except for the occasional long weekend. Therefore it is difficult to directly compare each school system. In Spain, schools start around 9 and finish at 5, but they have a longer lunch break, whilst in Germany schools start around 8:30 and finish between 1-2pm.

Can we compare hours instead?

Even comparing hours is difficult because some systems include this in their ‘compulsory education’ which refers to the amount of years a student spends in education and this ranges from 6-10 years depending on the country, which then affects the hours delivered of education.

‘Comparing time aspects of different countries is not an easy task. There are many different school times and they are intrinsically related. In some countries, the compulsory school day is longer than in others. However, these countries may have shorter school years, or their holidays may be longer or the instruction time may be shorter.’ (Parente, 2019 3)

What do we get now for our toddlers?

Eligible working parents of 2-year-olds are now able to access 15 hours childcare. Eligible working parents of 3- and 4-year-olds are also able to access 30 hours of government-funded childcare.

From September 2024, 15 hours childcare support will be extended to eligible working parents with a child from 9-months-old.
Education Hub 17

Summary

School days are usually between 160-190 days per year.
School hours range between 25-35 hours a week.
The school timetable is organised differently between each country; some consider lunch time and break times part of their school days, others do not.
Countries have different starting ages, so comparing aggregate hours in school is difficult.

What does history tell us?

I think a really good start is reading my previous blog post ‘Education Needs to Change’ inspired by Sir Ken Robinson. In his presentation he outlines how schools were created from the age of the industrial revolution.

Timeline of start times, ages and holidays in the UK

2022- Government guidelines require schools now to teach 32.5 hours a week. 1

2015- The Deregulation Act 2015 provides for the responsibility for determining term dates to pass to school governing bodies at community, voluntary controlled, community special and maintained nursery schools in England. 4

2015- Compulsory to attend school until 18 years old. 5

2013- Compulsory to attend school until 17 years old. 5

1972- Compulsory to attend school until 16 years old. 5

1947- Compulsory to attend school until 15 years old. 5

1938 The Holidays with Pay Act of 1938, which entitled workers to a week’s paid leave. Before this, only the well-off could afford to take time off with their loved ones. Now family summer holidays could be enjoyed by pretty much everyone. 6

1918 All young persons shall attend such continuation schools at such times, on such days, as the local education authority of the area in which they reside may require, for three hundred and twenty hours in each year, distributed as regards times and seasons as may best suit the circumstances of each locality, or, in the case of a period of less than a year, for such number of hours distributed as aforesaid as the local education authority. 7

1918- The minimum school leaving age increased to 14 8

1917 Lewis Report Juvenile education in relation to employment after the war: Departmental Committee report proposed a school leaving age of 14 with no exemptions, followed by attendance for at least 8 hours a week or 320 hours a year at 'day continuation' classes up to age 18. 9

1880 Education Act of 1880 that school attendance was made compulsory and it was not free for everybody until 1891 10

1853 Elementary (Schools Attendance) Act came into force in January 1854. 11

Victorian Era - School began at 9.00am and finished at 5.00pm. There was a two hour lunch break to allow enough time for children to go home for a midday meal, although in rural areas they might eat at the school. 12

Victorian Era: Some children went to school for half the day and spent the other half of the day at work 13

The Middle Ages: Holy-days and pilgrimages to get an idea of just how frequent, the Church of England currently celebrates nine Principal Feasts, three Principal Holy Days, and 26 Festivals – that’s not counting Festivals and Lesser Festivals besides. To put it another way, that’s not significantly different from the 28 days of annual leave that full-time workers are entitled to in the UK at the moment. Of course, you wouldn’t necessarily get time off on all of these days (and there was no concept of a weekend, only of Sunday as a day of rest) but it certainly wasn’t a time of uninterrupted hard labour.

Summary

As you can see the information found above seems a bit sporadic. The information that was most accessible was the minimum age of leaving school.

Local councils have been in control of school term dates and contact hours
The first record of attendance hours was in 1917 of 8 hours a week.
The ‘British Holiday’ was made official in 1938 when workers were given by law a week's holiday.
Some think the summer holiday was born out of agriculture OR climate (influenced by the americans) OR the amount of holy days there were in July and August.

What are the politicians proposing

Conservative:

Give working parents 30 hours of free childcare a week from when their child is nine months old to when they start school, saving eligible families an average of £6,900 per year.

Give young people the skills and opportunities they deserve by introducing mandatory National Service for all school leavers at 18, with the choice between a competitive placement in the military or civic service roles.

Transform 16-19 education by introducing the Advanced British Standard, enabling young people to receive a broader education and removing the artificial divide between academic and technical learning

-We will end the artificial and damaging divide between academic and technical education which has persisted for far too long. Every young person will spend more time in the classroom, learning more subjects, including English and maths to 18, as they do in most advanced economies around the world.

(Conservative manifesto, 2024)15

Labour:

Labour will transform our education system so that young people get the opportunities they deserve. We will expand our childcare and early‐years system, drive up standards, modernise the school curriculum, reform assessment, and create higher-quality training and employment paths by empowering local communities to develop the skills people need. We will also put employers at the heart of our skills system.

Too many children’s life chances are being scarred by rising poverty. Too many arrive at school not ready to learn, and too many are absent. Breakfast clubs improve behaviour, attendance, and learning. Labour will fund free breakfast clubs in every primary school, accessible to all children. Our breakfast clubs will support parents through the cost-of-living crisis.

(Labour Manifesto, 2024) 16

Liberal Democrats:

Introduce a ‘Tutoring Guarantee’ for every disadvantaged pupil who needs extra support.

Invest in high-quality early years education and close the attainment gap by giving disadvantaged children aged three and four an extra five free hours a week and tripling the Early Years Pupil Premium to £1,000 a year.

Reinstate maintenance grants for disadvantaged students immediately to make sure that living costs are not a barrier to studying at university

The Green party, Scottish National and Reform’s Manifesto do not have any points relating to extending child care, school extension.

Summary

No party is explicitly saying they will extend the term time or extend the school day according to their manifestos, but reading between the lines they are indirectly.
If National Service is introduced at the age of 18 then by definition the young person is still not in the workforce and is still in some form of education. So one could argue that the minimum age to leave education is at the age of 19, a year after National Service. The Conservatives are also proposing to give 30 hours of free childcare a week until a child reaches their school age. One could argue that this is a form of school, not education but what schools are turning out to be, child care.
Labour is proposing to fund free breakfast clubs at every primary school. Again, one could argue that this is an extension to the school day.

Thoughts and Observations

Can we compare ourselves to our European counterparts?

I don’t believe we can compare ourselves directly based on the duration of the summer holiday. The UK has a half term every 5-8 weeks whilst some EU countries run up to a full 16 weeks of contact time. Some EU schools start at 9 and finish at 5, some have a two hour lunch break, some only have 30 mins. Some EU states start schooling at age 4, some at age 7. It is difficult to make an argument looking only at start times and term dates when using other schooling systems as examples.

Can history provide us with some clarity about the school times/dates?

It seems history provides us with certainty that things always change.

It is difficult to give a definitive answer for when the summer holidays started and school times finished. Since the middle ages there have been schools that have been run by churches, charities, factories, parishies, governments and councils. Schools have resided in urban, city and rural areas. Some students have school in the morning and work in the afternoon. Some have holidays due to the agricultural timetable and some the holy time table. In more recent times schools have changed from local authority to trusts, partnerships and academies.

What is more clear is the government's introduction of the minimum age. It is clear that governments have continuously raised the age of leaving education.

Do parties actually want to increase the school day and school terms?

There is a possibility that this will happen. Looking back at the past, governments have been keen to increase the minimum age of when a student can leave school which affects the aggregate hours of education, but it is hard to give a clear answer on the time that schools start and finish and the length of the school year.

The teacher unions are not keen on the extension of the school day suggesting that it will do ‘more harm than good.’ 18

What they are softly doing at the moment is increasing the opportunity for the extension of the school day by breakfast and afterschool clubs and by changing the standard of what is expected by changing the curriculum.

It is worth noting here that a strong motivation for parties to extend school time is the struggle that parents face. Parents are struggling with the cost of living and balancing family life with working. Therefore extending the school day could be a solution to this. BUT is this education or are now schools primary childcare?

My opinions

Changing the school term dates will be a political minefield and there will be lots of fight from the unions.
The school day will change but softly. What I mean by this is that there will be an extension or access to before and afterschool clubs and overtime these will become part of the school time.
The term will not extend before the extension of the school day.
The curriculum will change and will suggest an extension to the school hours for reasons of more quality education.
If we are to extend the school day then are we still calling this education or childcare?
Schools have been created, changed, modified to fit what society needs them to be, maybe we should not resist this change.