Re: Teachers working long hours
Originally Posted by
Muddy
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Children need some basic training by their parents before they go to school.
I think children have too many holidays ditto university students .
They no longer work in the fields bringing in the harvest so why have long weeks in the summer ?
Airlines would not then ( perhaps ) put up their fares so much in school holidays .
Tend to agree.
Although there is a considerable value for youngsters to spend time out of school learning about life and having a multitude of non-school based experiences, I'm not sure that the current trend of playing on computer games or watching TV is really much use. Also, the current model of long holidays partly assumes that there will be one parent available at home to supervise/care/partake the child. This isn't quite so much the case as yesteryear.
I'd certainly advocate an increase in the number of days attending a school, but not necessarily a proportionate amount of time in the number of lessons. A smaller number of lessons per day, coupled with additional non-class based activities (such as sport, practical life skills, community work, creative work) would make sense IMHO. These would be managed/led by people who aren't the usual teachers since they perform a different function and require a different relationship.
Currently, (in secondary school), a child is meant to attend 190 days pa, with and average of 5 lessons per day. I.e. 900 classes. Increase this to 1000 lessons, and moving the 4% of time allocated to PE/Games to the end of day activities (which makes even more sense due to the time "wasted" in getting changed into kit), with 4 class lessons per day means attendance for 250 days. Plus a significant increase in exam outcomes. Plus a decrease in the current need for class teachers to work extensive hours beyond the contracted ones.
Allowing children to attend family holidays could be relaxed, since they'd be missing fewer lessons per week, which isn't such a "hit".
Just need to somehow finance the additional staff for out-of-hours activities.