Four-day week at a south London school
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
This school has made a lot of changes all in one go, which seem broadly positive, but I’d bet that almost all the benefit comes from this: smaller class sizes.
I went to schools with 35 students per teacher and schools with 11 students per teacher. The difference was stark. I also went to schools with those two ends of the spectrum on length of the day and can’t remember much of a difference.
I would imagine an 8 hour day where there are fewer students to teachers be an easier scenario to study in than one whereby you study with many peers per teacher, which I would expect causes far more social and mental stresses and focuses. I also imagine those with fewer students per teacher, have time to focus on better teaching methods and more holistic and healthy approaches, whilst teaching to many would require a different mode of teaching.
The point I am getting at is that in the same settings of peer to teacher ratio, there is likely a sweet spot whereby you hit the maximum amount you can take in per day, before learning anymore is really not worth it. Likewise the longer you stay beyond that point, you are not going to be resting as much and you would end up borrowing from tomorrow's lessons (burn out). Based on that, it seems highly unlikely that the ideal amount of time at school for say a 7 year old or a teen, is the exact same hours as a working adult day.
However I doubt these things will change. Just look at all the studies that show teens have a physiological need for a later waking pattern, yet we have made no attempts to change the start of their school day to be optimised to give them the best chance each day.
Not as extreme a difference in number of students or length of day, no. I realise this is anecdotal, just proposing a theory that makes most sense to me. I suspect you're right that there's a sweet spot on all of these things.
The school I was at that did ~8:30-4:15 (vs ~9-3:30) also had half a day on Saturday. I distinctly remember the Saturday morning school causing more burnout feeling than the longer days during the week. Partly that will have been because of the weekend things I was missing out on, so it's hard to accurately judge, but I don't think 5.5 days of school was a good choice there.
Easy to laugh, of course, but education is such a fraught subject in the UK (parents feel the stakes are so incredibly high) that I guess they saw a gap and filled it.
It sounds good until you have kids and have to work to earn your daily bread.
> nor an intro to work
It sounds good until you don't get hired becuase the other candidate can program a fizzbuzz.
A school that only is a babisitting facility or that only prepares you for work is not a good school, but they are two of the main objectives anyway.
> response to concerns about children’s mental health and a shortage of teachers.
Ha! Getting educated is so bad for children, and how insufferable an extra day among their peers must be! Disgusting!
But I have few complaints about kindergarten and undergraduate university education.
We hear lots of complaints these days about how mal-adjusted so many children are, but is there any wonder? They are whisked from after school clubs to private sports activities, then off to bed (or homework) once their mandatory activities are done. Some of this is because parents are terrified of being considered neglectful by under-stimulating their child - but then children never learn to just exist in the presence of events which are more important than themselves.