Date: 18/06/21
By Alan Hardie, CEO at NCEAT.

In last week’s blog, I wrote about the government’s decision to invest only 10% of the funding needed to implement the recommendations of Sir Kevan Collins, the Education Recovery Commissioner, on how schools can ‘catch up’ over the next few years.  A key question is how lost time for learning can be made up. One suggestion has been to extend the school day, perhaps making it 8am to 6pm for secondary schools. This is popular with many politicians but as recent surveys suggest, it is not so popular with parents with over 50% strongly against. 

It’s easy to see why having a longer school day seems attractive. Despite the best efforts of schools and families, all pupils have experienced over a year of disrupted education. It seems logical to add more time to the school year by extending the school day, so that pupils can catch up on some of the work they’ve missed. 

If we were to extend the school day, firstly there would be massive additional costs involved to employ all of the extra staff required to make this happen. This alone would take up the majority of the £15 billion cost of recovery identified in Sir Kevan’s report, but this isn’t even the main problem. 

The key issue would be that if longer school days mean more teachers, where would they come from? 

Although this year’s recruitment figures are more encouraging, there has been a national shortage of applicants for teacher training for many years, meaning recruiting teachers for secondary subjects such as Chemistry, Physics and Maths has been very difficult. Even those who have graduated with degrees in those subjects take a year or more to train and qualify, but if we really want to improve the supply of teachers in shortage subjects, we need to persuade more pupils to take the right A levels and complete the right degree course, meaning a minimum of four years before this can have a real impact. 

I would also be concerned about the impact of these extended hours in the classroom on the many clubs and organisations which do great extra curricular work with children after school. Even if these are held later in the day, I’m sure that a longer school day would impact on attendance at these clubs, reducing their capacity to support children in sports, arts, music, etc. 

Extending the school day will only work if it is planned strategically and properly funded. It has to be done working with schools and families and not just imposed upon them. Done properly, there could be a great opportunity to involve the types of clubs and organisations I’ve mentioned above in delivering part of the extended school day, giving more of our pupils the opportunity to take part in a range of activities. This is a vital part of the recovery from Covid-19 – giving pupils the chance to take part in activities to learn new skills, improve their fitness and be part of a team, opportunities they were denied during lockdown. Of course there may be extra tuition sessions to help pupils who are struggling academically but I would argue that enrichment activities are at least as important for most pupils to support their mental health and general sense of wellbeing. It would also mean that far fewer teachers are needed to extend the school day, saving billions of pounds.

Some very careful thought needs to be given to the impact on families where pupils have some caring responsibilities. If the secondary day is longer than the primary day, this could cause problems where secondary pupils may help look after a younger brother or sister. It is also easy for those making decisions to forget that there are also a proportion of pupils who are in the role of a young carer for an older family member. All of this needs to be considered when looking at making any extension compulsory. Conversely there will be other families where extending the school day could help significantly in providing wrap-around childcare. 

If planned carefully, properly funded and ‘done with’ rather than ‘done to’ schools and families through proper consultation, extending the school day could potentially be a positive development. However, if it means a rigid model imposed directly from Westminster then I worry that it just won’t work for pupils, schools and families.