School open 7 day a week to suit your life

[Tony]

How much easier would your life be if schools taught 7 days a week?

 

How about them being open 7am to 7pm each day?

 

Finally how about having them open all year round?

 

Your kids could go on the days at times that worked best for your family circumstances and those expensive buildings and facilities could be more efficient. Teachers could work flexi time and the school run and congestion could be eliminated. No more peak holiday prices.

 

Is the idea just simple common sense?

 

Would it work for you ?

[HeadingNorth]

There are a lot of major problems to deal with to make that work...

 

How do you know how many teachers you need to employ, since kids might be turning up at any time to suit themselves? How do you arrange classes, or are you teaching every child one-to-one (which is fantastically expensive)? To name but two.

 

 

If those problems are solvable, it's a great idea - but are they.

[Darth Vader]

It'd be easier still if we could drop them off and pick them up when we felt like seeing them again. I wouldn't mind seeing them for a day at the weekend every fortnight or so, but do you think the school could send them home with a packed lunch or something, that would help. We would still get the full child benefits though, wouldn't we?

[rubydazzler]

Just send them away to school and have done with it. They enjoy being with their friends all the time, and you don't have the fag of actually having to discipline, cook, launder, and pick up after them constantly. They have people to do all that.

 

And the children are so much nicer when they come home for the holidays, they're so glad to see a friendly face and be allowed to lounge about!

[I1L2T3]

The basic idea is fine and it works well in other countries, for the right reasons. Maybe the problem in the UK is the culture of long working hours.

[rothschild]

Better still.......if you really need to have the schools open 7 days a week for the hours you suggest, in order to fit in with your life style.........why bother having kids in the first place?

[rubydazzler]

There are two sorts of people on SF, those who take everything seriously, and then there's the rest of us

 

*although to be as earnest as some, there are already kid storage facilities in existance. They're called nurseries. Some of them are even open for 24 hours to cater for shift workers.

[Rioja]

Can't we just send them to prison?

[Tony]

There are a lot of major problems to deal with to make that work...

 

How do you know how many teachers you need to employ, since kids might be turning up at any time to suit themselves? How do you arrange classes, or are you teaching every child one-to-one (which is fantastically expensive)? To name but two.

 

 

If those problems are solvable, it's a great idea - but are they.

 

There certainly would be problems but the root of the OP is that we have a modern 24/7 society that is crippled in lots of ways by a Victorian schooling system that all too often uses Victorian facilities and methods.

 

To push the discussion on a little, schooling no more needs a 9-3.30 5 day week holiday ridden year than we need an extra hole in the head.

 

So, with a little modern thinking how would we go about creating a schooling system for a modern world. A schooling system that put the focus on achievement and need rather than pointless tradition.

 

What requirements would we have on a blank piece of paper?

[SiSiSi]

Although this is a wind-up (I assume) the sad thing is that a sizeable number of parents would actually agree with it. What's more, the more time kids spend at school the easier it is to blame someone else for their anti-social behaviour. ''it can't be my fault that he's a tearaway, he spends most of his time at school!''