http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-22202694

Piss off, Gove. Does he have any idea how long kids are spending on their homework alone now?

The problem with comparing to other systems is that you are comparing a small subsection of that entire country/culture/attitude etc.

At secondary school, I was up at 0630 and out the house by 0715. We got to school by 0830. Although I left at 1530, the journey and traffic meant I would arrive home by 1700. During the first two years, the homework was manageable within about two hours. By GCSEs, I spent four hours a night on weekdays and then spent most of the weekends on homework. In some ways, I felt robbed of my youth.

If we were going to extend school hours, we should be reducing homework to compensate.

I might be more in favour of adjusting school terms but the six week summer holiday was always awesome.

What will they do when millions of families all take their holidays at the same time because of school holidays? It will cause the shutdown of entire industry as they all have their holidays at the same time. Also the premiums for holidays during school holidays will increase even higher, so even fewer will get the experience of travelling abroad.

You're all operating from a fundamentally erroneous premise. You're starting from the assumption that Michael Gove isn't a blithering idiot with no more right to be a government minister than your average house plant. If you start with that assumption, everything else you base on it will also be wrong.

You are completely right, but we were all giving him the benefit of doubt.


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The first thing I thought was I hope that means no homework.

By the way, when you think about your homework and what you did at school, don't forget, you're a doctor. That takes a lot of study. I guarantee you worked harder than most in your school, so don't take your experience as a given for most kids.

It also depends on where you start. If you are going to a private school you have a lot more pressure to do well. Add in family pressures, when you have a doctor parent it becomes even harder to avoid the pressure. My dad was telling me about some of his school friends. One is now an admiral, as was his father, and so the pressures to do well in the Navy are immense. Most people do not have that start and making them do more hours may not help many.


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I managed to avoid the pressure to do well at private school pretty well. Looking back on it, it seems a bit of a waste of opportunity, but imagine how bad it would have been if some of the forced learning hadn't sunk in!

My school schedules in secondary were : 8 til 12, 1.15 til 5.15 Monday to Saturday with Wednesday and Saturday half days (42h of lectures a week) . That however includes 4h compulsory sport classes. I was lucky as I had only a short commute and went home for lunch but some kids took a coach into school everyday :s

It is only a few years and they're young. Not really that much hassle I think.

But it's not just about the kids. The teachers already use most of their "holidays" preparing to teach.

I was given the opportunity to become a sessional lecturer at a local art college. I went through the interview, got offered the position. Then I realised that although I'd only be teaching for a few hours a week, I had to spend an awful lot of the rest of the week of my free time preparing, boning up on the curriculum, researching material just so I could do those few hours. All of that extra work was unpaid, of course.

There were other reasons why I didn't stay the course, but that realisation I'd be giving a huge chunk of my life over to a part-time job without recompense was one of them. Respect to all teachers, I say.

Yes very under rated. When I was at school teachers got around 30% more than average wage, I do not think it is as good as that now.

I'm surprised it took this long to have this mentioned.
People think that the kids are just going to teach themselves? That's not gonna happen.

Mark

While in some subjects this maybe the case – and I would think only really at A level or degree level - However if you are teaching maths to a bunch of 11 year olds then unless the syllabus changes emphasis the basics of maths stays the same and you will use you old notes from 10 years ago

My boy is worn out at the end of the school week as it is.

It's actually a sensible idea if you think about it.

Kids at school for longer so they won't have much if any homework (as they can do it during the extra hour or two a day which his what homework should take).
Kids at school until 5:30pm or so means more parents can work as they don't need to worry about child minder costs or not working so they can pick them up at 3:30pm