Lefty think-tank in sensible suggestion shocker

This actually looks like a semi-sensible idea. The Institute for Public Policy Research is calling for the long school summer holidays to be done away with, and replaced with more frequent, but shorter, holidays.

Ms Sodha told BBC Radio 5 Live that the current structure of the school year was a relic from the time when children were needed to help out on family farms during the summer fruit-picking season.

She said there were two strong arguments for making a change.

"The first is that children regress with respect to their academic skills. Their reading and maths skills tend to decline when they're away from school and this is particularly true for children from poorer backgrounds.

"And that actually brings us on to the second reason. Not all children have the same access to out of school activities during the summer holidays and kids from more advantaged backgrounds are the ones who are most likely to get to go to these activities.

Of course, in a sane world, school holidays would be set by headteachers in response to parental demand. The IPPR report shows that its authors are still stuck in a 1940s top-down mindset and assume that a one-size-fits-all solution imposed from the centre will be successful. This is a pity as Ms Sodha looks as though she's not long out of university, and one might have hoped that someone so young might have some ideas more in keeping with the 21st century - decentralised decision-making, consumer power and so on.

However, gut feel suggests that there are probably more parents who will be for this change than against it, and there are obvious economic advantages to the tourism industry from having demand spread more evenly through the year rather than having everyone going at the same time. Given that all the main political parties seem to be set on continuing the madness of state education, a small sensible step is probably as much as we can hope for.  

Comments

[Jack Hughes]

It may be a good idea (or maybe not), but the reasons given seem to be more about class war than class teaching.

We read about the "decline" being "particularly true for children from poorer backgrounds" - but no reason why.

Then in the next paragraph its "kids from more advantaged backgrounds" doing better. Again no investigation or analysis.

Why not just machine-gun all those pesky middle-class children with their pianos, books, music lessons, manners, hobbies. And those dreadful bourgeois parents who have nothing better to do than turn up at parents' evenings and help with homework. That would get rid of all those horrible advantages.

[Bishop Hill]

Yes, I agree that the reasoning is not the most sensible, but the proposal is modestly sensible, nevertheless.

[Jack Hughes]

Bish,

Any new proposal for schools needs to be tested in a scientific way. That means tried in some areas and not in others and the results compared.

With extra effort to minimise the distortions called the "Hawthorne Effect" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect ) - an effect where people under observation perform better.

This test would be difficult to carry out in a political climate.

[Shuggy]

They were talking about doing something similar in Scotland years ago not long after I started teaching. I thought it was a good idea. You only feel the need for the long summer break because of the long march from the new year to the exams (we have no week in Feb up here.) I still think it would be better if it were broken up a bit. The school holidays were set to fit the needs of agriculture, were they not? Bit goddam silly retaining this pattern today, if you ask me.