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A longer school day and school on Saturday??? Anyone hear about this?
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<blockquote data-quote="Marguerite" data-source="post: 310020" data-attributes="member: 1991"><p>MWM, thanks for the info.</p><p></p><p>I mentioned school start/finish times, because travel makes a big difference to this, it's a very individual thing. For example in primary school, we drove the kids to and from school plus they went to after school care, because home was so far away. It was an hour's travel at least, each way. But they had a friend who literally lived across the street from the school. She could dash out the door as the school bell went, and still be in class on time! After school she could be home in two minutes.</p><p></p><p>When our kids were in high school, they had to leave home before 7 am (which in winter is before sunrise) to catch the boat. We don't have a high school in our village. The kids caught the boat, then a train, then walked - getting to school at about 8 am, but the later boat would get them to school too late.</p><p>After school they simply couldn't get to the boat for the usual after-school ferry which got into the village at 4 pm. So they had to catch the next boat, getting in at 5 pm. In winter, after dark.</p><p></p><p>The reason our schools have lined up their holidays with uni holidays (in broad at least) is so school staff can get access to in-service courses which are often held in uni vacation. Also, there are conferences which take advantage of the empty uni lecture halls and empty residential colleges (for accommodation of visiting conference attendees). Also increasingly, our senior high school courses are merging into tertiary institutions so a student can be studying at school then have timetabled college courses which are also included in their school timetable. Example - a friend of easy child 2/difficult child 2's was studying a preliminary Engineering course while working towards her HSC. After lunch on Tuesdays when easy child 2/difficult child 2 had her Textiles & Design class at school, her friend would walk next door to the college there and do her Engineering class. It was possible because the college timetable and the public school timetable were designed to mesh together. Our TAFES (College of Technical and Further Education) have the same terms and holidays as school.</p><p>We're hoping to do this next year for difficult child 3 - a computing course, 6 hours a week, fitted in around his school timetable.</p><p></p><p>I used to work at the university as well as having kids at school. I also helped set up teacher in-service courses. husband has done the same (also uni employee). He's had school Science teachers take advantage of school holidays coinciding with undergrad-free laboratories during the uni break, so they can do a refresher course.</p><p></p><p>There can be very useful reasons for having this level of coordination.</p><p></p><p>The 2-3 week holidays between the terms - these used to be only one week, in some cases. Definitely too short. And our summer holidays used to be much longer than they are now, so our kids would be driving us up the walls by the end of summer holidays. By taking some of the free time from the summer holidays and spreading it around the school year, it seems to have made it a much happier arrangement. The kids don't spend any more time at school overall, it's just organised more effectively, more balanced.</p><p></p><p>Private schools here have more holidays overall, several weeks a year more. There is some variation on how much, the variation is between different schools. And there may be a few private schools which have Saturday classes, but I don't know of any. I just don't think it would work.</p><p></p><p>I suspect that what is likely to happen in the US, if anything, will be more along the lines of slightly shortening the summer holidays but using the time to add to mid-school-year holidays. It would simply be too expensive as well as too unpopular, to do anything more. I would hope they make it a matter of choice, too.</p><p></p><p>But it's more likely that they want to get a feel for what people will accept. And using schools as child-minding facilities will be low on the list of reasons.</p><p></p><p>Marg</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marguerite, post: 310020, member: 1991"] MWM, thanks for the info. I mentioned school start/finish times, because travel makes a big difference to this, it's a very individual thing. For example in primary school, we drove the kids to and from school plus they went to after school care, because home was so far away. It was an hour's travel at least, each way. But they had a friend who literally lived across the street from the school. She could dash out the door as the school bell went, and still be in class on time! After school she could be home in two minutes. When our kids were in high school, they had to leave home before 7 am (which in winter is before sunrise) to catch the boat. We don't have a high school in our village. The kids caught the boat, then a train, then walked - getting to school at about 8 am, but the later boat would get them to school too late. After school they simply couldn't get to the boat for the usual after-school ferry which got into the village at 4 pm. So they had to catch the next boat, getting in at 5 pm. In winter, after dark. The reason our schools have lined up their holidays with uni holidays (in broad at least) is so school staff can get access to in-service courses which are often held in uni vacation. Also, there are conferences which take advantage of the empty uni lecture halls and empty residential colleges (for accommodation of visiting conference attendees). Also increasingly, our senior high school courses are merging into tertiary institutions so a student can be studying at school then have timetabled college courses which are also included in their school timetable. Example - a friend of easy child 2/difficult child 2's was studying a preliminary Engineering course while working towards her HSC. After lunch on Tuesdays when easy child 2/difficult child 2 had her Textiles & Design class at school, her friend would walk next door to the college there and do her Engineering class. It was possible because the college timetable and the public school timetable were designed to mesh together. Our TAFES (College of Technical and Further Education) have the same terms and holidays as school. We're hoping to do this next year for difficult child 3 - a computing course, 6 hours a week, fitted in around his school timetable. I used to work at the university as well as having kids at school. I also helped set up teacher in-service courses. husband has done the same (also uni employee). He's had school Science teachers take advantage of school holidays coinciding with undergrad-free laboratories during the uni break, so they can do a refresher course. There can be very useful reasons for having this level of coordination. The 2-3 week holidays between the terms - these used to be only one week, in some cases. Definitely too short. And our summer holidays used to be much longer than they are now, so our kids would be driving us up the walls by the end of summer holidays. By taking some of the free time from the summer holidays and spreading it around the school year, it seems to have made it a much happier arrangement. The kids don't spend any more time at school overall, it's just organised more effectively, more balanced. Private schools here have more holidays overall, several weeks a year more. There is some variation on how much, the variation is between different schools. And there may be a few private schools which have Saturday classes, but I don't know of any. I just don't think it would work. I suspect that what is likely to happen in the US, if anything, will be more along the lines of slightly shortening the summer holidays but using the time to add to mid-school-year holidays. It would simply be too expensive as well as too unpopular, to do anything more. I would hope they make it a matter of choice, too. But it's more likely that they want to get a feel for what people will accept. And using schools as child-minding facilities will be low on the list of reasons. Marg [/QUOTE]
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A longer school day and school on Saturday??? Anyone hear about this?
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