This post is not meant to be an exhaustive examination of the subject or of every option available but rather a small summary of some research coupled with my own experiences as a teacher.
There has already been, over the years, much debate regarding extending the amount of time students spend in school. I think these discussions have been more prominent in the U.S. where they seem to be facing a bigger education crisis than in Canada, but the issue still remains interesting in a Canadian context. It interests me particularly since I feel the current school year model, the one that follows the agrarian calendar is not only outdated, but also inefficient since it lends itself to long periods of sprinting (i.e. working like crazy with little down time) followed by periods of drifting (i.e. summer vacation), with few periods for recuperation during the year (only two short holidays and a few long weekends).
Intuitively, this doesn't seem to make sense in terms of mental health. I can also say from personal experience, that September is usually spent in review and remind mode as students have forgotten much of what they learned the previous year (This points to larger issues of how material is taught and reinforced but I will save that for another post). Finally, as a very simple argument, there is so much more to be done in schools in this modern day than there was 30 years ago (in the domain of technology, inquiry-based learning, critical thinking, etc...) and teachers are dealing with a great variety of student learning abilities, which, although they may always have existed, are now much more identified and we are obligated to teach students in differentiated manner, which is more time consuming. Overall, these issues seem to point to a need to increase the amount of time students spend in school.
There are many considerations, including funding, staffing, allocation of time, weather (have you ever spent time in a Canadian classroom in June? No...well, it's pretty comparable to a sauna, and I don't particularly want to find out what it would be like in July), union backlash, teacher preparation time, the impact on summer camps, amusement parks, and any number of other industries that rely on a two-month summer...It is certainly not an issue that is going to be addressed by a simple reformatting of days and hours and I acknowledge that.
Given all of these obstacles, it is no wonder that something hasn't already been done to address the issue of insufficient time spent in school, especially given that research does not in fact whole-heartedly support the idea of needing extended time in school. Some studies (all done in the U.S.) show minimal to non-existent gains from an extended school year or day, and some even point to issues of teacher and student burnout. Some studies point to the issue of instructional time already being wasted and therefore that adding more time to the school day/year will not necessarily increase how much time kids spend learning. It is much more important how the additional time is spent. The one area of research that does seem to be quite clear about is the negative impact of the long summer vacation on students from lower socio-economic backgrounds. Although all students experience losses in math over the summer, students from disadvantaged backgrounds experience losses in reading proficiency over the summer, whereas students from more advantaged backgrounds maintain their gains and sometimes even improve. Unfortunately, these losses may even be cumulative, putting some students at increasing disadvantage every year, with little chance of ever catching up. This research definitely points to a lacking in our public school system, which should be an equalizer.
In my research I have found a number of studies that support both sides of the issue - that of extending the school year and that of maintaining it as it is. The hardest part of the entire argument is that most research about the benefits of an extended school year seem to show advantages to lower-income students but not to all students - i.e. middle class and upper middle class students do not show significant improvements in an extended school year. And unfortunately, the voices of the latter tend to matter more when it comes to issues of policy and education, if the voices of the former are raised at all. However, in creating a change that would benefit students from a low socio-economic background, we have to see a benefit to society as a whole. The cycle of poverty, dependence on social welfare, unemployment, and crime often has its roots in insufficient or poor quality education.
I would like to propose a combination of extended school year and school day. This would consist of a school year that ran more year round, but with more frequent breaks, so in fact, not extending the number of days spent in school by much, but cutting down on the long summer break, whilst also offering more frequent short week-long breaks throughout the year. In my opinion, by cutting down on the extended break, you reduce the time wasted reviewing at the beginning of the year, and therefore gain additional time, without adding many days to the school year, which adds a tremendous financial burden. In addition to this, I would propose extending the school day by at least an hour to even two hours. This would make the school day more similar to a work day, and reduce the burden of child care costs on many families. What these additional hours consist of is extremely important, since research into an extended day has shown that the most likely outcome is student and teacher burnout. I will write a separate post on reconfiguring the school day since adds a layer of complexity that goes beyond simply extending learning time, but rather entails a complete rethinking of how we approach learning.
