Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove’s latest broadside against teachers is that our children and young people need shorter holidays and longer school days. He believes that we should learn from Asian countries and promote in our schools a culture of “working harder.” But is the British educational system actually broken? And in whose interest are these proposals really being made? Sion Reynolds of the teaching union NASUWT looks at the suggested changes in education.
Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove’s latest broadside against teachers is that our children and young people need shorter holidays and longer school days. He believes that we should learn from Asian countries and promote in our schools a culture of “working harder.” In a speech to a conference in London, organised by the Spectator magazine, Gove asserted: “In order to reach those levels of achievement a higher level of effort is expected on behalf of students, parents and teachers.”
In response, a Facebook petition has been created: “Michael Gove to work in a comprehensive secondary school for a term on a 90[%] timetable.” We agree with the sentiment but we wouldn’t want to inflict him on our children and young people!
Gove said that he believed the UK school system had been designed for the 19th century agricultural economy and was leaving British children lagging behind their Asian counterparts. “It may be the case that there are one or two legislative and bureaucratic obstacles which prevent all schools moving in this direction, but I think it’s consistent with the pressures of a modern society. I also think it’s going to be family friendly.”
In whose interest?
The demand for shorter holidays and longer hours has a certain resonance for working parents. After all, schools provide “free babysitting,” thus extended hours mean that parents can work more hours, bringing home much-needed pay in a time of austerity. Suzanne Moore of the Guardian said that like any parent she could see the attraction: half-term always “takes me by surprise.” She added a little balance though (all too often absent in the articles of the “opinion formers”) by noting, “[I do] like seeing my children sometimes – and what I see is that at the end of the day, and certainly by the end of term, they are tired.” They need to spend time at home with their families, winding down.
Unsurprisingly, the Tory press waded in behind Gove. In the Daily Telegraph, Margot James, a Tory MP, said that Gove is right to be concerned about the length of the working day. She asserted that most state schools start at 9am (I have never heard of this – in fact our school day starts at 8.15!) and finish at 3pm, with sport and drama scheduled during class times. By contrast, she says, on average, private-school children spend an hour and 45 minutes longer in class per day. She asks, rhetorically, is it any wonder they do any better?
Also, an editorial in the Daily Mail opines that Gove is simply proposing that all state schools offer longer terms and days, as some academies do already. At the moment this is rendered impossible by ‘union rules’. By this they mean the negotiated conditions of service for teachers, which state 195 directed days -including 5 INSET training days -and 1265 directed working hours are to be done per year. Predictably the Mail repeats the familiar right-wing slur that the unions have long put the interests of their members “ahead of the needs of children” by defending such conditions.
Holidays are beneficial
Interestingly, Anthony Seldon, the headmaster of prestigious private school Wellington College, actually disagrees with Gove. Mr Seldon argues that:
“Too much time in class and pupils switch off, or they become too tired for homework – a key part of the discipline of learning.”
“As a headmaster I know it is counterproductive for students to spend more than five hours a day in lessons.”
“Holidays benefit parents and teachers, too. Improved results come from teachers who are highly motivated.”
“A major incentive to join the profession is the prospect of a six-week summer holiday in state schools, as well as two weeks at Christmas and Easter.”
“Most teachers don’t squander this time, but use it to enrich their minds, travel, read, attend courses, and simply to relax. They deserve it.” (Daily Mail, 21 April)
It is refreshing to find a headteacher willing to defend the working conditions of teachers, but he fails to acknowledge the many hours of work teachers put in outside of directed hours, to mark, plan and prepare the lessons they teach. A recent NUT survey found that teachers work on average 50 hours a week, which is over the European Union Working Time Directive, which grants workers a right to work no more than 48 hours in a seven-day week. Excessive working time is cited by the Directive as a major cause of stress, depression and illness. Do we really have it so easy in UK schools?
We also have to question Gove’s assertion that holidays in Asia are shorter. Warwick Manswell in the Guardian (22 April) reported that in Singapore there is a 6-week school break. In Hong Kong the annual minimum of teaching days is 190, the same as here. In China the holidays seem to start in early July and finish in late August, while in high-flying Shanghai the summer holidays last 8 weeks. Most European countries have summer holidays of at least 9 weeks!
Dull, dull, dull
It is probably true, however, that pupils in Asia work longer hours in school. It is not unusual for pupils in Hong Kong to stay in school until 10pm, and also attend school on Saturdays, with added private tuition on Sundays. Is this really a good thing?
Gove says: “We’ve noticed in Hong Kong and Singapore and other East Asian nations that expectations of mathematical knowledge or of scientific knowledge at every stage are more demanding than in this country.”(Guardian 18 April) Like many education ministers the world over, Michael Gove often refers to the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data, which gives an overall aggregate score of the test results in reading, mathematics and science literacy. Aside from the fact that the data is educationally skewed towards the usual, privileged subjects, the PISA evidence is a recognised measure and does indeed place Hong Kong and Singapore in the “top-five.”
But, as Mr Seldon notes: “Here again, Gove is drawing the wrong lessons from this time. Delve into it deeper and you find that Asian schools are dull, dull, dull.” No wonder young people there are throwing themselves out of windows!
Benjamin Chan Tat-sheung, deputy executive director of Hong Kong’s non-government organisation Youth Outreach, reports that from 2005 to 2010 the suicide rate among teenagers aged 19 and under rose by 58 percent, whilst the suicide rate among adults gradually decreased.
“Parents and teachers, the education system, the social system, everyone sees academic performance as the only baseline of a student’s success and failure,” says Chan. “So, once they fail, they’ll think themselves useless and want to escape through either uninhibited indulgence or death.”
Elsie Chien Man-hung, deputy director of Suicide Prevention Services, adds: “They have too many lessons at school and, after school, they need to go to different cram schools.”
The dullness is also about the pedagogic methods employed in Hong Kong. In 2010 I was part of a delegation of pupils and teachers from Portsmouth schools to Hong Kong, working in international partnership with our Eastern counterparts around the themes of student voice “with care and action”. Educational professionals in Hong Kong were eager to learn from our methods, for example about collaborative learning and student feedback. By contrast, in Hong Kong schools it is commonplace for 11-16 year-olds to sit in classes consisting of over 100 pupils, listening to two-hour lectures from a teacher speaking into a microphone. Some pupils are beginning to show signs of disengagement and rebellion in class – almost unheard of previously – because of the tedium of lessons and due to school leavers’ declining employment prospects, the result of economic slowdown.
Less is more
The most pertinent of Mr Seldon’s remarks relate to educational standards, which evidence shows are not actually promoted by longer school hours. For example, Finland is also “top-five” in the PISA rankings, but has some of the lowest hours of teacher contact time with pupils. When it comes to teaching hours, in Finland, “less is more.” As Pasi Sahlberg explains in his acclaimed analysis, Finnish Lessons (2011): “In Finland, teachers teach less and students spend less time studying both in and out of school than their peers in other countries.” What makes a successful education system in Finland? It’s the teaching-stupid! Sahlberg expertly documents how educational excellence in Finland has been built, since World War II, on a highly professionalised teaching force and a system which values, respects and rewards the vital work of teachers. “In Finland, teaching is a prestigious profession, and many students aspire to be teachers. Therefore, the Finns have probably the most competitive teacher-education in the world.”
“If only Gove could learn these Finnish lessons,” we might sigh. Finland is indeed a beacon of good educational practice, but let’s not forget that the British educational system is not actually “broken,” as Gove would have us believe. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and Education International (EI) in 2011 and 2012 identified the UK as one of the 20 highest achieving and fastest improving education systems in the world. (NASUWT: Maintaining World Class Schools (2013))
Education for profit
But Gove has entirely different motivations. He is out to break the power of the teaching unions and the negotiated contract of working conditions that is “imposed” on all of our state schools. This is the real reason why he is pushing privatisation in the form of academies and “free” schools (which are not required to follow the School Teachers’ Pay and Conditions).
As noted previously in Socialist Appeal, the other motivation is profit. The 2011 Education Act has made it legal for schools to make a profit and some schools are already be doing this by charging parents for extra activities after school. Would parents be so keen to support extended hours if it meant paying charges, as in the case Comberton Village College in Cambridgeshire? This school asks parents to pay for their children to take part in everything from Mandarin lessons to indoor rowing out of school hours. (Cambridge News, 5 February) Some parents may be able to afford this, but as Phillipe Harari of Cambridgshire NUT said: “As soon as you charge you discriminate between rich and poor. People who have money can buy their children a broader education and that is not fair.”
Resistance and leadership
What is certain is that Gove’s lectures to teachers about “working harder” are going to add fuel to the flames. Teachers’ resistance in schools in defence of working conditions is about to be ramped up next month in a NASUWT-NUT rolling programme of regional strike action, starting in the North-West, and heralded by rallies across the North of England and the Midlands. A national day of action is expected in the Autumn and an overwhelming explosion of anger is imminent. Given the divisive tactics of Gove, the question will be whether many parents will support the teachers in their militancy. Labour needs to show leadership by clearly restating the case for a quality education system that respects, values and rewards its teachers.
