School’s out forever

Row after row of desks, classes of over 60 children, punishment by caning, the dunce’s cap; thankfully these are aspects of the Victorian education system long-abandoned by our modern school system. Many features of today’s classrooms would be unrecognisable to someone who went to school in the 1980s, let alone the 1880s. Yet, there is one feature that lives on: the long summer holiday. Is it time to change the structure of the school year?

The six-week summer break is a hangover from Victorian times. The introduction of compulsory schooling for children aged five to ten in 1880 was a huge step forwards: just a couple of decades earlier, education was the preserve of the very rich. Back in the 19th century, children were regarded as small labourers first, children second, and there was widespread concern that schooling would get in the way of children’s earning potential. The long summer holiday was timed to coincide with the picking season, so children could still work the fields. And so one of the most enduring patterns of modern schooling was set.

There are important reasons why this should be changed. First, there is evidence that a long summer break isn’t good for children’s learning. Educational studies both in the United States and Britain show that a long break from studying maths and English slows, and can even reverse, a child’s progress. Worryingly, children from disadvantaged backgrounds suffer the most, especially in reading.

This is related to children’s activities and learning experiences over the summer holidays. Children from the most affluent homes are more likely to have educational books and games at home and to take part in the structured educational activities that promote personal and intellectual development.

Many children admit to getting bored over the summer break. One survey of 16,000 children found eight in ten said they didn’t have much to do outside of school in their summer holidays. In another survey of 1000 12-18 year olds, 60 per cent of young people said they were bored three weeks into the 2011 summer break.

Boredom can be a recipe for young people getting involved in low-level anti-social behaviour. Anti-social behaviour peaks during the summer break and many local authorities spend significant amounts on summer holiday activities as part of their youth crime prevention initiatives.

Then there is the childcare headache for parents. Many working parents rely on a mixture of grandparents, family and friends to cover the summer break. It can be harder to call in favours for six weeks on the trot than for shorter periods of time.

The existing structure of the school year also means that teachers and pupils face a long 14-week autumn term, with two shorter terms in the spring and summer.

In a 2008 report for the Institute for Public Policy Research entitled “Thursday’s Child,” I recommended that local authorities should consider restructuring the school year, spreading the same amount of holiday more evenly throughout the calendar. This would result in a four-week summer break and five eight-week terms, two before Christmas and three after, with a two-week break between each. This more evenly spaced school year would make curriculum planning easier and mean that both teachers and pupils could recharge their batteries more often. In January 2012, Michael Gove encouraged academies and local authorities to consider adopting a shorter summer break.

This isn’t the first time this has been considered. The Local Government Association ran a commission to look at the school year back in 1999. It considered a five-term structure with a shorter summer break, but in the end this was dropped due to opposition from teaching unions, who argued that it represented a significant change in the conditions of teachers’ service and that teachers and pupils need the long summer break to recharge. But there has been renewed interest: several areas are considering this reform, most recently Nottingham City Council, which has launched a consultation.

Of course, changing the structure of the school year won’t by itself break down the strong relationship between a child’s background and school performance. This underlies our poor social mobility rates, which remain much worse than in Australia, Canada and many European neighbours.

For now though, money is tight and free summer schools for all children are a distant prospect. So it is worth trying something that is cheap but could potentially make a difference. The fact that some local authorities like Nottingham City Council and schools like the Free School Norwich look set to try out a reformed school year from September onwards gives us an opportunity to test what impact it has—and to see how children, parents and teachers feel about it. Government should not impose top-down change on local authorities; but this should not dissuade it from encouraging experimentation.