I’ve always wondered why our school days were so short when compared to our continental neighbours. From what I have seen, English pupils at a particular age always seem to be one educational step behind those from, say, France. Extra teaching time brings with it so many benefits… like learning a new language to fluency.
So, the education secretary’s proposals for an extended school day may give young people an educational edge in an international market. Longer school days—perhaps even from 0730 to 1730—and shorter holidays could be on the horizon. I know one set of professionals who probably wouldn’t welcome this: teachers. But how do these speculative proposals affect buses? Quite a bit, I’d say.
- Usually, there’s a convergence of the morning and school peaks but in the afternoons, they’re currently mercifully apart. Any afternoon extension of the school peak will stretch operators. Were school closing times to be put back, you’d have scholars, workers *and* the remnants of returning shoppers all vying for seats.
- There would potentially be an increase in split shifts to cover a lengthening span of dedicated school work.
- There may be fewer opportunities to use overtime to bolt a school bus onto an evening shift.
- If scholars are travelling more often, there’s revenue maximisation to consider, over more days per annum. And it could be that in the afternoon, you could get more work out of a dedicated peak vehicle, spread over several schools. And possibly so in the morning, if one school opens at 0730 and another (perhaps a primary or middle) at 0845.
- School-related urban traffic congestion will spill over into the evening peak which, where this doesn’t have an impact at the moment, will increase operator costs with the extra vehicle movements associated with scholars.
- The possibilities of Saturday tuition might prove lucrative for some operators who may need to wheel out specials, buses that come at marginal cost as they’re already required for the traditional Monday-Friday school peak.
- Saturday morning service bus journeys tend to be under-capacity so extra bodies might be accommodated on existing journeys at no extra cost, bringing efficiencies and even safeguarding vulnerable journeys.
- On the other hand, a small operator would probably struggle with staff on a Saturday. Even assuming that they’d be keen to work potentially six days, there are working time directive and, where appropriate, EU hours to consider. This inevitably equals more drivers and more associated costs.
7 comments:
I'll be gobsmacked if these proposals ever make it beyond the suggestion stage. As has been said elsewhere, many of the Tories who support these proposals went to public school where 0730 to 1730 days weren't a problem - staff and pupils lived on site. In the outside world, where an hour's travelling either end of the school day for both teachers and pupils is not uncommon, and where workers generally are fighting to get the working week shortened to below 40 hours, it's not going to happen.
In sixth form and higher education establishments in particular, although they tend to function for longer hours than comprehensive schools, it is usual for students to have huge spells of free time. It seems to me that using time already on site more productively would be a better option - with less effects on our industry as a result.
Have you noticed how many shoppers avoid the afternoon the school buses, preferring to travel later during the peak?
Ever tried getting a school to change its opening hours? Five minutes here, five minutes there, might be enough to get two journeys out of one bus.
I once dealt with a school that acknowledged the traffic chaos outside its front gates, and was interested in a dedicated bus. We could provide it at marginal cost off the back of another working, if their opening time was 10 minutes later, but that was such a stumbling block, it never happened.
And surely the trade-off to longer days is longer holidays? French schools - like many of the country's businesses - shut down during the whole of July and August.
"From what I've seen.........." - this is the sort of generalisation about education which, if applied to the bus industry, rightly earns a rebuke on this blog.Short of bumping existing teachers' workloads upwards by 30-40%, or putting loads of extra resources in (hardly likely at present) an increase in hours won't happen. Perhaps this is another bit of blue sky thinking by Michael 'Royal Yacht' Gove?
More specifically, schools in Europe tend to work different days, not longer ones -earlier starts and earlier finishes seem the norm.As Anonymous suggested, the 6th Form College in which I've just ended my career already worked 0845-1630, with many students having lengthy journeys on top of that due to the size of our catchment - though post-16 students are less likely to be catered for by special services.
My prediction is that doing school work at home for part days or certain days per week will become the norm within 5 years, especially for the upper school years (14 to 16). There will be a realisation that if your information source and learning is from the net (quite normal now) and you demonstrate your knowledge or competence on a computer (on-line tests etc. haven't happened yet, but the technology exists so it can only be a matter of time) then why do you need to have that computer in a classroom?
To be clear, I’m not predicting the end of schooling as we know it, just that a change that has taken place in many a workplace for certain people and certain circumstances will in time translate into the classroom, but probably a few years later, mirroring the generally later adoption of technology we tend to see in schools.
So, less demand for transport, potentially spread across more of the day, rather as happens for colleges today. There are positives and negatives alike for that.
Dennis Drat said...
'"From what I've seen.........." - this is the sort of generalisation about education which,..'
I would say that the "from what I've seen" is a qualification of the generalisation - he's being honest that it is his perception, and not necessarily universally true.
In other respects I would agree with you, and, compared to the German school day, the British ones are long. The German school day often consists only of the morning, thus saving the need to provide pupils with a midday meal and the associated long break, so the actual hours of lessons may be similar, but the day is spread over a shorter period than in the UK. A debate about 'all day schools' has been going on for a few years now, and some do exist, but they are the exception.
I will say this only once - The French Education system has to have longer hours than ours so that pupils can be taught the meaning of extra words like surrender, defeat, collaboration, and the like
Post a Comment