Research supports the premise that longer school days improve the overall quality of instruction which can be provided for students. In countries where the school day is longer students gain superior results on standardised tests.
It stands to reason that more hours face to face with students would give teachers the chance to spend more time on the core subjects and allow teachers to respond to the individual needs of their students.
As well as having a positive impact on educational outcomes lengthening the shcool days would have important flow on effects for family and community life. Practical considerations such as the funding of such an initiative and the effects on the teaching profession also need to be considered.
What do you think ?
All the Yes points:
- Less need for homework.
- Lessons would feel less broken.
- Time to finish activities
- So much easier for parents!
All the No points:
Less need for homework.
Yes because…
If more work was done in a structured environment built for working in, where you can get help with your work and you can work more intensively without distractions, you don’t have to do as much homework. Then your home life is something separate from your study life, so you can concentrate on playing and family time.
No because…
Well how much of a social life and play time can you actually have if you’re at school until all hours of the night?? Yea, none. In reality, most schools offer a study hall or IRP to give the students sometime to get homework done. Most students don’t have homework and if they come home with it it’s probably because they didn’t take the time in school to get it done or they just slacked off and talked to their friends. There is plenty of time to get at least some homework done in school and it’s much easier to work at home.
Lessons would feel less broken.
Yes because…
Lessons could be completed in one working session, meaning they don’t carry on over to the next day when the children will have forgotten about the subject or got bored of it, interesting lessons won’t get terminated altogether because of time limitations (boring lessons tend to be the compulsory ones with priority), more lessons are possible that practically require there to be a long uninterrupted gap such as a laboratory experiment that can’t be left overnight.
No because…
Students should be able to go home during the light of day. When it’s the winter season, the sunsets earlier and it will get dark. Students walk home from school and if school day is extended, kids will be walking home in the dark without any safety.
Sometimes, children have after school activities so they might miss out on them.
Time to finish activities
Yes because…
Every day, children could be in their last hour writing a story, doing persuasive writing or other important work, when the bell might ring. They come back the next day and can’t remember what they were going to write. This isn’t good, especially in a test, when you could then receive bad marks, which may be part of their reports. If you want a better report, to do better at school, and have a better life, I suggest that school hours should be extended.
No because…
So much easier for parents!
Yes because…
If the school hours are extended, adults wouldn’t have to pay for after-school care for as long as they would now. Also, they would be able to work longer hours thus getting more money, and making life more of a luxury. For instance, lets say that you finish school at 3pm. Your parents might put you in after-school care from 3pm-5pm, until they can pick you up. After-school care, in my case, is $50 per hour. Are parents willing to pay this price? I should think not. If we extend school hours to 5pm, they won’t have to put you in after-school care saving about $500 per week. Also, adults could work for longer and pick you up at about quarter-past 5-5:30, as you are allowed to stay after school is over for an amount of time. If we make school longer, this will save money, get adults more and make your life more luxurious.
No because…
Not enough hours of daylight during winter.
No because…
Children need to get enough hours of daylight or they’ll be depressed, it’ll be too cold to be outdoors when they finish school and their sleep will be affected. During winter, school already takes up most of these hours and it mostly involves studying indoors.
Yes because…
Not enough fundng…
No because…
to keep the building open for the extra hours, or to pay the staff for the overtime. The teachers themselves would not only have to work the extra hours but also do even more planning for those hours, which they already spend most of their time outside working hours doing. The non-teaching staff would need to be paid more to maintain the building for the extra hours it would be open.
Yes because…
NO!
No because…
I think that should school days should not be extended because you get tired of work and you need to relax and if you have longer days then its harder to complete homework when you have less time at home.
If they wanted to extend school days then they should have more breaks and more recess time.
NO NO NO NO the classrooms will be boring plus why do we need to makes class longer anyway. I think that we need to leave class time alone and try to make the lunches better. our lunch is terrible I really want to know why we need longer time its not about how long it takes its about how much you try. so better lunches and shorter time. if you ask me.
This really helped me for my debate.
Thank you
Yes school days should be longer, just not nation wide. We do not have the funding nor recourses everywhere to make this a common thing. But it would benefit students largely. The U.S. has fallen behind academically compared to other countries. In order to make up for that schools are cramming as much in a possible in a short man of time. If we extended the school day even just an hour it could make it easier on students to grasp everything. This would also reduce homework and make the transitions in between classes smoother.
As to the financial issues, because we do not have the rescues for this project to go nation wide I suggest it becomes more of a growth. That schools slowly start to take on to the idea. This would give us time to adapt and continue the growth.
“Students need time after class-” Yes this is true but it won’t effect homes of social skills. There are still weekends for these students to socialize with and all families come together at least once in the day for dinner and such. There is no border keeping students form socializing. Although I will admit after school activities such as sports may need to be cut down a bit. But hen you look at the importance between playing a sport and the opportunity to enhance your education which is more beneficial in the long run? And if enough schools take a licking to the new schedule sports and after school activities will have to move after it. (adaptation)
Some schools have already started experimenting with this. Schools that are behind added an extra hour and showed almost twice as much improvement.
I am a honors high school student. I get up at 6:30am, my school starts at 7:45am and goes until 2:45pm. I stay about an hour after school to finish homework and get any extra information from my teachers.Then I go to work my community service hours (required for school) I get home around 6:30 and eat dinner, clean the kitchen and have free time until around 10pm when I go to bed. I have enough time to eat, sleep, socialize, and still have additional time. Once I finish with my service hours I plan to get a job, by law I can only work until 7pm, but it wouldn’t effect my schedule. I have enough time, having additional school time wouldn’t effect this.
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