Four-day school week is a success in Hoorn
SBO de Wissel in Hoorn has been experimenting with a four-day school week since the beginning of this school year. "We see special things happening."
Image: Angeliek de Jonge
It is quiet in the school on Wednesdays. All 220 students are then free. And that is every Wednesday. Special primary school De Wissel in Hoorn is the only school in the Netherlands allowed to experiment with a four-day school week. And that works very well, says director Mark Leek. “I can easily demonstrate that the quality and efficiency of education remain at least the same. In fact, we see special progress in a number of children. ”
De Wissel consciously opted for a day less due to the high level of absenteeism among children. Appropriate education has greatly increased the number of pupils with complex problems, and for them in particular, going to school every day is 'top sport'. Leek: “At the end of the week they were completely exhausted and not enough by Monday. Everything we did, such as resilience training or focusing more on practical learning, did not work sufficiently. ”
The idea that more hours is better is hard to eradicate
With the designation excellent school for two years, the school is allowed to participate in the pilot scheme for schools and therefore deviate from the law with permission. Since this school year, the children do not go to school on Wednesdays. As a result, they receive 140 hours less lessons per year (3,5 hours per week). Leek: “We want to demonstrate that we can manage with fewer hours: less is more. "
Odd
Going to school every day is 'top sport' for children in special primary education.
A structural four-day school week is not allowed and education minister Arie Slob does not intend to change this. With his recent decision to end the 'Flexible school hours' experiment, his position seems set in stone. Apart from the fact that the risks to the quality of education would be too great, he substantiated his decision with the 'common view that deviation from the teaching time should not be a structural situation'.
By law, primary school students must attend school five days a week and be taught at least 7.520 hours for eight years. This is an average of 940 hours per year. The starting point for this hour standard is that every child is entitled to sufficient teaching time to master the subject matter. The more hours the better, is the general belief.
According to educationalist Geert Driessen, there is no scientific evidence for this. “The minimum number of hours of education a child needs to achieve the intended goals has never been investigated. The number of school weeks is based on how life used to be when children had to help out on the farm in the summer. The number of hours per week is not based on anything, except the well-being of the child. However, there has been no psychological, physiological research into what would be the most ideal school times. That is very remarkable, yes. ”
Efficiency
Whether more hours yields more, according to Driessen, is very much the question. In the countries that consistently rank at the top of the authoritative Pisa ranking, students attend school the fewest hours. The best-scoring Western country has been Finland for years, while students receive no less than XNUMX hours less per year than in the Netherlands.
A few years ago, the Central Bureau of Statistics compared the efficiency of education in 33 countries and also concluded that more teaching hours is not necessarily better. On average, primary and secondary school teachers provide 840 hours of compulsory lessons per year, internationally this is 740 hours. In countries that score better than the Netherlands, it was even only 693 hours.
I wish this so many more children and teachers than just mine
“There are many factors that can explain the success,” warns Driessen, who researched variation in school hours for the Institute of Applied Social Sciences (ITS, University of Nijmegen) in 2015. “In Finland, for example, the teachers are university-educated and classes smaller. In countries such as Japan and China, children also receive a lot of guidance after school. The results therefore depend very much on the curriculum and the quality of the teachers. ”
Enthusiastic
One day less to school can have a positive effect. In American states where children live far from school, a four-day school week is often chosen to save costs and travel time. Contrary to the researchers' expectations, a shorter week with longer days turned out to yield better results than a regular five-day school week. Pupils from grades 6 and 7 scored significantly better in math, and their reading skills remained the same.
A day of rest a week can contribute to the reduction of fatigue, stress and illness in children.
The causes have not been investigated. 'My assumption is that teachers are so enthusiastic about the four-day school week that they teach better', one of the researchers writes in the scientific journal EducationFinance and Policy"Research in other sectors also indicates that a four-day working week leads to higher productivity."
The ITS study 'School times in primary education: facts and fiction' in 2001 showed that four or five days makes no difference. Two lower grades were examined: one was given a four-day school week with less than 22 hours of lessons for a year and the other a five-day school week with more than 24 hours of lessons. 'There appeared to be no significant differences in terms of performance on language and arithmetic, work attitude and well-being', is the conclusion.
This research also shows that longer teaching days are not necessarily more stressful for students than shorter teaching days and that the morning is not necessarily the best time to teach. This also allows the argument that a four-day school week would be pedagogically and didactically irresponsible. A day of rest a week can even contribute to the reduction of fatigue, stress and illness in children.
It remains to be seen whether a four-day school week is difficult to combine with the parents' working week. The number of parents who both work full-time is only 8 percent and more and more parents choose to both work part-time. In a poll by parent organization Parents & Education about solutions to the teacher shortage, the majority of parents reject a four-day school week.
A transition to other times has a huge impact on family life
Nevertheless, one fifth sees something in it as a structural solution. “We have not asked the reasons for this,” says Dorine Wiersma of Parents & Education, who welcomes further research into the advantages and disadvantages of a four-day school week. “A transition to different times has a huge impact on family life because they are used to a certain rhythm. You have to see it more broadly. The teacher shortage is a major social problem and personally I think a four-day school week is an extremely bad solution. In healthcare, we don't say either: do one less day? Moreover, I cannot imagine that it makes no difference if you cut one fifth of the class time. Education is much more than just transferring dry matter. ”
Day care
These are arguments that seem familiar to the director of De Wissel. The school took more than a year to prepare for the transition to four days. The participation council was directly in favor, as were most other parents, because, according to him, they also noticed that five days is too much for their child. Leek: “The questions that arose were mainly about how they should arrange childcare. We agreed with out-of-school care that we would also open on Wednesdays, something that only four parents opted for. ”
Parents at De Wissel find their child calmer at home, and teachers notice that they are less likely to explode.
Only one parent thought it was such a bad idea that she took her child out of school. “It is mainly parents of children with a pre-university leaving profile who were concerned about whether their child is short of something. If they want, the teacher can therefore give homework for Wednesday, but I don't think that's necessary. Because we spend a lot of time here on social skills, we cannot work through the entire history book anyway. Yet there has never been a secondary school who felt that we had spent too little time on it. They just start again with prehistoric times. So it's all about teaching children to think and perform at a high level, and that works well. ”
After three quarters of a year, he is already very satisfied with the introduction of Wednesday off. Absenteeism due to illness has fallen sharply and the results of the first Cito tests show no deterioration. “We see special things happening,” he says. “A number of students have even progressed beyond the agreed goals. In addition, there is much more rest during the week. Where we previously thought this is going to be a difficult day, like Sinterklaas, this is not the case now. Parents also find their child calmer at home and teachers notice that children explode less quickly or are more calm again. These are all small developments, although of course they cannot simply be related to the four-day school week. Research must show that. "
duo
Teachers are 'normal' at work on Wednesdays and that also has major advantages, according to Leek. On that day they can finish their work in peace or consult with their duo. “Thinking together about how to divide the groups or what to offer which child at any time leads directly to quality improvement. In addition, teachers are finally getting around to deepening or implementing plans for thematic work. That has been on the agenda for years. Many teachers have ticked off the workload, which is no longer an issue. They say: I have my profession back. ”
'The four-day school week was not born out of necessity'
The four-day school week was not born out of necessity due to the teacher shortage, but according to Leek it can be a solution for the long term. “This year the flu wave passed our school and there are teachers who would like to come and work here. That's because the profession is becoming more attractive again and that's exactly what is needed to attract new people. ”
Leek hopes that more schools will be able to experiment with a four-day school week. “That way the experiment gets more body. I can imagine that if the results are good, only sbo schools will soon be allowed to do this or maybe even only my school. That makes me happy, but it doesn't make any progress. I wish so many more children and teachers than just mine. ”
Ethical
Educational scientist Driessen argues for a major empirical study of teaching time. “The idea that more hours is better is hard to eradicate,” he says. “In Rotterdam they are now in the process of introducing an extra ten hours of teaching time per week, without any substantiation. First find out if it makes sense. But the ministry does not want or dare to undertake this investigation, because they do not think it is ethically justified to give one child fewer hours than another. But we are now pushing millions of children into a grid of an hours table, while it is not known at all whether that works well. How ethical is that? ”
