A HEAD teacher is planning a revolution in school opening hours, with lessons every day of the year apart from Christmas.
Dr Paul Mortimer wants to rebuild Hollingworth High School, in Rochdale, so that it can teach students all year round.
Pupils would be divided into eight mixed-year groups and their terms and holidays would fall at different times. They would spend the same time in school as now - the required 190 days. Only the term dates for different groups would change.
Dr Mortimer said: "For the first year the school would have the normal Monday-to-Friday working week. But a year after that we would start lessons on Saturdays and a year after that on Sundays."
Changes
Dr Mortimer, who advises the government's education innovation unit, plans to bring in the changes by 2008. He said: "We need a school for the 21st century, not the 19th. Children and teachers would still only be in school for the statutory number of days but on different timetables."
He said the changes would help parents who work full time and families who wanted to take holidays in traditional school term time, when flights are cheaper.
The National Union of Teachers expressed concern that teachers would be asked to work weekends and traditional holidays.
Spokesman John Bangs said: "It is a Utopian vision, but it doesn't fit the reality of teachers' and parents' working lives."
Comments
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What a pipe dream. Making a "workable" timetable for children! Alright so some parents might benefit from this change but many many parents work a 9-5 monday to friday and will not want there children in school at weekends. Oh and just out of interest when are children meant to have time to play freely without the constriction of school.
Stop trying to run a school like a huge business.
So the government's education innovation unit asks a Rochdale headteacher for advise when the town has some of the worst results in the country. Doh.