Teacher working hours – Could schools adopt a 4-day week?
Gordon Cairns looks at why adopting a four-day school week could be not just practical, but even advantageous for staff and students alike…
Amid a pile-up of problems – from rising inflation, to impending power shortages that threaten to leave homes in the dark and shut down businesses for hours at a time – now might not seem like the best time for educational establishments to be adopting radical new ideas.
And yet, there’s one innovation that could potentially turn the problems we face into an opportunity to develop a better way of educating our young people – a thoroughly planned, four-day secondary school week.
Dire warnings
The dire warnings that trusts and LAs have received regarding winter 2022/23 – power blackouts, prohibitive fuel bills and all – could be tempered somewhat by reducing the school week by one day. Doing so would immediately cut energy costs by up to 20%, but the potential gains would extend beyond the financial benefits alone.
Trials of four-day school weeks carried out in the US have appeared to show some improvements in students’ reading and writing outcomes, though the overall picture is so far inconclusive.
In long term, beyond the mental health benefits of a three-day weekend for students and staff, we would also likely see a significant reduction in schools’ collective carbon footprint, given that the thousands of often old and energy-inefficient school buildings across the country wouldn’t need to be lit or heated for as long.
Then there’s the environmental saving to be had by not having to transport 9 million children to school and back as often, which could well be the biggest benefit of all.
Interesting patterns
For those sceptical at the idea, be aware that it’s already happening elsewhere in the economy. A growing number of UK businesses have started to embrace what was once considered wishful thinking, by keeping their staff on the same pay while instituting a four-day working week. Crucially, the majority of these workplaces have reported no drops in productivity, despite their reduced staff hours.
At the same time, there’s been a steady rise in the number of US schools that have opted to extend their weekends. Within just the past two decades, numbers have risen sixfold – from 257 at the turn of the century, to over 1,600 across 24 states last year (albeit mainly for financial or staffing reasons, rather than strictly educational, environmental or mental health factors).
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, providing students with one less day of schooling each week hasn’t correlated to a 20% drop in grades – though a multi-state, student-level analysis published in August 2022 by researchers at Annenberg Brown University did find some fractionally negative effects on average maths and English outcomes. These amounted to less than 1%, following analysis of the standardised spring tests for students in grades 3 to 8.
Digging deeper into the report’s numbers, its authors discovered some interesting patterns. Non-rural students didn’t perform as well as those who lived in the country, and girls were more likely to be negatively affected by the four-day week than boys.
Conversely, a separate Georgia State University study dating from 2015 – which examined rural school districts only – found that a four-day school week actually had a positive impact on two subjects with identical scores.
One of its authors, Mary Beth Walker, dean of the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State, suggested that just as workers on a four-day week have been found to be more productive, extended weekends may result in teachers instructing more enthusiastically.
Understanding disparities
However, a further report noted that since US schools and districts had chosen to implement a four-day week differently – with some extending the length of the remaining four days to make up for the loss of the fifth – it was difficult to definitively gauge what the policy’s impact on academic outcomes actually was.
The Annenberg Brown University team concluded that a better understanding of why disparities in marks might occur and adapting accordingly would be key to successful adoptions of a four-day week. As many schools discovered during the COVID pandemic, it’s possible to deliver education flexibly in ways that aren’t tied to the 9-4 weekday model.
Has it ever been calculated by educationalists that the optimum number of hours spent learning for young people equates to 32.5 per week? Did we arrive at that number because it broadly mimics adult working hours? Or simply because ‘that’s how it’s always been’?
What’s easier to predict is that a three-day weekend would increase the number of hours that secondary-age adolescents spend sleeping. This was confirmed by three students involved in another study, who all lived in different US states, and found they were able to reduce the ‘sleep debt’ they built up on school nights. The end result of this would presumably be a greater number of students coming to school well rested and ready to learn.
Sleep researchers have previously observed a correlation between lack of sleep and depression, along with an increase in risky behaviours among adolescents. Giving students a sanctioned extra day off could help reduce the school-related anxiety that affects an increasing number of students, while simultaneously lowering the stress and anxiety levels of teachers – assuming the schools in question modify their targets to reflect the change in teaching days.
Educational priorities
Simply getting a one-day reprieve from the rush hour each week would likely have a positive impact on teachers’ mental health, while the longer weekend might serve as a carrot for boosting teacher retention.
Of course, for a four-day school week to become a reality, some parental objections would also need to be overcome, requiring as it would adjustments to many families’ weekly childcare and working arrangements. In 2021, the RAND Corporation commissioned a survey into the proposed introduction of a four-day school week in rural communities across the Western United States.
The resulting ‘Can Four equal Five?’ report showed that parental focus groups generally responded positively to the new timetable, and the opportunities it allowed for families to spend more time together.
However, it’s worth noting that a previous RAND study in 2019 estimated that a four-day school week would bring about an 11% reduction in employment for married mothers with children aged 5 to 13 – though it found that there would no significant impact on fathers or single mothers.
Ideally, a four-day school week would pave the way for a long-term change in our educational priorities – perhaps one that might see adoption throughout wider society, allowing people to do more with less time at work.
The eco factor
- Schools account for around 2% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Carbon Trust.
- Schools collectively burn the equivalent of over 4 million tonnes of CO2 – three quarters of which are emitted by burning gas
- Schools’ collective carbon emissions amount to roughly the combined energy and transport emissions of Manchester, Newcastle and Bristol
Gordon Cairns is an English and Forest School teacher who works in a unit for secondary pupils with ASD; he also writes about education, society, cycling and football for a number of publications
