So…??

“So… who’s responsible for that?” In these accountability-conscious times, how often we hear this question. It gets asked of children large and small. It gets asked of employees and employers; organizations and governments: and time and time again, it is asked of schools…

- who’s responsible for this kid’s learning;

- this kid’s behaviour;

- the other kid’s behaviour;

- values; personal health; missing clothing; toys; pie money?

Our schools are expected to meet a myriad of demands made by an over-expecting, and often under-supportive society.

So… think about this: New Zealand primary schools are required to be open for 396 half-days a year. For the sake of this exercise, let’s call it 400 half-days (that’s two hundred days - with me so far?). On each of those two hundred days, a child is at school from 9.00am to 3.00pm….

• That’s six hours out of the twenty-four hours in each week day (and at least 1.25 hours of each school day are spent eating lunch and playing games – both good things for kids to do).
• That leaves 4.75 hours/day available for teaching and learning; 850 hours / school year. That’s the equivalent of 35.41 twenty-four hour days (let’s call it 36 days)
• That’s 5.14 seven-day weeks….9.8% of the school year

So…

• If schools opened on the first of January and…
• students were physically and mentally capable of working non-stop, twenty-four hours a day (no play or lunch breaks);
• seven days a week until they completed the 36 days of instructional time:
• then the school year would be over on the 5th of February - just in time to celebrate Waitangi Day (a few days earlier if they are of secondary age!).

If a class has twenty-five pupils in it, the instruction time available to each individual student averages mere thirty-four hours per year. Not a lot, really is it?

So… if learning is an ongoing process and our kids are spending slightly less than 10% of each year at school: what’s happening with the other 90% of their time. Who’s responsible for that?