With Cochrane’s public school students enjoying their third vacation since the Christmas holidays, questions of the quality of education our next generation is receiving is prevalent on the minds of many parents in Cochrane, Alberta and throughout our northern nation.
Schools were closed for a week in February, again for a long weekend in March, for another week in April for an Easter week off and will have another four-day weekend for Victoria Day weekend next month.
There are few months in the school calendar year that isn’t graced with some time off for the kids, and even thought the 30-40-year-old generation enjoyed holiday time as well, it seems like Canadian students these days don’t have to handle any more than three to four weeks of classes in a row before getting a break.
So, how does our children’s time in the classroom compare to others around the world?
Well, despite the perception that student-teacher classroom time has dwindled over the past few decades, it may simply be a case of the schedule being shifted and not lessened.
Rocky View Schools (RVS) provides 182 instructional days for its K-8 students and 183 for Grades 9-12. In Ontario, there is a minimum of 194 instructional days, 12 more than young Cochranites experience.
In the U.S., there is 180 instructional days; quite similar to what we have here in Alberta.
The U.K. kicks off its school year in mid-August and runs until around June 20. Students get a week off in October, February and April, a two-week Christmas break and a summer holiday for eight weeks.
So all in all, fairly similar to what we have in Canada, other than the fact that they begin school two weeks earlier.
Japan is an entirely different story.
Japanese students endure a three-semester school year that begins in April and ends in March.
There is a six-week summer vacation and a winter break that lasts two weeks, but other than that, students don’t see anymore than a long weekend throughout the year.
Saturday classes are also quite common in Japan.
An average school day in Japan begins at 8:30 a.m. and ends at 3:50 p.m.
Students in Cochrane get out of school at 2:35 p.m., even earlier on Fridays (2:12 p.m.) and start at 8:10 a.m.
For several years, there has been some who have made the case for an extended school calendar, one that would either go deeper into the summer months or commence sometime in August, like in the U.K.
Theories behind how summer vacation from the classroom came about range from the notion that kids were let off school to help on the farm, to a more urban explanation, that parents needed to retreat from sweltering heat within the city, and if their children were in school, they wouldn’t be able to take a summer vacation.
But, is there a correlation between school hours and test scores?
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) for 2012 (a study of 470,000, 15 year olds) revealed these reading, math and science scores:
- Canada: Reading (523), math (518), science (525)
- U.S.: Reading (498), math (481), science (497)
- U.K.: Reading (499), math (494), science (514)
- Japan: Reading (538), math (536), science (547)
Shanghai, China by far garnered the highest scores in each of the three categories.
Canada came in seventh in reading scores, 13th for math and 10th in science.
So, despite Cochrane’s students only attending school for 182 days at just over five hours of class time each day (around 960 hours) – compared to working full time 40 hours a week, minus two weeks vacation (2,000 hours) – Canadian students are performing above the world average, but could our educational system be doing and working more?
