Keir Starmer recently soft-launched Labour’s general election charge with a new plan for education, focusing more on oratory skills and breaking down the “class ceiling”. Absent from his plan is the answer to an important question: where is the time going to come from?
Starmer’s proposal emphasises his main goal to close the career attainment gap – between those privileged with a private education and those in the state system – by increasing the focus of schooling on oratory skills to bolster students’ ability to debate and express their ideas, and ultimately to improve their success in the workplace.
Focusing on oratory skills throughout a young person’s education may boost state school students’ competitiveness, but it will not solve our current problem – students in state schools regularly perform below their private school counterparts. The solution could be simpler than policymakers realise: state school pupils need to spend more time in school.
Given the limited number of hours currently allocated daily to children’s education, Starmer’s vision for oracy, as well as Rishi Sunak’s plan for STEM, will need to come at the expense of something else. Rather than augment the content of the school day, and thus launch a never ending cycle of re-prioritisation, they should propose an extension of the standard school day to 5pm, with less of a focus on homework. This would give young people in the state system a meaningful advantage compared to those who may be losing interest and preparing to go home for snacks by the time the clock strikes three.
At present, the UK minimum standard for a school day is about 6.5 hours (from registration to the end of the day). Extending this to 8 hours – which would mean a 9am start to a 5pm finish – would give students an extra 285 hours of potential learning time yearly, and a stonking 1,425 hours extra over their secondary school career. That would be enough time to complete 4 extra A-level syllabi. It would allow enough time for a host of curriculum improvements, from Starmer’s oratory skills plan, to Sunak’s moulding of the UK school system into a STEM superpower, to an entirely new PE regime to boot.
A 5pm finish would also align student schedules with that of the average working parent, making lives easier for guardians who wouldn’t have to worry about childcare, after school clubs, or a child falling into the wrong circles during the last hour and a half of the workday. It would provide a safeguard against antisocial and dangerous behaviour, and provide a meaningful step forward in making a work/family balance more easily available to parents.
An 8-hour school day would make the UK an international exception, as most developed countries settle around the 6.5 mark, but a simple glance at many of the UK’s private schools demonstrates that a longer day is entirely possible. It is not unusual for UK boarding schools schedules consisting of lessons, extra curricular activities and sport to run from 8.15am to 5pm, giving their young people the advantage of hundreds of hours more a year spent in an educational environment. Instead of tinkering with the state education “status quo” in order to close the gap on private schools, lawmakers should replicate the techniques that have made the UK a world renowned leader in private education for centuries.
Teachers unions would likely kick up a fuss, as they did in 2021 when faced with the prospect of a 30 minute extension to the day. However, if policymakers were to meet those objections with an appropriate pay increase reflecting teachers’ importance to the long term future of the UK, and employ more teachers overall to diversify the workload, they could overcome the opposition. Fully involving educators in the process of deciding what to do with that extra time would also help to bring the unions onside, prevent burnout, and ensure that the priorities of both teachers and students are considered.
Closing the gap between private and state education in the UK requires bold, meaningful change, not just shuffling of the deckchairs. A longer school day for British young people could launch UK education into the new world, and make the UK a great reformer of education once again.
Noah Khogali is a Scottish Conservative Councillor, a political commentator with Young Voices UK and the Policy Director of the Conservative Friends of the Commonwealth. He tweets @NoahKhogali
