Timesonline.co.uk | Alarm over pupils facing a 50-hour school week

by Alexandra Frean, Education Editor and David Brown
'[...] All schools will have to open from 8am to 6pm within the next four years in an attempt to give state school pupils the same opportunities as those in the private sector. Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister, told The Times yesterday that the initiative was so popular that 2,500 schools had signed up ahead of target [...]'
Timesonline.co.uk September 19, 2006

The article cites 'head teachers, staff, union members and campaigners' as raising doubts as to the wisdom of such programmes (indeed, some characterise them as 'child abuse') in view of The Very Rev Dr Rowan Williams's recent description of childhood as being 'in crisis'. Most interesting is the social class edge to the whole thing: Beverley Hughes reminds the public that 'independent schools have always done this'. And although the article says that extended day schools would enable parents to 'work more flexibly' (whatever that means), Frank Gulley is right to point out that the majority of the criticism wrongly compares the experiences of children at extended day schools to those of children in idealized middle-class at-home-parent families. The more appropriate comparison is extended day school compared to the realities latch-key children already face.