Schools should be given “flexibility” to “take ownership” of plans to lengthen the school day, a headteachers’ leader has said.

While adding a mandatory extra half an hour of learning time after school would be “very problematic”, the other option being considered by ministers - extending opening hours on a voluntary basis from 8am to 6pm - is “enlightened”, according to Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL).

However, even this may not be “quite ambitious enough”, he said.

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On Saturday, Tes revealed that two dramatically different approaches to extending the school day are being considered by government for its post-Covid education recovery plan.

Ministers are weighing up whether they should opt to pay for a compulsory half-hour extension with an academic focus or fund a longer 8am-6pm school day that would be voluntary.

Covid catch-up: Longer school day ‘should be flexible’

Asked what he thought of the two options on the table, Mr Barton told Tes that it would be “much more difficult” for schools to adopt a mandatory extra half an hour of teaching time.

“What I’ve been saying in all the discussions with the Department for Education, including the secretary of state, is could we just remind ourselves that this must be about quality and not quantity, because it’s very easy to assume that just because you tack another half-hour on to the day that automatically is going to solve the issue,” he said.

“And the reality is, when I was deputy here in Thurston [Community College], in Suffolk...we had a catchment area of 220 square miles. So some young people were travelling for an hour and a quarter on the bus to get to school.

“So, in that context, adding extra time on to the end of the school day really wouldn’t be a helpful option, so we just need to make sure we keep flexibility in this for schools to know their context and to do what’s right.”

On the other hand, the ASCL leader said the voluntary 8am-6pm day sounded “enlightened”, although possibly not “quite ambitious enough”.

“Here’s another example of where a trade union, I think, has got higher ambitions than the government,” he said.

“It could be that this is really an opportunity to start rethinking that learning is something which is there for the lifetime and doesn’t need to be constrained within certain hours.”

Mr Barton said opening on a voluntary basis between 8am and 6pm was the “most attractive” option, because “what that then allows us to do is to say, ‘OK, if we’re going to provide some additional resources and support before school and after school, what might that look like? Who might provide it? Which young people would benefit? How do we change the buses?’”

He added: “That allows us to take ownership of it as school leaders - that would be a good thing if the resources are there.

“Far better than what will feel, I think, like an ideological compulsory view that, ‘We in Westminster know better than you in your own communities, towns and villages across England.’”

Mr Barton said the proposal to extend the school day by half an hour for “academic” purposes was also “very problematic” from a pedagogical perspective.

“To simply tack something on at the end of the day would seem to me that it’s not addressing the most important thing, which is the quality of teaching, quality of support or quality of enrichment,” he said.

“Far better I think is to say to schools and colleges, ‘Look, we think it would be good to be able to provide more quality time. You have a look at what that means in your context. Here’s resources to do it, and yes, you’ll be held accountable for it. But you’re the people who know best.’

“And it was a government that originally came into government saying that we should trust leaders to know their communities best. And I think this past year has demonstrated that they do.”

Mr Barton added that he felt “the whole notion that there are some things which we deem academic and some things which we deem enrichment and that one of those is more important than the other is a complete educational cul-de-sac”.

“There will be some young people who will do better in their maths and their English and their history, because they’re also playing in an orchestra, doing football and doing drama,” he said.

“I do think there’s an incredibly narrow view if they think that simply by creating extra academic provision for 30 minutes a day, that that is going to be the solution after the worst global pandemic we’ve had in a century.”

Yesterday new polling from YouGov suggested that a significant majority of parents of school-aged children are against extending the school day to help pupils catch up after the Covid crisis.

But in Mr Barton’s opinion, school leaders are likely to back longer hours if they are given the freedom to tailor additional provision to their pupils’ own needs.

He said: “We don’t want to divert ourselves into thinking that simply increasing time is going to increase quality.

“But equally...if the government is going to make sure there are resources there and doesn’t impose a one-size-fits-all model that looks good in some sanitised office in Westminster, and does allow people in their own context to say, ‘OK, what could we do knowing our young people and knowing the team we’ve got here?’, then I think [headteachers will] look at that with a kind of sense of supportive interest.”

The YouGov survey also showed that the wider public are fairly evenly split on a longer school day, which the government’s education recovery commissioner, Sir Kevan Collins, has suggested may be a key part of a catch-up plan expected to be announced in the next few weeks. 

Mr Barton argued that it was preferable not to be “constrained” by a “time limit” when extending the school day.

“If basically what you’ve got to do, because it would be mandated, is to keep your school open for half an hour extra for ‘academic’ subjects...what does that mean?” he asked

“I need, what, an English teacher and a maths teacher, all of these students, for half an hour, so who exactly between 4pm and 4.30pm is going to say for every day, ‘Yes, I’ll come and do half an hour, or I’ll do that before the school day.’

“Whereas if what you’re given is the flexibility to say, ‘Right, we’ve got a period of time where we can take on people to do a range of different things,’ some of which is the academic support, some of which might be mentoring and coaching, some of which might be enrichment provided by arts organisations or sports organisations, that actually gives you a lot more flexibility about the quality of provision you can provide because you’re not constrained by a rather narrow ideological view of a time limit.”