Thousands of students return to school this week after the summer holidays. After so much fun at the beach, it’s noses in books time once again.
This summer I came across a report that listed Maltese students as having the most holidays when compared to their European counterparts. The report, published by the European Union, says that children attending local government schools will have 90 days of holidays during the scholastic year that starts this week, including the 62 days they will enjoy next summer. The numbers exclude weekends.
Students attending private and Church schools have even more holidays, considering that their Christmas and Easter vacations are longer, and these schools also add extra holidays throughout the year to celebrate Foundation Day and whatnot. Maltese children are also the only European students to benefit from what are known as half-days in June.
The question that immediately came to mind is whether such a situation is conducive to a country that lays so much emphasis on the education sector. We all know that human resources are our greatest assets. Is having such a system – with so many holidays – the best way forward? Are we molly-coddling our students too much? Are we getting the results we want from our students?
The replies I got from the Education Ministry to a set of questions I submitted said that there is no correlation between the number of holidays and academic excellence. I was also given some specialised articles that quote foreign studies carried out in this regard, all confirming that achievement depends on other factors, such as school leadership, effective teachers, school ethos and parental involvement. No mention of holidays.
Fair enough. I am not an expert, and I take the experts’ word for it. But I do have my reservations about their findings, mostly because I believe that the system we have in place today is contradictory to the statements that are made about the goals that need to be achieved in the education sector.
First of all, let’s talk about stress. Parents who take an interest in what their children are doing at school know that the curriculum they have to cover each year is vast. Now, if this curriculum is staggered over a longer period of time, I think it would be easier for our children to learn what they have to at a slower pace. The topics would be spread out more and it would give them the chance to absorb them better before they move on to the next subject.
As it is now, there is little time. If a student is sick for a couple of days, maybe a week, he or she will lose so much because so much is crammed into so little time. And, to me, this is not the correct way.
The education authorities are doing their best to reduce stress. They have even reformed the transition from primary to secondary school to avoid putting exam pressure on the students. But while, on the one hand, we have taken this step, having such a vast curriculum condensed into a relatively short time is diametrically opposed to the idea of reducing stress.
What must also be kept in mind is that our school day is one of the shortest in Europe. Students in France and Italy, for example, have almost as many holidays as Maltese students do, but in France the school day finishes between 4pm and 6pm, whereas in Italy schools also open on Saturdays. This means that the scholastic year in these countries is as long (or as short – depending which way you look at it) as ours, but students spend more hours at school and therefore the curriculum they have to learn is spread over a longer period of time.
This short school day system we have in Malta – coupled with the large number of holidays the students have – also goes against the idea of encouraging more women to get a job. We have yet another contradiction here. While the government wants more women to enter the employment world, at the same time we are making it harder for them if they have young children to take care of.
Women who collect their children from school or who want to be home when they come back at 2.30pm cannot take a full-time job. Only if school days are longer will we have a situation that encourages women to go for full-time jobs. As the situation is at present, most will opt for a part-time job – if one at all – to be able to meet their family commitments.
The extension of the school day will have another positive effect, which is more time for the curriculum to be better spread out, or else the opportunity for additional activities at school that go beyond academic subjects. Today, students have little time for drama, art, sport, dance, music and other activities that would give them a more comprehensive educational development.
There is another side effect to all this. By having short days at school and so many holidays, we are instilling the wrong principles in our children, making it harder for them to accept the rules of the adult world when they grow up. It is therefore no wonder that so many employees do their best not to give a full day’s work. Neither is it a surprise that others consider the sick leave days to which they are entitled at full pay to be part of their vacation leave. As children, they were used to having 90 days of holidays or more; how can they make do with only 24?
The experts may be right in saying that academic results are not affected by the number of holidays. But it is not only results that we should look at.
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