The idea almost seems like it makes sense on its own. The kids didn’t go to school. Give them more school. With more hours, lessons, and time in the classroom, the gap might close on its own. It seems like a good idea. It might not be.
A study from the University of Cambridge uses data from more than 2,800 schools in England over five years to quietly question what has become a common policy trend. The results show that even big increases in classroom time probably wouldn’t make a big difference in how well students do in school. Just 0.12 to 0.18 points more in a school’s value-added score—a standard way to measure progress—was added for students in Year 11. This was true even though they had an extra hour of English or math class each week. At most, it’s a small push.
There is no question about how much COVID-19 took from students. In the first twelve months of the pandemic, about 1.5 billion students in 188 countries were unable to go to school in person for different lengths of time. In England, most primary and secondary school students missed about 40 days of on-site instruction. Losses were closer to 150 days in Colombia and 180 days in Costa Rica. There was real damage that wasn’t spread out evenly, and children who were already struggling were often hit the hardest.
It’s possible that the urge to make the school day longer comes from a real need to do something that can be seen and measured. But the study’s lead author, Vaughan Connolly, makes it clear: keeping kids in school longer to do more math or English probably won’t make a big difference in their grades. And the picture is just as discouraging for poor students, whose education was hit the hardest. The evidence suggests that more of the same teaching is not likely to help close the achievement gap.
Instead, Connolly says that the quality of the time spent in school is much more important than the amount of time added. It might make a bigger difference in the long run to cut down on subject time and replace it with sessions that focus on how to learn, like developing good study habits, metacognitive skills, and the ability to take in and remember what you’ve learned. That’s more difficult to pass politically. Some people might notice if you add an hour to the school bell. All the facts, though, seem to point that way.
The people who teach are also a part of this conversation, but they are often left out when policy discussions are only about the students. English full-time teachers were already working about 50 hours a week during term time, according to polls done before the pandemic. In England, lower secondary school teachers worked about eight hours more per week than teachers in most other countries. In June 2020, a poll of senior school leaders found that 70% of them worked an average of more than 51 hours per week. These aren’t people who have time to spare.
Teachers didn’t just switch to online lessons and call it a day during the pandemic. A lot of them were calling families, keeping an eye on students who might be at risk, learning new tech on the spot, and keeping things together in ways that didn’t make the news very often. Researchers who are still looking into what teachers went through during this time found that as the uncertainty lasted, their mental health and well-being got worse over time. Many teachers thought it was unfair that the public thought teachers had it easy during closures, working less and enjoying the peace and quiet.
It doesn’t make sense to ask workers who are already busy to put in more hours to fix a problem they didn’t cause. Students don’t learn from teachers who are worn out and down on themselves. It seems clear that much, even though it doesn’t show up in the policy brief very often.
It seems that the need to make progress on learning recovery more public has led some governments to use the most obvious tool—more time—without checking to see if it really works. The Cambridge study doesn’t say that you shouldn’t work hard or spend money. It makes the case for putting that work where it belongs. The less dramatic answer might be to rethink how the current school day is used instead of just making it longer. But it looks more and more like the honest one.
