School times increased to 6pm?

[Mokujin]

I've been hearing on the news that the Government is planning to increase school times from 15:00/15:30 to 18:00 and school holidays will decrease from 13 weeks a year to six or seven weeks a year.

Articles: www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jan/30/lengthen-school-days-cut-holidays-tory-adviser

m.bbc.co.uk/news/education-25961514

I generally think this is a bad idea because:
1. Primary school children would be too knackered after school in which they will have to go home, have their dinner and possibly go straight to bed. Where would homework and social time come into all of this?

2. Would teachers agree to their times being extended aswell? Although they'll get paid extra, it is also about their free time/social life being affected.

3. During the winter, Teenagers and primary school-children would have to walk home in the dark and not everyone uses public transport.


What I don't understand is that they're saying, "crime rates will reduce".
Not all teenagers go to school so crime will be committed regardless.
Schools aren't holding centres to keep teenagers off the street.

I think the current school times are fine as it is as it gives children and teenagers more studying time and also social time aswell.
It would also be weird seeing school routes run around 6-7pm

[snoggle]

There are also some interesting transport implications arising from a move to have later school finishing times. At present the PM peak period is spread out meaning that peak buses can do a school run and then move on to supplement other services as required. Shifting school finish times would mean more buses and drivers would be needed overall as school services would be additional to the extra peak buses. This would push costs up and place pressure on TfL's budget. Fleet efficiency would be worsened as you'd have buses sitting around all day just for schools and nothing else. It would also make PM peak travel for commuters even more intolerable if you combined school time loadings with commuters travelling home. This would most likely mean commuters and school children could not get on some buses worsening their journey times which would be very unpopular.

You would also not want the school run (in terms of loads of cars on the road) to coincide with the PM peak. This would lengthen journey times meaning yet more buses would be needed just to run the current level of service. At least the current arrangement causes a traffic blip between 1500-1630 but it's largely out of the way before you get the end of work commute home with cars, vans and bikes all battling for road space. Goodness knows what the impacts would be on the tube and rail networks.

This is one of those policy initiatives that looks superficially attractive but which ignores the knock on consequences elsewhere. The big issue that is missing from the newspaper article is how on earth much longer school hours are actually paid for - they don't come free.