Loading
“We are worried about the disruption,especially for HSC students who will miss out on face-to-face instruction. There was little consultation,and it seemingly went from a proposal to a done deal announced in a newsletter.”
Chevalier College is an independent Catholic co-ed high school in Bowral owned by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart. It has almost 900 students.
Miller told the Herald that students would still attend the school campus on some Mondays for excursions or other events.
“This change will reduce face-to-face teaching,will reimagine the timetable and give teachers more time to do professional learning,” he said.
In a letter to parents earlier this year,Miller said the majority of the 130 parents who attended a community forum held on the issue expressed their support through a show of hands.
Sally,another parent at the school,said the proposal was “outrageous”,and had withdrawn her children from the school.
“We don’t want to be a test run for this. Socially,it’s good for children to attend school five days a week,” she said.
The proposal comes a week after Queensland’s Education Department releasedchanges to school hours policy this month,due to take effect from 2024,which offers guidelines for altering the number of school days per week or fortnight,or changing school hours by more than 30 minutes.
The NSW Department of Education said there is no plan for NSW public schools to introduce a four-day school week,but individual schools have flexibility to vary their starting and finishing times.
Loading
The former NSW Coalition government floated a shift in school hours last year andordered a trial of extended times at 14 schools. That trial was scrapped this year.
Another Chevalier parent,who spoke anonymously in order to speak freely,said her major concern was that “core to the changes is it would remove all teaching from Mondays for year 10 and up.”
“This approach is being labelled ‘best use of time’,but means face-to-face teaching time will only be Tuesday to Friday. The bottom line is this is a plan for a four-day formal school week,with no teaching available on Mondays.”
Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney said he was cautious about the school’s move to reduce face-to-face teaching.
“If COVID taught us anything,students can really struggle when they are cast out of school. We should be delivering more school provision for kids,not less,and we know the social ills that kids experienced after long periods of out-of-school learning. So fresh from the pandemic,is it really time to be experimenting with their futures?”
Loading
University of New England lecturer in education Sally Larsen said the experience of remote learning during the pandemic reinforced the need for school to be back in-person. “Not every child is intrinsically motivated to pursue learning at home.”
“Moving to a day learning at home could disadvantage students that need additional support. A four-day school week also raises issues around teachers being able to get through an already crowded curriculum,and maintaining academic rigour.
A spokesperson for the NSW Education Standards Authority said school operating hours are a matter for the NSW Department of Education for government schools and the owners and operators of non-government schools.
“NESA’s remit is only in relation to the allocation of the required time for specific courses,” the spokesperson said.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories,analysis and insights.Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.