Now the day is over. Yes or yes. The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, announced this Thursday during the debate on the state of the region that the new public schools in Madrid will have classes in the morning and afternoon. It is not that I can speak of a change in Madrid’s policy, but it is a decision that goes against what most community centers do.
Debates within the education community about whether a continuous or split day is better are fierce. Cloisters are leaving. Its advocates – including teachers and some families – argue that it is better for students and also allows for reconciliation. Its detractors – researchers and families with other life situations – argue that it harms performance and only benefits teachers. Although there is no conclusive evidence, morning sessions have become more widespread over the years. In the absence of official statistics, one survey calculated that 71.4% of centres had a continuous working schedule in 2022.
In Madrid, the president explained that this commitment aims to “fight against school dropout, improve student performance, their rest or eating habits, as well as combat loneliness, addictions or the possible influence of gangs.” Is the president right? What do we know about the effect that one day or another has on student learning, on work-life balance and even on the country’s economy?
Although there is no definitive answer due to lack of research, the different approaches carried out suggest that the split day has more advantages. More advantages for students first of all, the main subject of education, but also for families, for the gender gap, for the country. In this way, Ayuso also aligns itself with the OECD, which advocates the elimination of the intensive morning schedule in schools as a fundamental measure to reduce school dropout. The organization refers to the positive effect produced by a longer “time spent in the center”, whether in school or not, to justify the lengthening of the school day.
Student performance
A compilation of the research carried out so far by Professor Mariano Fernández Enguita refers to the work of the French François Testu, Hubert Montagner or Devolvé on attention (measured by the proportion of errors made when performing small tasks) and fatigue (self-perceived). “The results are always very similar,” writes Fernández Enguita, “to the initial scheme of the work of François Testu [consistente en] “Average attention early in the morning, peak in mid-morning, a sharp drop at the end and average attention again in the early afternoon” are repeated in other studies.
This is confirmed when we look at the opposite, fatigue. Studies record some fatigue from the morning, minimal fatigue after a while and it begins to increase until reaching the maximum level around 1:30 p.m. for a school day that starts at 9 a.m. section is avoided and add an hour in the afternoon, where attention is average. Changing the split day to a continuous day means, according to these data, abandoning the afternoon part (average attention and fatigue) to delve into the last part of the morning (low attention, high fatigue) and even a little more time in the first. morning (average attention and fatigue).
The direct effect between the type of day and performance has not been demonstrated, but there is more literature that demonstrates that “spending more time in school has a positive effect on academic performance and student well-being,” as one student explains. study by EsadeEcPol, which cites experiences in several countries where “educational reforms that promoted full-time schools (with 7 or 8 hours of school attendance and with lunch at school) were associated with improvements in student learning and graduation, as well as other social conditions -emotional and behavioral indicators, television consumption time or early pregnancies among girls. In addition, he adds, “the effects have been concentrated in households with the lowest incomes, so these types of reforms have a prominent redistributive character for students.”
Better coupling to rhythms
Pediatricians also believe that split days are better for children. A report prepared by the Valencian Society of Pediatrics (SVP) states that it is better adapted to the biological rhythms of students, as it promotes sleep and performance, especially in the case of adolescents. For this group, adds Esade, the start of classes early in the morning means, in practice, sleep deprivation in the adolescent school population with undesirable consequences, such as inattention, behavioral problems or poorer academic performance.
Effect on families
From this approach, the extension of the school day benefits… mothers. “A long school day promotes, through greater employment of women, both greater social equality and greater equality between the sexes,” explains the Esade study. The reasoning is as follows: if the child has a continuous day and is at home at mealtimes, he needs to be taken care of. Normally, in two out of three cases, the mother is in charge. And if you are at home to take care of your child, you cannot work, as is obvious.
“International evidence shows that increasing the time spent in school (both school and non-school) decisively promotes the integration of women into the labor market and, consequently, the number of hours they work,” they write, of course. But this time, they put in figures. Some examples: after having a child, “women’s participation in the labor market decreases by about 9% compared to that of men.” Another: the working day drops to 25 or 28 hours per week. By cross-referencing the data with the Living Conditions Survey (ECV) of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the study also quantifies the gender gap: 7,670 euros of annual difference with continuous work, 7,970 euros with split work.
In this continuity, in addition to the consequences on the economy of families, it also affects the country as a whole. It is estimated that with this loss of work, families lose 8,048 million euros and the State, consequently, 1,200 euros in personal income tax alone.
And the teachers?
Teachers prefer continuous working days. 87% of those who work in a center with these characteristics agree with this, a figure that drops to 32% when there are classes also in the afternoon. Furthermore, according to some research collected by Esade, the morning (continuous) team is associated with lower levels of perceived mental fatigue and better mood on the part of teachers, but there are no differences according to the type of team regarding work stress.
Despite this, teachers use the alleged benefits for students as the main argument to defend the continuous day. “A majority of 93.1% use student allowances as the main reason (75.7%) or second reason (17.4%) respectively, and 65.5% cite family reconciliation or as the main reason (13.7%) or as the second reason (51.8%). These arguments are well ahead of those that mention the benefits that this type of day brings to teachers, represented at lower levels both as the first reason (3.6%) and as the second reason (22.7%)”, he explains.
In addition, being present at the center only in the morning (does not mean that they stop working) also favors the participation of teachers in training activities in the afternoon, which ends up benefiting the students.
Finally, there are those who think that the debate is wrong. It is not about continuous schedules or split schedules, but rather about part-time teaching and full-time teaching. This approach thinks about school schedules – staying in the center favors students, with or without classes – and educational services such as the cafeteria or extracurricular activities, without necessarily being linked to class schedules.
