Less school holidays?

The much anticipated autumn half-term holidays are upon us although some parts of the country - noteably Scotland - will have already enjoyed their pre-winter break.

Failed Prime Ministerial candidate and former education secretary Michael Gove had called for longer school days and a cut in the length of holidays, which he said would lead to improved performance and make life easier for working parents.

The suggested reforms would have allowed state schools to choose to stay open until 4.30 pm and introduce a shorter, four-week summer holiday for pupils from next year - representing a profound change for parents used to tailoring their working hours to the classroom timetable.

Gove had claimed that the school system had been designed for a 19th century agricultural economy and risked leaving British children trailing those in Asia.

“It may be the case that there are one or two legislative and bureaucratic obstacles which prevent all schools moving in this direction, but I think it’s consistent with the pressures of a modern society. I also think it’s going to be family friendly,” he had said.

Responding Christine Blower, of the Teachers Union, had considered Gove to be ‘making policy up on the hoof,’ without regard for the evidence adding: “Teachers and pupils already spend longer hours in the classroom than most countries and also have some of the shortest summer holidays.

“Independent schools in England and Wales, which often break for two weeks more during the summer and have longer holidays at other times of the year than their state counterparts, do not apparently feel the need to change and are apparently do not suffer from their reduced hours.”

The suggested changes would have required a rewriting of teachers’ contracts and a reexamination of working hours: the current contract mandates that teachers work 195 days or 1,265 hours a year.

TATTIE HOLIDAYS!

Gove considered that pupils were being handicapped in comparison with their peers in other countries. “The structure of the school term and the school day was designed at a time when we had an agricultural economy,” he had said.

“I remember half-term in October, when I was at school in Aberdeen, was called the tattie holiday - the period when kids would go to the fields to pick potatoes. It was also at a time when the majority of mums stayed home. That world no longer exists and we can’t afford to have an education system that was essentially set in the 19th century.”

Gove gave the example of successful education systems in east Asia that demanded higher standards of their students and had longer school days and shorter holidays.

“We’ve noticed in Hong Kong and Singapore and other East Asian nations that expectations of mathematical knowledge or of scientific knowledge at every stage are more demanding than in this country.

“In order to reach those levels of achievement a higher level of effort is expected on behalf of students, parents and teachers. Schooldays are longer, school holidays are shorter. The expectation is that to succeed, hard work is at the heart of everything.”

“If you look at the length of the school day in England, the length of the summer holiday … then we are fighting or actually running in this global race in a way that ensures that we start with a significant handicap.”

A Whitehall source commented: “We can either start working as hard as the Chinese, or we’ll all soon be working for the Chinese.”

The NUT are presently considering a new draft contract setting out a 35-hour working week which would include 20 hours of ‘pupil contact time’ -the equivalent to four hours a day in the classroom - as well as 10 hours for lesson planning, preparation and assessment, and five hours for ‘non-contact duties’ such as staff meetings, parents’ evenings and logging pupils’ results.

Think on!

China already owns half the pigs in the world and, as rural peasants, there have begun to have more disposable income, the demand for pork has risen.

However, growing feed for all those millions of pigs is land-intensive, and China’s agricultural land is in bad shape: According to China’s official news agency, Xinhua, more than 40 per cent of farmland in the country has already degraded due to over-intensive farming.

So China has decided that, instead of growing the pig feed it needs, it is just going to import it from places like Brazil. The demand for soybeans to feed China’s hogs is driving a soy revolution in Brazil, which, in turn, is incentivizing farmers there to chop down the rain forest to plant more soy.

And, of course, cutting down the rainforest releases carbon into the atmosphere, which speeds up global warming, which gives us less arable land, which makes our upcoming land versus food problem all the worse.

One possible solution is to replace meat that comes from land with meat that comes from labs - at the Netherlands’s Maastricht University, vascular physiology expert Mark J. Post is working on it…..

Farming ‘scapegoats’

The Wales State of Nature Report 2016 provides welcome recognition of the important role played by farmers in conservation, but places misguided emphasis on some environmental factors say the FUW.

Responding to the report, the Union’s Gavin Williams said: “While we would certainly not agree with some of the assertions made in the Welsh State of Nature Report, I welcome the fact that it is far more balanced than the UK report in terms of recognising the positive role of farmers in conservation, and the validity of concerns we have been raising for decades.

“Amongst those concerns are the fact that under-grazing - sometimes as a result of the Welsh Government’s agri-environment guide lines - is what is already causing a damaging effect on many species and habitats.

“It is heartening that 67 per cent of the priority species assessed in the report are classified as stable or increasing in numbers. However, for those species which are not performing so well we do need to consider what actions must be taken.

“The various state of nature reports across the UK recognise factors such as increases in avian and mammalian predators, and the abandonment of grazing, burning and cutting, all of which have a negative impact on species and habitats.

“There is a growing recognition of the environmental damage that under-management and the loss of farming has had, and would have if we were to see farming becoming even less financially viable, and these concerns are starting to be reflected in reports such as this.”

However, Mr. Williams said there were still those who reach for the farming scapegoat whenever they are faced with problems, and remain in denial about uncomfortable truths such as the fact that growing numbers of predators are dining out on some of our most endangered species.

“Politicians and environmentalists need to be honest with themselves and the general public about factors such as predation, otherwise they risk causing further damage to the environment.”

Mr. Williams emphasised that despite some differences, there was a vast amount of common ground between the farming community and the authors of the report, and that the FUW would continue to work with other bodies in order to secure an economically and environmentally sustainable future for Welsh agriculture.

Wi-fly

Many of us will remember hearing the humming sound of the telephone wires as we travelled the country lanes - now most of this is being changed as we turn to fibre optics so as to effectively facilitate broadband.

However, some things do not change as, during harvest, we see well fed young crows resting on the wires after enjoying a bellyful of wheat or barley shed from the combine harvester.

Then the swallows line up in their thousands before setting off on their long journey to sunnier climes.

And now the news is confirmed that their places have already been taken by the millions of starlings on their annual visit!

For humans, a life on wings symbolizes a life free of struggle - but birds don’t have it so easy. They have to find mates, forage for food, and use those wings to migrate thousands of miles - all while avoiding countless threats from nature and humans. Through it all, they’ve adapted. From the ballooning air sacs of the male Magnificent Frigatebird to the precise, celestial migration of the European Starling, birds have learned to survive in a wide spectrum of ways. Ornithologist and life-long birder Roger Lederer dives deep into these evolutionary miracles in his new book, Beaks, bones and bird songs.