Year Round Schools

Published 11 Oct 2017

The conversion of public schools into Year-round School (YRS) has benefited some students while others protest against this yearly based school system. Year-round School phrase means that the school will be operating for 180 days but the breaks and school days will be arranged in different pattern. In this paper the program of Year-round school will be discussed along with its benefits.

In a Year-round School the operating days of the school are 180 which are divided in the calendar of 12 months. The breaks are for a shorter time period. The most popular plan among the Year-round School plans is 45-15. This plan allows students to attend classes for 45 days which is about 9 weeks in overall count and then they are given break for 15 days. This benefits the building capacity because one group of students is always on vacation in this plan. Another popular plan for this system is the quinmester. In this plan students attend 5terms. Each term is of 45 days where one term becomes optional for the students. There are more plans to this year-round system, such as tri-semester and quarter system (Molnar, 2002).

The Year-round system is the result of economical considerations rather than the educational progress considerations. This program claims some advantages which are successful to some extent in the areas which are considered as advantageous. The teachers are getting the best possible benefits through this plan. Teachers spend less time on the old material for the reviews as the contents are not forgotten, this helps them save time and continue for the next material for teaching. Because of this plan teachers have fewer burdens and load of work as the student will have frequent breaks in the year-round system.

The students learn their course work in more effective ways because of the distribution of school days of operation. Students will not forget a lot of the class work during shot summer breaks. The school buildings which are inefficient during summer will be operating throughout the year according to this plan. The shorter breaks will help the students to get the recreational time before they get back to the operating days of school. It is most common in students that the long summer breaks make students lethargic and they become the victim of boredom. Because of this program the students will be in constant motion of education and learning. It’s feasible for the students to get breaks because not every student wants to travel in the summer break. The biggest advantage of this plan is for the school that will be operating for the whole year and more students will be accommodated. This plan is being used by other countries as well and they have been successful in their conclusive studies (Oberg & Shields, 2000).

The public schools were given the system of 3 months summer break when the society was mainly on the agriculture and now the society is technological. The students are more interested in the part time job rather than helping out in the family business, or mostly students are at home with working parents.

On the basis of the analysis of the Year-round system it has been concluded that this system is accorded by most people. Parents and teachers are happier with this system. About 80% parents have voted to continue the year-round system. Students academic achievements can be boost to a large extent.

References

  • Molnar, A. (2002). School reform proposals. IAP.
  • Oberg, S., & Shields, C. (2000). Year-round schooling. Scarecrow Press.
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