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All work, no play … long school hours contradicts David Cameron's belief in a strong family life. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
All work, no play … long school hours contradicts David Cameron's belief in a strong family life. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

Keeping children at school until 8pm is only good for pushy parents

This article is more than 12 years old
Michael Gove has said free schools could stay open until 8pm – why not just pack Harry and Chloe off to boarding school?

Full marks will be awarded to those who provide the correct answer. What do the following have in common?

Andrew Lansley

Michael Gove

David Willetts

Answer? They've all received a vote of no confidence from the professions within their respective portfolios. For Lansley it was doctors and nurses, Oxford dons for Willetts and teachers for Gove. Since trumpeting his plans for free schools, Gove has not been short of flak, which has probably not been helped by having Toby Young as one of the scheme's champions.

It's hard to refrain from knocking free schools when the very idea of them seems to be one of the pillars upon which Cameron's "big society" rests – the big society that he's tried several times to explain. Free schools will, Gove claims, cut out big government and enable parents to gang together and govern the school themselves – using state money.

The use of public funds is one good reason, then, that the first free schools, due to open this September, will be scrutinised like no others. Those behind the schools, such as the group setting up Norwich free school, are already considered to be "pioneers"; their imminent birth through the labour pains doled out by opponents is testament to their "incredible energy and commitment". As a result of their immense hard work, the DoE states, there will be a greater opportunity for children to learn and develop in the way that's best for them. What is so questionable about giving children such a wonderful opportunity?

Gove this week announced that free schools will be able to lengthen not just term times, but the length of the school day, too.

Free schools will be free to open 51 weeks a year, until 7pm or even 8pm – six days a week. The hours are not dissimilar to those once worked by children in the Victorian mills. It is natural for proponents to believe this will give their offspring, and our future generation, the edge – it will turn them into academic powerhouses, reeling off ancient Greek and Latin in no time at all. It would be a great idea if it wasn't such nonsense.

These hours are not for the children. They're for the adults. The parents, who hold down demanding careers so that they can give Chloe and Harry "the best start in life" or "the competitive edge". Therefore, it's not just for the future economies of Harry and Chloe, but the current one of their parents.

There's a short story by JG Ballard, called The Subliminal Man, which he wrote in 1961. Ballard, known for being eerily prophetic, presented a dystopic picture in which everyone had to work all day to keep the economy going – even when they were at home. That is what the championing of all these long hours feels like: it's madness – it justifies and champions a dysfunctional view of life, one that doesn't allow for a work/life balance. And let's not forget family life. How on earth are these children and their families meant to bond with each other? On a Sunday? Strange, this, given that David Cameron is a believer in a strong "traditional" family life.

In light of all this, I would suggest an exercise in rewording some of the DoE's claims. How about: "The right school can transform a parent's career and help them achieve things they may never have imagined (yes, I've substituted "a child's life").

Even the National Union of Teachers thinks the whole idea is questionable.

If champions of free schools think it is good that their children may have to eat their evening meal at school, then would the obvious answer not just be to ship them off to boarding school and have done with it? Cost, of course. The state doesn't allocate money to send children to Harrow or Bedales. Yet.

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