Education experts defend the split school day that the Community of Madrid will impose on the next schools to be built in the region. They consider that «helps improve performance academic of the students, who reduces inequalities and that can reduce the early school leaving rate. Something that was also endorsed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
This positioning of the experts comes after the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has announced that all the new public Early Childhood and Primary Schools built in the region will also teach 1st and 2nd years of Compulsory Secondary Education and They will have a mandatory split day. She announced this in the State of the Region Debate, where she also explained that “schools that have split days will not be able to change to the intensive schedule from the 2025/26 academic year.”
Ismael Sanz, professor at the URJC and head of the Funcas Education Economics program, defends that the measure of the Community of Madrid to implement the split school day “would be positive to prevent inequality from getting worse.”
Furthermore, this expert considers that the split school day is, as a whole, “good” for several reasons, among which stands out that children are going to have more breaks, recesses and, therefore, “they can recover from the care they have had and have less cognitive fatigue.”
«There comes a time when they get tired of listening and have less capacity to learn when they have been listening to the teacher for a long time. That is the great advantage, because if not in the intensive day you have classes very close together and there comes a time when cognitive fatigue affects the most, affecting the most disadvantaged students the most,” he stated.
Likewise, Sanz confirms that the split day can be a factor that helps reduce the school dropout rate, since “it could help prevent deficits from accumulating in Primary that later make learning difficult in Secondary.”
For his part, Raül Adames, director of the CEU Schools Area, said in statements to Europa Press that “with the day broken the school can manage the schedule in a more flexible way, since you have more flexibility to distribute the schedule and make it more appropriate for the student to rest.
In addition to improving activity at school, Adames considers that the split day also “It often helps with family conciliation” while the continuous shift generates schedules and spaces that, in his opinion, “are not appropriate.”
The director of the Institute of Educational Innovation of the Villanueva University and president of COFAPA, Begoña Ladrón de Guevara, has spoken along the same lines, arguing that the split day is “pedagogically better” for the school life of the students, since it “Having spaces where there is no class helps to consolidate what is taught in the classroom, helps the most vulnerable children and helps with better nutrition.”
In this sense, he recalled that the school has two functions, one is academic and a second socialization function, such as lunch time, the playground or recess, which, in his opinion, “are equally important, formative and fundamental for children’s school life.
Parents’ associations
The Federation of the Community of Madrid of Associations of Parents of Students (FAPA) Francisco Giner de los Ríos also supports the measure promoted by Isabel Díaz Ayuso. In her opinion, “more and better distributed school time contributes positively to the comprehensive development of students, both from an academic point of view and in terms of physical and emotional well-being.”
The aforementioned federation mentions a report published by the European Commission in 2021 on educational systems in Europe that supports the advantages of having school times better divided between morning and afternoon, highlighting how these models facilitate greater retention of information and a better adaptation to the biological rhythms of the students.
The report, titled Education and Training Monitor 2021″, points out that “educational systems that allow students to have adequate breaks throughout the day, promote deeper learning and more balanced socio-emotional development, especially in the early stages of adolescence.”
Schools with 1st and 2nd ESO
The president of the Community of Madrid also announced that the new schools to be built will be public schools for Infant, Primary and 1st and 2nd years of Compulsory Secondary Education (CEIPSO) so that “minors are more protected.”
These centers will join the dozen centers in the region that already offer these same stages and courses, with whose educational communities we will work to ensure that they also adopt the split day. For their part, the thirty CEIPSOs that teach the four courses of the complete Secondary stage and already have an intensive day They will offer new activities with the aim that students with greater difficulties finding alternatives in the afternoon can spend more hours at school.
The FAPA Giner de los Ríos defends that this measure “would mean that (students) can use the dining room service up to 2nd year of ESO, so students who currently lose the right to apply for the dining room scholarship, for not having the service in their educational center, they could at least benefit until they reach third grade.
«We consider that this measure will favor educational quality, the well-being of our sons and daughters and the conciliation of families. We trust that these initiatives will help reduce school dropouts and offer a more equitable education tailored to the real needs of the students,” they say from the aforementioned federation.
