The 4-Day School Week — Feedback From Experiments Around The World

Updated Sept. 22, 2024 at 6:55 p.m.*

PARIS — The global experiment that is the four-day school week is expanding to multiple countries around the world. From Poland and France, Australia and the U.S., more and more individual schools and school districts are showing the costs and benefits of shortening the school week. Still, the shift in education schedules is still in its early stages.

For the 2024-25 school year, students in the southern Arizona municipality of Patagonia will be required to show up just four days a week. This largely mirrors what was launched half-way around the world last September in Wodzisław Śląski, a city of 50,000 in southern Poland.The reduced schedule — which comes along with fewer tests and new assessment criteria — were an initiative that came last year from the citizen grassroots level and ultimately was approved by municipal authorities, reports Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.

The experimental four-day school week, for students in grades one through three, as well as certain older classes, have been instituted in all 13 public elementary schools within the city. Students now devote one day a week to carrying out non-traditional educational projects, such as going to science centers, learning craftsmanship, or taking walks through the local forests. The measure has been widened from a smaller pilot program tested last year, which included only a few of the city’s public schools.

Joanna Kulińska, principal of Primary School No. 2 in Wodzisław Śląski, explained that classes in select subjects will be combined into blocks, during which students can carry out a thematic project, go to a science center or take part in a non-traditional nature lesson.

“This is a fantastic idea that allows us to transmit knowledge in an interesting and modern way – through experience and practice”, Kulińska added.

The new policy in Poland is part of an expanding interest in the four-day school week, with similar experiments in the United States, Australia, and France, with some instituting one full day of “non-traditional” learning, or simply an extra day off, as a means of reducing student stress and increasing engagement in class time. Some also see it as a way to reduce costs at a time of economic constraints.

In the U.S., a recent EdWeek Research Center survey said that 95% of school districts still have a traditional, five day schedule. Still, some 900 districts around the country have implemented the four-day weekly schedule.

Cutting costs 

In the United States, more than 1,600 schools in a total of 24 states have decided to embrace the four-day week, according to a report from MIT Press Direct. Their findings show that, rather than “laying off teachers and administrators, increasing class sizes, closing or consolidating schools, [or] implementing student activity fees”, many school districts have instead chosen to take one day, usually Friday, off from the traditional school week.

Kids are busier now, sometimes they don't get a break

But in spite of the financial motivations, some parents and students alike have found that the four-day week has been beneficial for their performance and mental health.

Jennie Gentry, a mother of three in Missouri, where about one-quarter of schools have shifted to a four-day week, remarked upon her children’s support for the measure.

"I feel like they're happier because they have that extra day to catch up”, she told ABC News, "Kids are busier now, I mean they play so many sports and things like that now on the weekends, sometimes they don't really get a break."

However, the shift to the simple four-day week — unlike the Polish model of shifting a day towards “non-traditional” learning activities — has also caused concern among parents who work five days a week, and struggle to pay for childcare on their children's days off.

Earlier this year, schools in the states of Pennsylvania and Indiana have approved moving to a four-day schedule. The news was meant with equal parts enthusiasm and reticence: Les Huddle, the superintendent of the Lafayette School Corporation in Indiana, told Newsweek: "We knew with a decision like this there would be some push back and negative comments. Most have come from individuals who do not have students [here] or haven't taken the time to become fully educated on the concept."

It's now Arizona's turn to give the no-class-on-Fridays plan a try, as all public schools in Patagonia, in the south of the state, have switched to four days of learning for the 2024-25 school year. According to superintendent Kenny Hayes, the decision try this new schedule was driven by the quest to boost student success: "On Fridays more kids were spending more time on the bus than they were at school so it was important for us to try and alleviate some of that bus time so they could concentrate on homework and other things they could be doing.”

Australian independence

In response to an ongoing teacher shortage, some in Australia have suggested implementing a four-day work week, which has resulted in higher numbers of applicants to teaching positions in the United States.

Merryn Dawborn-Gundlach, a senior lecturer at the University of Melbourne's Graduate School of Education, spoke to Australian broadcaster ABC News about the "unprecedented" four-day week as a potential solution to the hiring crisis.

"I did work at a school myself, an independent school, where they did have the four-day week, and that worked really well," she told ABC. "And I believe that if you were going to bring this in, that it would have to be justified by saying, well look, this is developing independence and skills that will hold the students in good stead for (future) courses ... or for whatever they want to do.”

Still, she added, the four-day week alone would not solve the problem of the education system.

What French teachers want

The changes at Wodzisław Śląski in Poland may have been inspired by experiments of the public school system in France, which has had “non-traditional” school time since the passage of the Peillon reform in 2013, according to the Le Parisien daily. The city of Paris has reduced school hours on Tuesday and Friday afternoons, from 3:30-5:00 p.m., when students have the option either to go home, or to participate in extracurricular activities offered for free by the city.

80% of teachers wanted to return to the four-day week.

Other French cities, including Lille, Marseille, Toulouse, and Bordeaux, have opted to return to a true “four day” week, where the full day Wednesday, rather than Tuesday and Friday afternoons, are dedicated to extracurricular enrichment activities for students. And in Seine-Saint Denis, a suburb outside of Paris, nine out of ten schools opted to return to the four-day week, beginning in the 2018-2019 school year.

Aside from costs and benefits for students, proponents of the measure cited surveys of teachers, 80% of whom wished to return to the four-day week, rather than the previous four-and-a-half, citing that a free Wednesday would provide them with the opportunity to “take a step back from their work.”

This past May, teachers in the central city of Pau went on strike to demand a shorter work-school week, France Bleu radio station reported.. The motivation, according to union representative Elsa Delignières, is well-being for both teacher and student. "For the children, fatigue is growing, which poses problems for us of concentration in the classroom," she said.

*Originally published Sept. 1, 2023, this article was updated Sept. 22, 2024 with new enriched media.