Aidan Regan

Yeah, the second tweet is probably a little bit unfair, you know.

No, but the more serious point is that...

I think as most parents will understand, like if you don't have flexibility in your job, I don't know how people manage kids in primary school.

I mean, the one o'clock finish.

for kind of younger kids, two o'clock finish, you need to have a lot of flexibility and you need to have obviously an afterschool system that's integrated.

So the real issue here is that I think it is true that the primary school system is designed on the assumption that there's somebody at home, right?

And that world doesn't really exist anymore.

It's kind of designed on the assumption typically it's the woman at home.

And we haven't really developed an integrated afterschool system yet.

No, I think pedagogically, the school day is probably about right in terms of the kid in class teaching time.

And it is true, for example, Irish teachers actually work more than the average OECD.

whatever about the summer's off and stuff, but they do work.

And there's obviously a lot of emotional labour involved.

But I think the best practice model, if you're looking at Sweden or Denmark or Germany, where you have a school system where you have, yes, you're in class pedagogical teaching of the kids, but it's integrated with the after school system.

You know, there's a recognition that most people are working full time.

So it has to be a continuous day, basically from nine to five in the kids' best interest.

We don't have that.

It's a bit of a kind of, oh, are you lucky enough to have the after school on site or not?

You have to pick the kids up.

You have to bring them somewhere else.