Schools should provide 45 hours of education per week for 45 weeks of the year, says Paul Kirby

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Longer school days and shorter holidays are "the perfect election promise" to win votes for the Conservatives from stressed parents juggling work and childcare, a former top adviser to David Cameron has suggested.

Paul Kirby, the former head of policy development at No 10, posted a personal blog setting out a big increase in the amount of time pupils spend at school, which he described as "a real game changer in education".

Under Kirby's proposals, the school day would be extended to 6pm, while school holidays would be whittled down to just six or seven weeks a year.

"What about this for a simple manifesto promise – 'From September 2016, all state funded schools will, by law, provide 45 hours of education per week for 45 weeks of the year'," Kirby wrote in his blog.

"This increase by two-thirds in the time that kids spend at school is designed to allow all parents to work full-time without the need for additional childcare. The average employment leave would cover all school holidays. The average working day would give most parents the chance to do a full time job, in between dropping off and picking up their kids."

The coalition government has already used guarantees of free nursery funding and school meals for primary school pupils to attract support from what it describes as "hard working families".

A spokeswoman for the Department for Education offered a non-commital response: "We will obviously consider recommendations for further reforms."

The DfE pointed out that – under reforms introduced by education secretary Michael Gove – schools are already able to vary hours and term times.

"We are already giving all schools the freedom to set the length of the school day and term. Many academies and free schools offer extended opening hours, and we want more schools to take up these freedoms," the DfE said.

Kirby, who left No 10 nearly a year ago to return to KPMG as a partner, said the move would be popular with teachers and give pupils time to catch up with their international competitors.

"In simple terms what we are doing is giving kids the equivalent of an extra seven years of compulsory education between the ages of five and 16 and giving teachers almost no time constraints," he wrote.