The definition of a school year should be the same as a calendar year, running from January 1st through December 31st rather than from July 1st through June 30th or any other such dates. A January through December school year is much more logical and would make referring to school years much simpler. People would be able to refer to a 2004 school year rather than a 2004-2005 school year.

Under this proposal, students would suffer no increased academic regression (forgetting) than under a traditional calendar because a long summer recess would merely fall within a grade rather than between grades.

However, to further mitigate the problem of student regression during extended vacations, vacations should be spread out a little more evenly throughout the school year, making summer vacations shorter. The school year calendar should be organized so that schools will be in session on all days except weekends, major holidays, the last two weeks of December, the first two weeks of January, Easter Week, the month of July and one week off in October.

In all, there should be 200 days of classroom instruction per year, an increase of 20 days over the current schedule.

Under the structure of an academic year running from January 1 through December 31, students who have a certain birthday anytime within that calendar year should be eligible to attend that relevant grade level.  The currently illogical practice of having the age cutoff within not just a year, but within the academic year, and further ridiculously of having the cutoff within a month (like at midnight between September 1 and 2) is just not defensible in any way. There can’t possibly be a rational explanation for such an illogical cutoff. However, under the current system in which the summer recess separate academic year, then the age cutoff should be on the next most logical placement of July 1, half way through the calendar year.  This way, children whose birthday is during that academic year would be age eligible for the relevant grade level. At least moving the cutoff from the evening midnight of September 1 to the morning midnight of September 1 would be far more logical.

Formal primary level academic education should begin no sooner than at 8:30 am daily and should go through to 4:00 pm.