Half term didn't used to exist did it?

Mainly because a late Easter means not a lot of time between end of holidays and start of May exams.
It also means two equal terms between Christmas and Summer

Half term is ONE WEEK in February / late May and October.

end of

Aberdeenshire and Fife get 2 weeks on October for Tattie houkin, basically back in the day it was everyone on hand to get the Potatoes (and probably other crops) harvested for winter.

It most certainly did, IME. I'm older than most on here, at school and university in the 60s to 70s, and my school half terms were always, but always, around the midpoint of the autumn, spring and summer terms and usually lasted a week, with the three terms themselves divided by Christmas, Easter and summer holidays.
There was never any confusion about this!
Same when DC were at school, in the 90/00s.
I have never heard of the actual holidays being referred to as half terms but perhaps this is a recent thing.
(For universities, half term didn't exist at traditional/RG Universities in our day, or even in DC's: terms are fairly short - 10 weeks mostly and only 8 at Oxbridge - looked up my old uni, it still has three 10-week terms. Newer ones might have longer terms. )

I grew up in England and half term weeks are just that, a week off half way through the term. Autumn half term was called blackberry week as it was when they were ready for harvesting.

When I was in Scotland they seemed to ignore Easter as a holiday all together, I think they add the 2 weeks on to the summer holiday?

Everyone I work with, no matter whether they have children or not knows the Easter holidays are a week or two around easter.

And with us, everyone knows (except my former manager, who is surprised every year,) that the start and end dates can vary for different counties, which is relevant when there at least 3 counties in play for your team.

I'm not rearranging as they fucked up by not being clear.

If you were unclear when the Easter holidays were, you should have checked. Everyone I work with, no matter whether they have children or not knows the Easter holidays are a week or two around easter.

I had to book a meeting outside the Easter holiday. It had to be outside the Easter holiday because of childcare commitments. I booked it for last week, the Easter holiday is next weekend. Some people are pissed off as they're now having to pay for extra childcare, they meant the school Easter holidays (which makes no sense whatsoever as different areas have different dates). I'm not rearranging as they fucked up by not being clear. If they'd said "half term" instead of Easter Holidays, there wouldn't have been an issue and I would have double checked dates. I took it to mean the actual Easter holiday.

Do people normally work bank holidays where you work?

Yes and in 80s crappy short half terms of 2 days but longer main holidays

Oh and May half term used to be mentioned as Whitsun

It's still referred to as Easter break and I never refer to the long holidays as half term

Fully agree OP

And am really chuckling at the idea that 'Easter holidays' could ever refer to the Easter Weekend in relation to work meetings and not school holidays. Or would some people (in 9-5 office type work places) genuinely need to be advised that they should avoid weekends and bank holidays when booking meetings? 🤣

DDs school sent an email referring to the 1/2 term for Easter, it is a crap school.
Cafe down the road has 1/2 term special on now.
I’m in the midlands, I know it’s the end of spring term/ Easter holiday.

Who are all these people calling the Easter hols half term? I don't think I've noticed it (and I'm a teacher with kids at school, so if it was common you'd think I would have), but they're just wrong.

My mum used to call one of the half terms (think it was after the summer hols) ‘blackberry week’. Anyone else heard that term, or did she invent that all by herself?!

Can't have been the end of October, because if you pick them after old Michael as (11th October), that's when the devil spits on them. Otherwise, it would be the most logical one.

When I was at school (I left school in 1972 - I am cracking on a bit) we never had the luxury of a weeks half term. It was usually a couple of days tagged on to a weekend, sometimes only one day, so it was, at best, just a long weekend. Families would never have sufficient time to go on holiday, say. (But then, holidays in employment were a lot shorter too, so you were lucky to get a weeks family holiday during the long summer hols). I think children generally spend far less time at school now than they did in the past - even the school day was longer than now.

In Kent they have 6 terms - the holiday patterns are exactly the same as everywhere else but instead of having 3 terms each chopped in half, they just call them terms 1-6. So all the breaks are just called holidays. Weird.

The school I am working at is calling the Easter holiday half term. It's completely confusing.

@Fairislefandango I’ve already said it annoys me but I think the PP is right.
Half term in that you’ve done half a term and then you get a holiday.

Rather than thinking about it as a split of the 3 Autumn, Spring and Summer terms.

I’ve never noticed anyone calling it half term! The half term holidays are the ones half way through the term. Easter, Christmas and Summer holidays are the end of a full term and are longer. No idea where the confusion has come from.

I heard this for the first time yesterday! Very strange. Half term is halfway through the term, not at the end of it!

This is actually one of my historical interests and before everything was standardised (so 19th century), schools setting holidays tended to have breaks at Christmas, Easter and Whitsun, with a long Harvest holiday that varied in length and timing depending on the area and what was being harvested! After 1862 they had to have a certain number of school days every year to qualify for state funding (measured in half-days, because children working in factories had half-time education, which is the origin of morning and afternoon registration records) but when in the year those days fell was up to the school.

I’ve never heard them referred to that way. October half term, Feb half term and I’ve always called the May half term whitsun (though my OH who grew up in the same village as me has never heard this saying and doesn’t know what I’m talking about when I say it )

I wouldn't call October half term either. Half term is the May and February weeks if you get them - not everywhere does.

Whilst I'm being a mardy cow on this thread, I honestly think it's because people are thick, or lazy, or both.

Nothing to do with diversity etc.

Right, I'll go away now!