Summer holidays should be longer

Where we live the summer holidays are around ten weeks, we don’t have long halfterm holidays, children have 178 days of school a year, so only slightly less than 190 in England. It isn’t unusual for parents and non-parents to take all of their annual leave in June/July, so its also accepted countrywide that non-essential services will run much slower in the summer months. The company my husband works for has a two week complete shutdown for the first two weeks of the summer holidays, this doesn’t come out of his holiday allowance.

Ok I am a teacher and for the record our so called holidays often get taken for planning and preparation for the new school year. We also get extremely tired looking after your kids - as surrogate parents, social workers, educators, mental health support, counsellors, data managers, and all the other things that parents and the government decide is our responsibility!! We need a proper break! I have my own children and yet I know I will spend at least 2 weeks of my summer holidays getting ready for the sept term. I also spend many weekends and evenings during temr time plus other school holidays making sure your kids have well planned lessons. I work full time and have 4 neurodivergent kids and I am now also a single parent. I am entitled to a proper break. Also my term dates don't align with my youngest child's specialist school placement so I am currently still at school whilst my son finished his temr 2 weeks ago! ! I have to suck it up and sort out the childcare. I do sympathise with parents on low incomes that have to work and cannot take time off during school holidays but seriously can we we stop the attacks on teachers regarding their extended holidays!! We work bloody long hours during term time with planning, directed time meetings until 4/ 5.30pm most weeks , we also often have briefing each day at 8.30am. Then there are the parent meetings and admin tasks that we dont get time for in our day! My typical day is 8.15 am to 4 30pm at school and if i have a full teaching day I get just 1 x 15 min break and 30 min lunch. When I do get home and sort out my own family I then tart work again at approx 8pm for at least 1- 2 hours. I refuse to work Friday evening or sat but also work 2- 3 hours on a Sunday afternoon / evening! I plan well organised lessons as at my current school we have walk-around and drop ins at regular intervals so we get observed multiple times ' informally ' a week and that doesn't include the formal reviews of teaching and learning. Please just let teachers have a holiday

Ok I am a teacher and for the record our so called holidays often get taken for planning and preparation for the new school year. We also get extremely tired looking after your kids - as surrogate parents, social workers, educators, mental health support, counsellors, data managers, and all the other things that parents and the government decide is our responsibility!! We need a proper break! I have my own children and yet I know I will spend at least 2 weeks of my summer holidays getting ready for the sept term. I also spend many weekends and evenings during temr time plus other school holidays making sure your kids have well planned lessons. I work full time and have 4 neurodivergent kids and I am now also a single parent. I am entitled to a proper break. Also my term dates dot align with my youngest child's specialist school placement so I am currently still at school whilst my son finished his temr 2 weeks ago! ! I have to suck it up and sort out the childcare. I do sympathise with parents on low incomes that have to work and cannot take time off during school holidays but seriously can we we stop the attacks on teachers regarding their extended holidays!! We work bloody long hours during term time with planning, directed time meetings until 4/ 5.30pm most weeks , we also often have briefing each day at 8.30am. Then there are the oarent meetings and admin tasks that we dont get time for in our day! My typical day is 8.15 am to 4 30pm at school and if i have a full teaching day I get just 1 x 15 min break and 30 min lunch. When I do get home and sort out my own family I then tart work again at approx 8pm for at least 1- 2 hours. I refuse to work Friday evening or sat but also work 2- 3 hours on a Sunday afternoon / evening! I plan well organised lessons as at my current school e have walk-around an drop ins at regular intervals so we get observed multiple times ' informally ' a week and that doesn't include the formal reviews of teaching and learning. Please just let teachers have a holiday

I don't know any schools near me with more than a few "enrichment days". We had three, all in the last week of term.

Not everyday obviously - the point is, they are not cooped in the classroom day in, day out at this time of year. I can see all the local schools are doing sports days, residentials, trips etc at this time of year - it’s right there on my facebook feed everyday! My eldest was very excited to tell me they’ve been watching movies in drama and loving it! No kids have done any serious work in a few weeks and mine have had alot of fun.

If you made the holidays any longer, there would be an absolute outcry for more holiday camps and parents couldn’t do it on the annual leave we have. Therefore, whats the point in replacing the last two fun weeks at school with sending them to holidays camp instead?

And there would not be anywhere near enough time to mark them.

I presume that schools have to comply with the same regulations on temperature as other workplaces where people manage fine to be productive? If not, of course they should, including air conditioning if necessary and windows can't be opened safely.

Personally I'd prefer more frequent, shorter holidays throughout the year (not less holidays overall) as I think it would be better for the children to have frequent decent rest breaks rather than it all being lumped into summer. I'd also have the 4 week summer break in late June into July when the sunniest and hottest weather normally is and after public exams have finished.

Terms that ran from late July/early August would also give more term time to cover the curriculum before May/June exams, as the exams could run right up yo the normal end of term.

Ours have been out doing sports, days out, picnics in the last 4 weeks. Neither of my kids have complained about the classrooms being too hot. They adjusted the uniform at our secondary school too when the recent heatwaves were announced.

As a society, air con is going to become more widely used if the Summer’s get hotter (colleagues have been talking about getting it for their homes). So yes society is changing but the answer isnt just lets make the holidays longer. That doesn’t fit in anyway with life in 2025.

Don’t send your kids to private school if it disagrees with your lifestyle so much.

Well it's not really is it. The temperature rarely goes over 30 in the UK and it's often just as hot in May and June as it is in August. 2020 was a hot summer and there was hundreds of people working from their homes and gardens, very few with aircon, and we all survived.

Only because our kids have longer school days including Saturdays. If you want longer state holidays then petition Labour to lengthen school day to 5pm + Saturdays. Easy!
Really not over reacting FYI, sick to death of the bigoted narrative around independent schools. Some parents are wealthy, others aren't. Just like state sector where millionaires send their children.

etc.i have 2 family members who are teachers primary and secondary. They take 2 weeks and then started prepping for the following school year! And half terms they work and only take 2 or 3 days off. They have the same A/L as everyone else maybe even less. And after school mybfamiky stay and work until 6-8pm and take work books home etc. They deserve proper protected time off work term time and non term time.

My cousin left her position recently as the head of department would call her after work and ask her to do extra things and even on her weekends.

Totally agree 👏🏻 4 or 5 weeks is more than enough in the Summer for most children and would massively help those where home isn’t the safe/loving place our children live in.

It still allows you to get cheaper holidays than many poor people who send their children to state. You have over reacted btw. Most who I know who went private were wealthy.

In North Africa due to the weather the kids are off 1st June to 10th Sept when it starts to cool down. They hsve 2 weeks in Dec and then 2 weeks spring. They have 1 week for Eid al Fitr and 1 week for Eid Al Adha.
They manage it by having longer school days. The kids are bright and fluent in Arabic both local and internationally, French and now some are proficient in English. They split the days up e.g Am Arabic, PM French and all the leasons are taught in that language. So when they graduate they are fluent sometimes in 3 - 5 Languages. I don't know how they do it. The curriculum is much much harder in the UK.

The issue is that parents are the cause for allowing children to sit indoors with devices being lazy bums. I never got bored eith summer holidays. All my mates from school were on the same estate and we would be out for hours biking, at the park, roller blading, climbing trees, scooter and going over each others house playing football and everything. I didn't do expensive hobbies everything I did was free. Using our imagination and being kids. Swimming was a must in the summer and our parents used to work full time. Weekends they would takenus local places, nature reserves and picnics and the larger parks. But in the week we hung out with cousins, older siblings, friends etc.

That's quite clearly a ridiculous statement.

They’re good as they are. I think a month is more than enough.

I grew up with 10 weeks and hated it. Then going back to school, teachers spent about a month trying to bring us back to speed because most had forgotten what they learned months before.

This is what Wales tried to implement until the bloody teachers union poo-pooed it. Would have been so much better with 8 on 2 off! 6 weeks is a long time to manage for annual leave/holidays clubs etc for working parents.

If you think teachers get too much holiday, try doing it - especially the autumn term!

I like many others would prefer a four week summer holiday season and two weeks at October and May half terms.

I really think that the four week summer holiday would be staggered by local authority boundary’s to reduce the pressure and cost of school holiday holidays! I really want to take my kids to Egypt, but it’s impossible to do this in summer as it’s 45c, and unbearably hot! With flights departing from my local airport it would only be possible to book a five day trip to fit it into half term holidays, which isn’t long enough to make it worthwhile.
Likewise Athens is well into the 40c in the summer holidays.

I also think that there is a child welfare issue with such a long summer holiday, children in difficult family circumstances shouldn’t be unsupervised for six weeks.