To think the long school holidays are not for the teachers' benefit?

[NotInMyDay]

Discussion on BBC Breakfast this morning re long school holidays. A rep from teachers' union was saying the long school holidays were vital for teachers to rest and recuperate so that they could do the best for our children at the start of the next school year.

AIBU to think that it's the children who need this break and therefore the teachers have it too? Rather than NEEDED by the teachers.

I think that most teachers do a fantastic and unenviable job but they don't need to recuperate any more than GPs, surgeons, nurses, bus drivers etc.

It is this type of comment made that gets my back up and I don't think does teachers any favours in the long run - as there are other jobs that also work under pressure.

To try to compare and say teachers are doing 20 hour days and need the holidays - well other people work 20 hour days and could do with the holidays but don't get them.

I would be good to appreciate teachers, nurses, paramedics without trying to say one works harder or longer hours than the rest and therefore deserves x y and z.

Totally agree OP - why do teachers deserve 6 weeks off any more than a Social Worker, Nurse, Doctor, Paramedic etc, who all have stressful and sometimes difficult jobs?

The Teaching Unions really don't do their members any favours with comments like these.

It was indeed a stupid and unhelpful comment to make.

Why did the 6 week holiday first start? Wasn't it so that children could help out on the land over the summer? I'm not 100% sure tbh, but I'm pretty sure that it didn't start because the teachers needed a 6 week holiday. Maybe the reasons it started in the first place are now out dated and irrelevant.

From DH's POV it would be better to spread the holidays over the entire year. So 6 2 week holiday perhaps?

But 'they don't need to recuperate any more than GPs, surgeons, nurses, bus drivers etc' I am not sure about. I don't many GPs, nurses of bus-drivers admittedly, but I do know that DH is tense as a wire by half way through the term and does need his break. He does deal with particularly challenging pupils though. However 2 weeks does the trick quite well.

Thought it was because they followed the practices of the public schools like Eton. Public schools had long summer holidays because the whole family used to decamp with servants to their or a families holiday house for a month or two at a time.

If they make a major change to the norms for terms, then it needs to be done everywhere, and at the same time. For it would be a total nightmare if you had DCs with differing term dates - and just think what would happen to prices if only 2 or 3 weeks overlapped all schools!

I think that union rep has just done their members a huge dis-service.
Teachers don't have the monopoly on stressful jobs

They've played around for years with the idea of changing the term/years structure so that the terms and holidays are evenly divided.
No one can agree.
It is an outmoded design.

It's the number of hours worked in term time. I'm a teacher in school from 8am-5pm each day. I teach solidly through the day with 2.5 hours prep and marking time built in the week. Bearing in mind it takes at least 20 mins to prep a lesson, and a few hours to mark a set of homework essays (I teach secondary English) and you can see the 2.5 hours doesn't go very far. Lunchtimes are spent marking, doing extra revision classes for exam groups, supervising extra-curricular clubs or seeing individual students about coursework etc. So in the evenings I will do at least 2 hours more work, then work most of Sunday. I don't want to seem moany, but it's the reality of the job - you put ridiculous hours in in term-time but the holidays balance it out, so it evens it out. Other jobs are just as demanding too, but perhaps the difference (and my brother is a dr and sister a nurse, so I can compare a little) is that you go home and that's it, your home-time is your own. Teachers don't have that.

I'm a bus driver and it's the easiest job in the world. You just sit on your bum all day driving a bus. Easy. Being a teacher must be very stressful, but maybe 2 weeks is enough to de-stress a person, even a teacher.

For it would be a total nightmare if you had DCs with differing term dates

This happens anyway with the terms timetables as they are, at the moment Warwickshire and West Midlands have different term dates - Warks being on holiday and West Midlands still being at school this week. There are plenty of places around the country where term dates are slightly different over the boarder but you might have two children at school on both sides of the boarders.

Id be sad to see the 6 weeks hols go personally and i work too.
I love the break from packed lunches and bedtimes and homework etc.We also often take a long holiday and its the only chance to do that.
I dont think anyone actually needs so long but its nice to have.
Even when the weather isnt that great its lovely to go for late walks or bbq's without the pressure of bedtimes to be up for school the next day.
Even when im at work its nice to get home and have no rush around,a late dinner and time with the dd's.

I agree totally. Daft thing for the rep to say.
Did s/he also point out that teachers very rarely actually get all those weeks holiday but use it to sort classrooms out, plan, etc etc? Not that they don't get a long holiday but still, some of it is used in work.
Taken on what you've said, it wasn't exactly a balanced comment designed to win support.

And what you've highlighted goes to the root of this whole problem. When people get agitated about long holidays for teachers, they forget that teaching is not about the adults but about the kids. The breaks are not designed for the teachers but for the children so when people start advocating changing things (you know the kind of comment - 'I think teachers should have to work the same number of days as I do etc etc') they need to change their thinking, start thinking carefully about the people the education system is actually for, and stop thinking so much about those that deliver it.
day.

Lurcher - those aren't especially ridiculous hours tbh. For me they are normal - I work for myself. I don't get 13 weeks holiday. So yes, you do seem moany

I do think people hugely underestimate how bone-crushingly tiring teaching is. That's not to say other jobs aren't tiring, I think it's just tiring in a different way. If you have to make presentations at work, imagine having to make 5 hours of presentations every single day to 30 subordinates who don't necessarily want to be there, who talk while you're talking, who sometimes puke and pee while you're talking, whom you have to discipline while still maintaining composure and ensuring that you finish the presentation, followed by a q and a workshop session where your subordinates just don't want to participate, but you're under pressure to have them produce good work. And that's before you have to deal with OFSTED, colleagues, parents, paperwork, etc etc etc. It just relentless.

That said, six weeks is a very long stretch, unnecessarily long IMO. 4 weeks would be fine.

I appreciate that other stressful professions with long working hours must think this - but teaching is very much a 'treadmill' job, you step on at the start of term, and its relentless, highly pressured all day, working all evening, thinking about individual children, lesson ideas, pressure from SMT all of the time and at night; any teacher worth their salt finds it hard to 'switch off' at all, and you finally step off at the end of term (and more often than not get ill, once you're finally able to relax).

My DP is a management consultant in the private sector, all target driven and pretty stressful. He finishes at 5pm and is home for 5.10. I asked him if he ever thought about work when he was at home and he said 'no, not really'.
I was amazed as teaching is really quite 'eat, sleep, and breathe it' whether you want it to be or not.
Yes, children need the holidays, but I'd have to say teachers do too.

When MPs take 2 week's break in the summer they can steal my children's precious long summer holidays from them.

We all know how hard teachers work because they never tire of telling us!!

My sister and best friend are teachers btw and I know that they do, I absolutely know they work hard but ffs give it a rest!!

I also love the 6 week break - everything is just so relaxed somehow!

The kids in my class don't decamp with their servants for long holidays...they travel back to their home country to visit their extended families. Many use all of the six weeks, and overlap into term time in July or September. I never have a full class in the last or first weeks of term.

If the six weeks were reduced to four, I would probably have even fewer pupils sitting in front of me as the end of term approaches.

As a parent I love the 6 week holiday in the summer, to me 4 weeks would seem too short. I would like it earlier though, as in Scotland because we always seem to miss the best of the weather.

Stresshead, I'm a journalist and my job is often like that too. Very high pressure, thinking about it, planning stuff all the time at home etc. I don't get paid for overtime either. We also had a pay freeze for three years. I get 25 days holiday per year.

Welcome to the real world.

I think people forget as well that the summer holiday shut down is essential for all the big maintenance/repair jobs that need to be done in schools. I think that children do need the big break from school. In some quarters it's like they want to turn children into mini workers - proposed 8-5 school days, reduced holidays. You have enough of that shit when you are a grown up.

The teachers' union rep is there to protect the interests of its members. Don't see any problem there.

Notice how the private system, with longer holidays, is never the target of criticism.

What would be ideal is the holidays for children continued, but teachers had to come in to school and work, on, oh, I don't know, any old shite. Hold on though, they did that back in the 80s when a week of holidays was taken away from the teachers for pointless PD. Then everyone could stop moaning at the lucky beggars.

Whether you see the long summer holidays as precious times may depend on if you have primary DCs with plenty of safe places to run, or are putting up with teenagers hanging around in a city.

Lurcher: no line is saying teachers don't work hard, but what you describe is not an unusual workload for many lines of work. And at least you have neither on call nor the possibility of mandatorily cancelled leave.