To think that the school year should be reformed so that there are only 6 weeks of holidays instead of 13!

[bollywoodfan]

...Yes I am finding the holidays difficult! They are too long and there are far too many imo. I don't see why children & teachers need so many holidays! They are a nightmare for parents to arrange childcare for, which also costs a lot of money. Most households don't have a sahp and the govt is discouraging this anyway. So it makes sense for there to be the same amount of school holidays as there is annual leave i.e 6 weeks
OK, before the teachers start moaning - the workload for teachers could be more spreadout as there would be a longer period of time in which to fit the curriculum. You could also have weeks where you did other things, like sports or music week, activities etc, so that it is not all book learning all the time.

Benefits: more time to learn, less workload for teachers as slower pace, less childcare issues for parents, less bored children in long holidays
Disadvantages: may need to increase tax as it would cost a bit more to keep school buildings open & staff would have to be paid more. Less time for kids to relax I suppose..although as I said, there could be activity weeks or days which coukd break up the routine

So my plan would be:
2 weeks for summer holidays
1 week christmas
1 week easter
1 week in Nov
1 week in Feb
Who's with me?

OP - have just read another thread on this board by someone who is upset that they can't become a teacher. Then I noticed it was you. Would you be calling for these changes had things worked out differently for you?

The reality of summer holidays is that a lot of families where both parents work full time need to access childcare, holiday clubs and courses for their children.

These children are not getting 6 weeks of running through summer meadows and making daisy chains with loving parents looking fondly on; they are being shunted around whilst parents juggle furiously. Should there be another way for the families dealing with this that doesn't have to involve other families (and teachers) losing their holidays?

We are all being encouraged to work full-time; shouldn't there be infrastructure in place to support this? Might partly pay for itself by enabling more parents to get back into the work place.

Who says both parents working full time is right?

I couldn't give a stuff what the government want.Idecide what is best for my children and two stressed out parents working full time with dc doing 10 hours a day and no down time aint it.

Sorry if you work full time it is your issue,parents are already having help with childcare,why should all kids suffer by losing holidays they need because of a lifestyle choice by other parents?

I'm not arguing for fewer holidays.

I'm saying that a lot of children have FT working parents, and are actively being encouraged into this position by economics and govt policies, and therefore as a society we need to take a look at the infrastructure that supports this.

Or maybe we should look at what is actually best for children and work towards facilitating that.

Square - not all families work full time through lifestyle choice you know. There are families who have no other choice but for both parents to work full time due to financial reasons.

And actually I'm not sure a lot of children do have 2 full time working parents.Most parents I know have one parent working part time and one full time.I think somebody on another thread said at least a third had a sahp and 2 full time parents were a minority.

Dreaming agree however maybe we should be working more towards providing flexible hours,unpaid leave during the hols or other ideas that would be in the interest of the children themselves and not working parents.

Square - yes that should happen but I won't hold my breath. Your comment of "if you work full time it's your issue" smacks somewhat of 'I'm alright Jack.' There are lots of issues or circumstances which do not affect us personally but that shouldn't stop us having and showing a little empathy.

True; we could look at ultimately working towards a society where 1 equivalent parent stays at home, which I think would be great; but the problem is that we're an ageing society which needs more, not less, tax revenue to support it from the working population, and so that's going to be a difficult position to move to in the short term.

And in the short term families are struggling with the current situation now; I'm suggesting that we look at different ways to help this, and start to acknowledge that a different infrastructure may be needed. This doesn't mean that I think that holidays should be shorter for children.

Dreaming read the childcare threads,the I'm alright Jack attitude goes both ways.

I am getting worried at how much children are suffering because of the economy.Millionaires get a tax break and the gov are making sahp on a par with benefit cheats(something to be looked down on).

The message is get into work whatever,shove children into childcare whatever with how ever many ratios,give children a working day many adults would find hard,remove any ability for them to have free play,free thinking,free creativity etc,etc,remove their libraries,remove their Children's centres,increase their curriculum pressure,remove their holidays etc,etc....

Think Gov mentioned wanting to make the school day longer too.

Rest assured it won't be Tory children suffering from all this when the inevitable meltdown occurs further down the line.

Also what is going to happen during these two weeks summer holidays? Is the whole country going to grind to a halt as all parents take their annual holiday then? Will employers have to give everyone those two weeks off rather than spreading ot out as they do now? What a nightmare!

Oh and let's not forget the lot of the average child is not spending 10 hours a day in a leafy,pleasurable building surrounded by greenery but a school building falling to bits with crap lighting surrounded by concrete because all the playing fields have been sold off.And people want children to spend even more time there!

God I sound very Labour,I'm not honestly but it is enough to send you down that route.

Bertram, your school would have had those 'extra' training days budgeted for already in the 195 days the teachers have to work (and 190 the kids have to be in school).

What authorities have started doing, is holding them back. If the school is closed for the day due to snow, then the training day is swallowed up by that to avoid the children losing a day of school. But if there's no snow, then we still have the same number of training days as every other year. (5 - which used to be an extra week off for teachers' hols pre Mr Baker!)

We've missed 1 day of school here and the DDs have missed 2 due to snow - so I'm waiting to see which training days are cancelled to allow for that.

Teachers are paid for 195 days, that's 38 weeks teaching and 5 non teaching days (INSET) days. They are exempt from the working time directive, their contracts are determined annually and governed by the School Teachers Pay and Conditions Document, negotiated annually between the government and professional associations and unions. Although they don't get paid 52 weeks their salary is designed to be paid equally over 12 months and compensates for holidays.

OP - yabvu - especially as you only have a reception child and therefore no experience. I agree 13 weeks would be ridiculous, I like what we have. I am SAHM, because its too much of a nightmare to sort out childcare and because I'm lucky I can. My children are shattered and need time to be children. Working parents have my sympathy though and I do think cheaper and more accessible clubs should be made available during holidays.

Have to say we live in a cul de sac with loads of kids.I am the only sahp,all the other parents have 1 part time worker alongside a full time worker and they have all worked the Easter hols out with zero need for school clubs.

Yesterday my dc spent all morning reading Harry Potter and The Borrowers in bed then the entire afternoon up until 8pm playing outside a variety of made up ball games,bike riding,hide and seek(the normal street games)etc. None of us are wealthy and none of us go on holidays bar camping.

Many,many parents are creative during the holidays and I really don't see why because a few aren't or have problems with childcare that all children should miss out on the above and the opportunity to just be and be creative.

Kids need down time,it is when they become creative.Kids need to recharge,they're still growing and developing.Really we should be enabling all parents to give their kids free time not taking it away.

I want longer holidays, more of em. kids should have time to be kids, get bored, lie around, play, read, build dams etc.

I love having dd at home. She can learn to cope with only 6 weeks downtime when she's an adult.

What would happen if this was implemented but thousands of parents didn't want to send their children into school in August? What if they wanted to take them to the beach/woods/Blackpool/swimming/the library instead? How awful that they wouldn't be able to :(

I suggest all the teachers who supposedly don't get paid for their holidays might want to take legal action against their employers

This is completely missing the point. Teachers are quite happy:it is the holidays they want and not the money. If you pay them but only let them have 6 weeks holiday then you won't get the teachers-it is as simple as that (or you won't get the good teachers who can do other things).

I am an older teacher and I went to a meeting where we were told (and I fully believe it) that we were the last of a dying breed i.e. people who enter the profession at 21yrs and work through to retirement. Now people will start, do a few years and move on; or do other things and then try teaching. You get burn out.
Many teachers come back from maternity leave and do a job share, older teachers often like to wind down with a job share.
When I was supply teaching we were all older people (men as well as women) who were not looking for jobs and had no desire for jobs, we were just doing it to be able to have a work/life balance and not have all the workload.

There is a terrible amount of teacher bashing on here and you will get the teachers you deserve if you expect them to cope with the demands of the job without the holidays and patronisingly try and make out that they are being exploited because they don't get holiday pay!

Somehow I don't think the OP is serious.

One sure thing is that she isn't a teacher if she thinks that sports, music, activity weeks just plan themselves and that more weeks at school just spread the existing work over a longer time rather than needing more work!

I don't understand why, in the face of teachers repeatedly providing the evidence that it is a fact that teachers are not paid for the holidays, some people insist on carrying on arguing the myth that they are. It's not a matter of opinion, a political point or a piece of clever syntax. It's a fact. If teachers were paid for those 13 weeks, teaching salaries would be about 25% higher.

To reduce the 13 weeks of children's holidays would conversely increase the amount of paid classroom contact time which teachers have. This would mean - presuming an extra 7 weeks - that each school would need to fund an additional 35 paid days for each teacher.

Thus you're looking at an increase of - off the top of my head - 245 extra employee days even for the most basic 1-form intake primary school (7 full-time teaching posts or equivalent) so somewhere in the region of roughly an additional £30,000-35,000 per school. For larger schools, of course, it will be vastly more as they have more staff.

And all this comes out of the education budget. Which comes out of everyone's taxes.

Still think it's a great idea?