Summer holidays - outdated

[Wednesdayafternoon]

So I was just scrolling through Facebook and I saw some pictures after school club/breakfast club to my sons school put up and it just got me thinking how crazy it is that schools just completely shut down for like 6-7 weeks.
They have all these facilities during term time to support working families because there is obviously a need to for it, but in the holidays... ahh f*ck it!
Obviously o know there's summer schemes but at a massive expense and also different hours and locations.
My sons school isn't offering one so he's attending some random school for 3 days over the summer mainly just so he's socialising!
I'm extremely lucky as my mum is a great help to me during the holidays. And obviously I'm very much looking forward to spending more time with my boys and no school run... hurry!!!
But I just find it crazy that schools close for such a significant period of time.
Obviously I know school isn't childcare but it school itself enables parents to work so it kind of is 🤷🏼‍♀️

The school I'm based in does have some leisure facilities open during school holidays but are for organised club use only, which enables some rental income to be earned.
Children's clubs are not usually run during the holidays these days due to lack of funding to cover wage costs.

Holidays used to be longer but then Mr Baker (MP) introduced inset days'. Dm was a teacher.

So when we (teachers and TA’s)are employed on a yearly basis, and your council tax goes up to compensate, you will all be really happy!

@jamdonut Sadly some of these parents will only be really happy when us school workers are in the workplace 12 plus hours per day for 52 weeks of the year. Happy holidays 🙄

I’m a ta and I agree @Wednesdayafternoon - everyone in the staff room agrees.

We need to stop seeing schools as child care providers and back to seeing them as institutions of education. Teachers are trained to educate your children, they are not babysitters or social workers. We don't expect car sales people to also change tyres and design new engines but we expect teachers to do EVERYTHING in relation to children.

I agree wholeheartedly that there is a dearth of good child care options but this is where the focus should be. Campaigning for local authorities to provide better out of school opportunities that are cheap and accessible. Our local authority provides lots of summer sports camps at reasonable prices but not much else if your child isn't into sport.

Totally different set up here in France. For a start schools are closed for summer hols for 10 weeks on average (could be more if it's an exam year etc) but there is affordable childcare for every age - it's dependant on your income, but approx 10€ a day for little ones (2+) then for teens there are summer camps and various subsidised activities - theme parks, beach days, local activities, concerts, karting, etc etc - I'm fortunate that I work from home so my boys can pick and choose what they fancy, but it's a very good system that seems to work.

it is particulary difficult now due to needing all the income you can to afford to survive
i imagine it was started so the children could be around for the farm work

The problem is that society has changed so much that majority of families have 2 parents working or are single so they have no support with child care. Childcare not to mention is extortionate as we know which then impacts on the grandparents who may have just retired or may still have elderly parents themselves to look after. A colleague of mine has just reduced her hours to 3 days a week so she can help her daughter with childcare and see to her elderly mother.
Rather than say do they need 6 weeks off. The better approach would be for the government to help and support and more employers to offer term time working so people could have the option to take paid holiday leave when their children are off school or if plausible to work from home for part of it.

This debate has been going for years .School should be a sum of Childrens lives,not the whole part! Most children get tired from School .I was lucky that I was a SAHM for a long while, and had a small PT job in a Nursery with Term Time only .I appreciate this is not everyones experience though . 6 weeks seems a long while ,however if we changed to 4 weeks ,people would say thats too long!My DM worked and I was looked after by DGM (who took me to work with her!) again not everyones experience .There should be some sort of free lunch /care for deprived children .

My parent colleagues were loudly discussing this yesterday. Their view was that:

a) teachers should be in the classroom all year around except for the set amount of statutory minimum annual leave, which would be taken at specified intervals to give parents certainty.

b) nobody in the workplace should be able to take leave at those intervals except parents, unless all parents have been accommodated and then the slots can be opened up to everyone else.

Basically the entire world operating around parents. People in this country treat teachers (and childless workers) as indentured servants who they think have been conscripted to provide child caring services. My colleagues were genuinely surprised when I pointed out that teachers and childless workers would just leave their employers and go elsewhere.

Few employers would be in a position to offer term-time only working.

What needs to be available is more childcare. Other countries seem to offer it for a fairly low cost compared to the UK but those countries must be subsidising it from somewhere, ie people are paying for it via tax.

We need to stop seeing schools as child care providers and back to seeing them as institutions of education

I think as a society, we are to far gone to see School just for education. On top of this, they do provide a lot more than just "childcare". But let's face it without schools, many parents simply wouldn't be able to work at all. The type of work we do in order to sustain ourselves isn't child friendly. Children need a safe space while parents are working. School offers this space. It offers the opportunity to work away from home in an office or factory. Our whole economic activities are based on schools as childcare.

But MN just doesn't seem to acknowledge this.

The question nobody here is asking is how many children are left on their own for 6- 9 hours/ day during the school holidays.

How many older siblings will be left in charge of younger ones while parents are working?
How many friends, neighbours or extended family members are "keeping an eye on" children while the parents work?

It’s not a case of teachers agreeing or disagreeing, the decision has absolutely nothing to do with them. You do realise that teachers don’t get paid for any holidays don’t you? They just get their wages spread out over the year.. and many teachers would work over the summer as most teacher’s pay is low, however it’s highly unlikely that you’d get the government to agree to pay teachers to work over the summer holidays..

I get sick of seeing bashing teachers, so ve recently left the profession due to the amount of hours (teachers officially average over a 70 hour week), low pay (less than minimum wage if you calculate it for most (not all!)), stress, toxic environments. Teachers are leaving their droves and attitudes like this are a huge contributory factor. These people bashing teachers are going to be the loudest ones to complain when there are no qualified teachers left to teach their kids

I'm laughing at B so your deluded colleagues think only parents need time off in school holidays? What happens if you are married to a school worker or have family who are school workers? Are they just never allowed to holiday together? 😂

Some people are just so self involved!

I’m a teacher. Before I had kids I felt summer holidays were too long. Now I have children I’ve changed my mind, I love having all this time, we’ve just done day one and already I’m anxious there’s not enough time as we have so much to pack in. Most kids really benefit from a decent break. In many countries it’s much longer.

Sounds very good.

A lot of teachers spend all of their evenings and all of their weekends marking and prepping, so they're not on a 5 day working week and 2 day weekend cycle.
I know of teachers who work on Christmas Day to keep on top of the demands of Ofsted. It is normal for teachers to work through their holidays too.
If summer holidays are decreased - expect even fewer teachers in schools.

Teachers working on xmas day? Yeah right….Better learn some time management then 🙄

see its people like that who whine constantly that give us teaching staff a bad name. Fed up of it!

Many staff who work in schools choose to do so because of the school holidays fitting in around their own families needs. Completely agree that there is a need in the holidays but looking to those staff to provide it will never work.

The question nobody here is asking is how many children are left on their own for 6- 9 hours/ day during the school holidays.
How many older siblings will be left in charge of younger ones while parents are working?
How many friends, neighbours or extended family members are "keeping an eye on" children while the parents work?
Plenty of people have alluded to that. It doesn't mean the answer is more school.

Reminds me of a self congratulatory PE teacher I trained with, who would boast about spending ten minutes on lesson plans written on the back of a post it whilst berating the science trainee for not managing his time well enough.
SScience trainee now head of department and smashing teacher.
Pe teacher sacked for inappropriate relationships with pupils.

What do you teach, advanced sneering?
S

Whilst I was growing up in the 1970s my father was a single parent to three of us. There was virtually nothing in the way of organised childcare back then so we looked out for each other and we managed perfectly well. During the school holidays we had to make our own entertainment, there were very few organised activities but we survived.
Maybe these days we expect others to organise too much for us .

Quite unbelievable of those colleagues

It is the same type of people who think GPs should have surgeries during the day, evening and weekends.