To be worn out by the mismatch between annual leave & school provision

[Yellowlegobrick]

25 days. Like most people i get 25 days annual leave.

School holidays plus inset days needs 65 days cover.

There are sod all good options to cover it locally. There'll be a football camp 20 mins away for 3 days 9 - 2.30, a forest school doing an odd week 9-3. The bigger camps are massively oversubscribed, don't run for the whole holiday and you sometimes can't get a place.

Aibu to think there needs to be a formalised, centrally managed system to acknowledge the gap and provide better coverage?

Even if DH take all our annual leave separately, we can't cover it all, especially not when we lose at least a couple of days each per year of annual leave covering days the children are ill.

Its a constant annual stress, i find myself filled with dread when the letter comes from school: end of term, finish after lunch at 1.15.... there goes another half day 🙁

Can you use a local childminder?

Great, I'll send your hospital appointment letter with my address, can you pick up my xray machine and bring it with you, I'll be wfh for childcare.

You are NOT being unreasonabl e. So glad kids are older now but was a nightmare and very expensive and that was with me working part-time and DH having a resonably flexible employer. There were some sports clubs but there is only so much football or tebis a young child can play in a week. Something should be provided to cover in proper settings with down time for the children and not full on sports and activities.

Something should be provided to cover in proper settings with down time for the children and not full on sports and activities.

Any sort of childcare facility needs to be fairly full on with activities or kids get bored and start causing trouble.
Yes they can mix stuff up with a bit of free play and organised games and activities but they need to have stuff organised.
Even trying to get 30 kids to watch a film together you can guarantee some will loose interest half way through and start trying to engage other kids in mischief.

This is why I can't work full time year round, as there is no way on earth I can find cover for 13 full weeks of holidays each year. DH and I now take a lot of separate holiday, and I also take 2 weeks unpaid leave.

Good plan. I’ve got one of those trollies. Sorted.

such a luxury to WFH

I’m assuming this has already been covered… when I was a single parent I used this in the summer holidays for two weeks at least.

My employer had never heard of it so I had to send HR the information before it was approved.

It’s unpaid but the cost of holiday club for 3 DC was almost as much as I earned anyway so Parental leave didn’t make too much difference.

The point being, it shouldn't be so hard.

Uni students looking for work over their very long summer break...

This gets suggested a lot, but I'm not sure how many of them would find it an attractive offer. It would inevitably have to be early starts, likely long hours and the nature of the work means it couldn't offer much flexibility. It's not something that would've remotely appealed to me at that stage. I don't doubt some of them would be suited to the work, but when people suggest this it doesn't seem to go beyond identifying them as a group of people who are free over the summer.

Yes its bad really. There is clearly a need. Ive always said, its like school is set up for families who have one parent who doesnt work, which is not the case in 2023! Eg school day ending at 315pm/our summer holiday cover does cover the entire holidays (which is fabulous) but it runs 830-330! I work to 5pm! So literally all of my holiday is taken up in half days over summer.

we do have breakfast clubs/after school clubs/late stay but your looking at around £16 per day for all of that which is ridiculous.

no one can realistically take all of this holiday, unless you dont work or are on a term time contract. I get kids need a break but something needs to be in place given most families need both parents working full time unfortunately

England have some of the shortest school summer holidays in the world. I think the government should look at what works for summer childcare elsewhere and trialling that here. They probably won’t, though.

Most school heads I know are inches away from a nervous breakdown or retirement-the way they have been treated by the government over the last 3 years is appalling. Being held responsible for sourcing year-round childcare is not their responsibility. They need to educate children in term time and ensure the buildings can be made safe during the holidays so that this can happen.

I haven't RTFT, but just chiming in to say yes, it's ridiculous. There's an expectation that women work (and that's fine, I work almost full time myself and would hate to be a SAHM), but school holidays are still set up the same as when women had to give up work when they had children.

My son's just about to start school and I've been searching for holiday clubs ready for Easter and next summer. School do a different activity every day, which is great but he really won't like some of them, and they don't release what they are until a few weeks before. The only other clubs I can find are either sport-based and very expensive, or start from age 7. It's impossible, and that's with a job I can do from home and enough money to afford clubs. Fuck knows what people on low incomes and inflexible jobs do.

The afterschool rent the school hall from the council but have nothing really to do with the school.
Other than the odd bit of co-ordination with any other afterschool activities, it's not something that headteacher needs to worry or think about.

Schools are there to provide an education for your children. They are not a childcare provision to mind your children while you go to work! Clearly there’s a lot of people out there who did not consider childcare when they made the decision to have children. It amazes me how many people decide to have children and then moan about this!

Aibu to think there needs to be a formalised, centrally managed system to acknowledge the gap and provide better coverage?

YANBU - it’s due to misogyny and our society not valuing childhood or family life.

I feel it's the world of work that's a problem as much as the way holidays are set up. The summer holidays were based on grouse shooting season, weren't they? So around the holidays of MPs, not anyone else?

There's far too much time spent at work considering many jobs are unnecessary to society and/or can be done in less time or with jobshares (the four day week is a good start, though not helpful for parents needing to collect children!). Holidays could be spaced out better across the year, although it doesn't make sense to be working indoors long hours in summer.

I feel it's the world of work that's a problem as much as the way holidays are set up.

I'm really glad that point has been raised.

Schools are there to provide an education for your children. They are not a childcare provision to mind your children while you go to work!

Except the reality is the government clearly think schools have a childcare remit to some degree given the use of schools for childcare over lockdown - when in fact the educational part of their remit took a lower priority. The government also expect parents of school aged children to look for work, and many work patterns extend over school hours.

In any event, I don’t want schools to provide childcare so I can go to work, I’d like childcare to be available so I can go to work. It just doesn’t exist for kids with complex needs.

It's true, the link between childcare and educational provision has been very blurred. It's the same in the welfare benefits system too. We have a society where school has a significant childcare function, as lockdown demonstrated in multiple ways. Less work gets done when schools are closed, because less labour is available.

This isn't to say that schools should be providing childcare over the holidays. I recognise that buildings maintenance means many couldn't if they wanted to, and also it's not clear where the workforce to do this would come from. But we seem to have come up with systems where we get the worst of all possible worlds, and it's understandable that people are pissed off. School is childcare when UC want you to up your hours, but it's not childcare when it comes to, you know, actual childcare so you can work.

I haven't seen anyone suggesting it is the schools responsibility, just some suggestions school buildings could be used.

Most people when they decided to have a baby will plan for maternity and pre-school/daycare costs. I don't think many people realise how poor/expensive/unsuitable out of term provision is. I certainly didn't. They might look at their current location and what primary schools are good but not many people are able to research that far into the future because provisions change.

My primary school (90s) opened in the summer from 9 to 5ish, mainly run by the classroom assistants and local uni students. It cost £1 a day.

We have a big split in our area. Either the clubs are expensive, activity heavy provisions or they are aimed at very low income families. I can imagine it's most difficult for middle earners to either secure a place at the cheaper one (which is often used by parents who don't work) or pay out more than their salary on the other.

Christ, have you tried to find a childminder recently?! I have one. She's one of only two who picks up from our school. She doesn't work Fridays or school holidays and is quite fearsome about her time off (and fair enough, it's not a job I'd want). Honestly I'm hugely grateful to have got a place with her, childminders are like hen's teeth.

It's an outdated system. Fine when mums were at home all day. These days not so much.
And I say this as someone who works at a school!

Most people when they decided to have a baby will plan for maternity and pre-school/daycare costs. I don't think many people realise how poor/expensive/unsuitable out of term provision is. I certainly didn't. They might look at their current location and what primary schools are good but not many people are able to research that far into the future because provisions change.

Yes, exactly.

A couple who are considering TTC now will, if all goes well, have a child who is primary aged until 2035 at the earliest. As fucking if anyone knows what the holiday clubs in their area are going to look like in a dozen years time. There is no amount of considering things that will give you that information. In just the same way as someone who has a 10 year old now would not have been able to predict in 2012 the general gutting of the sector, pandemic and labour shortage with which we are now faced.