Private schools extra holidays - how does this not harm outcomes

[Eranie]

Looking at 3 private schools around us at the primary level.

School 1 -
8 weeks summer
1 week October
3 weeks Christmas
1 week February
3 weeks Easter
1 week May

17 weeks total

School 2 -
8 weeks summer
1 week October
2 weeks Christmas
1 week February
2 weeks Easter
1 week May

15 weeks total

School 3 -
6 weeks summer
2 weeks October
2 weeks Christmas
1 week February
2 weeks Easter
1 week May

14 weeks total

All these schools seem to be very good academically. All have similar length school days (8.45-3.15 in infants, 8.45-3.30 in juniors). The one with the most holidays caps class sizes at 16 and guarantees a TA present at all times in infants and over 50% of the time in juniors. Others seem to cap class sizes at 20-22, not sure if a TA is always present.

AIBU to wonder how the school with 3 week end of term breaks is keeping academically which so much less time? Does anyone have any insight on this?

I don’t work so we can handle the long breaks and we live the facilities better at the school with the longer breaks (further out of the city so has more land, therefore tennis courts/pool/better playing grounds. However I’m concerned that with longer breaks they will fall behind academically?

There are ways but this government won't look at them because they are stuck in an ideological rut that independent schools are "bad" and should be destroyed, rather than looking at how they could be used to alleviate the crisis within SEN + state sector

I don't doubt a child was expelled, but it might be the behaviours exhibited, or that the school was incapable of meeting that child's particular educational needs. One child in DCs' year 7 class was expelled. He had ASD but he also broke another child's nose with a cricket bat - on purpose. The parents claim it was solely due to him having ASD and tried to sue the school for discrimination but without much luck on that front.

Not all mainstream schools can meet send needs - the difference with the private sector is they can just say no, while the state sector can be forced to keep children they cannot appropriately support. There are also bad players in both sectors who are discriminatory against children with more modest support needs. But there are also many mainstream private schools with a very long history of proactively supporting send. We are in a mainstream private that doesn’t particularly advertise its support, but when you look at numbers you see that they have about 2x on their send register as local state schools.

Most public schools don't teach 4 year olds at all!

It was a prep school feeder attached to a public school