Can School Extend Easter?

[EasterEvenLonger]

My kid’s school had published Easter holidays as:
Mon 7 April - Tuesday 22nd April

They have written today to extend it to:
Friday 4 April - Thursday 24 April
An additional 3 working/school days

I can’t list all the reasons this is a fucking nightmare for me. Can they just announce this without any consultation and just 3 weeks notice? They haven’t taken any subsequent days off to compensate. It’s an additional 3 days.

YABU - of course they can
YANBU - no they shouldn’t be able to do this

Thank you @PhoneStand.

Yes, it’s primary so cannot have DC alone at home. This closure is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of unhappiness at the school for various reasons. I understand costs prohibit an external company being used but I honestly don’t understand why it can’t be a phased move without the need to close the school.

Anyway, I will have to put a plea out to see if anyone will share the leave and hope I can limit my personal leave to 1 day.

And to the poster asking me why I had kids, mainly because I was bored and hoped they would look after me in my old age.

School isn't intended as childcare in the uk.
If parents workplaces are inflexible then that's a separate issue.

School that I am a governor of had building works over the summer. Staff went in the last week of the holidays and the dust was inches thick. They had to delay the start of the school year by 3 days to get it finished (and that was with all of the staff and most of the governors helping!).

What are you hoping for, someone to tell you it's not allowed and you're going to march into school and demand they remain open with the threat of legal action? How far are you going to take it?

These things happen. As others have said school don't 'owe' you childcare, it's just one of those things. You'd have to find childcare if your child fell ill so instead of thinking about what you can say to the school focus on sorting it out instead

Yeah, if they’re moving building they can add on extra days for this. So the teachers and staff will all be in working to set up the new building and make sure it’s safe for the kids

You were a sahm when your kids were younger, yes?

Yes, they can do this.
We had similar - with the letters clearly stating they had authorisation from LEA and/or DfE (sorry, can't remember exactly).

Is there any way you could shift your work holiday around, and put in the days needed, and cancel some dates when holiday clubs could be available?

Hope you can find a solution.

Of course it does.

If the school is on fire, they don't have to tell you the day before that it will be closed. If they are just having an INSET day, they do.

It always baffles me when people choose to have children get fined by the school/council for taking them out of school for a few days on holiday, yet here we are.

How are these 3 days of missed education going to be corrected?

You must be the world's most easy to baffle person then or are you being deliberately obtuse?

You surely dont think that everyone has a job that can accommodate extra time off with no notice or handy childcare options for unforeseen circumstances do you?

Maybe get out in the real world of working parents and find out the sruggles

They can if it’s unexpected or if what they need to do can’t be done with pupils on site. And whether they could do it classroom by classroom, or not they will say they can’t.

As others have said, they will have had to ask the LA who will have authorised it so as you said you don’t want to be ‘that’ parent…. only suggestion is if you’ve already taken annual leave for over Easter use the opportunity to have your children’s friends over for a day, on the proviso that you get payback on those extra days? Not ideal I know. But the short answer to your question is yes they can, sorry.

Sorry, hrtft but I thought schools were obliged to provide xx days schooling. Assuming the teachers aren't all humping boxes, they should be providing online learning as during covid, at least.

I appreciate that doesn't help childcare issues and the whole thing sounds very poorly planned! Assuming it's a primary school, have you any school mum friends who are SAHPs who could help?

Not sure what else you can do tbh....

OP this is an exceptional event and a one-off. It’s not something that could be helped. The school literally have to move everything over to the other building! They probably had to wait until the new building was ready. I’m amazed it’s only 3 days.

Students have to have 190 days in school and teachers are allowed 5 inset days for training. These 5 days come off their holiday allowance, not your child’s school allowance. The school can put these 5 inset days anywhere in the school calendar year but usually tack it on to the front or back of a holiday to make it easier for everyone. They are probably using 3 of their Inset days here that they have held in the bank until the new building was ready. Yes it’s usual for schools to publish a calendar in advance with all the inset days on but this is a very exceptional circumstance!

Also schools can be granted extra days in excess of inset days at short notice for things like serious repairs, extreme weather, safety reasons or unusual circumstances.

Sometimes things can be annoying without anyone having done anything wrong. You are right to feel annoyed as it’s unfortunate for your circumstance but it doesn’t mean the school are doing anything wrong here- it’s an unusual situation!

Schools take a view that they are not childcare which is true to a point BUT parents also plan on them being open on the published dates.

When mine were at First School there was an inset day at short notice over Christmas. We managed to cover it but I did have words with the head and had to point out that my wife & I had to book Christmas leave in advance by a deadline. In fairness she did get the point

But that would be more disruptive. Instead of all kids missing the days at the same time, you'd have repeated blocks of three days for each kid. If someone had 3 kids in school they may have to sort childcare out for 9 days instead of 3.

If they are having building work done and have to move stuff from one building to another then the council probably haven’t given them much notice.

Basically in a nutshell, the government via the local authority can grant schools extra days in excess of inset days if they need it for major logistical moves or repairs or things like this or extreme weather or if they have to shut it for safety or a crime or something. They are gifted these days by the local authority. They don’t have to be made up. Just like an extra gifted bank holiday doesn’t or if the school was closed for a few days to investigate a hypothetical crime. The 190 legal days of schooling is 190 days where realistically possible. They can’t give you notice months and months in advance if they don’t know the date the contractors will have the new school building ready.

Your pisstake reasons to have kids made me laugh as those are the EXACT things that my uncle said to me when I said I didn't want children.

There are lots of reasons why schools might have to close at short notice so while schools should strive to give reasonable notice there are no laws requiring them to or to open on other days to make up for the shortfall.

My guess is that the closure will be a health and safety matter as they won't have the funding to make the move safely in a way that allows them to keep classes running (they will be relying on the teaching staff to do a lot of the work - so they can't expect them to do that and teach, they're probably already impinging on time in the holiday that most staff would use to do prep work etc.) and they will only have just realised that they aren't going to manage it over the holiday.

I'm sorry. It sucks. It's likely poor planning on the school's part and under resourcing on the government's part that puts you in this situation but I doubt kicking up a fuss at the school will do anything other than mark you out in the way you say you don't want to be.

our calendar always has fine print at the bottom that it is subject to change. They get an earful from all sorts of angry parents every time they do so I can’t imagine they ever do it without a good reason.

is it the teachers doing the moving? Can’t they do the move over the original Easter instead?

teachers always tell us how often they work over the holidays. They are always in school, planning, marking etc. in the school holidays.

No, they don’t but the reality is that 13 weeks of holiday are already really difficult for most families with working parents to cover, and are usually meticulously planned out, so springing an extra 3 days at short notice is going to be even more of a struggle.

Schools do tend to operate as though it’s still the 1950s with every household having a housewife at home.

I’ve had to click YABU to actually answer the question (can they do this) but you are vv much not being unreasonable to be pissed off about it! I swear some schools seem to think working mothers (and you know it’s mothers they think will sort it out, not fathers) don’t exist.

Same here, I've never heard of extra days being added on wily nily.. that's really unfair on parents