Say it with me...

[TesChique]

School. Is. Not. There. To. Be. Free. Childcare.

All this talk of bringing the school summer holidays down to four weeks is boiling me as not one argument is child education centred. Instead its all focussed on making parents lives easier

It is six weeks for more complex reasons than "oh its from when we had farms and we dont have farms now lol oh also itd help me"

It is a fact - you are right.

I’d happily write to my MP in Ireland if I felt it would make any difference. The teaching unions won’t ever agree to the changes and the government are at their mercy as far as I can tell.

In the U.K., and in primary school!

Let’s take a different look at this; let’s ignore what would suit all of the adults.

In an ideal world, ignoring practicalities and what is actually possible to facilitate, what do we think would suit children best?

I think children do need a break, they need the feeling that they’ve been on a break. But balance that against learning loss. So I think maybe a month off in the summer, keep Christmas at two weeks, cut Easter to one and keep mid terms subject to them doing no less than 6 weeks of school between breaks.

When schools have different holidays to those around them it can be great for some and a real ball ache for others ie. those with children in different schools, those who work in schools.

How I rolled my eyes when a newsletter asked us to consider how tricky it was for some of the teaching staff whose own children had a different 1/2 term to them. I accept that one of the great advantages of teaching is that you are off when you're children are, but this is not a given and it's also nothing to do with the parents. Surely that information was for the staff newsletter.

Ha ha.....remember MPs voting AGAINST continuing free school lunch provision over the summer holiday during COVID? They don't care about children living in poverty or deprivation.

I don't particularly want a shorter summer holiday, but society is a system of things that influence each other. Helping with a family's financial stability is clearly helpful to a dc's education, those things aren't unrelated.

I think this is primary consideration when looking at the whole picture. What works for the family unit as a whole and supports parents to in turn better support children is key.

I don’t think the level of holidays in the UK is particularly excessive, but that’s probably because I’m in Ireland when the holidays are significantly longer and the school day is shorter.

No, but the free childcare element shouldnt overly influence. which it is.

How so? How is it overly influencing anything?

School is part of wider society. The best interests of the child should be first and foremost, but the burden on working parents is part of the picture, it’s part of looking at how to assist the family unit function best in society.

We are not the same society as 50 years ago. Children aren’t needed to help with harvest and there are far fewer SAHMs. Asking what children are going to do for the summer holidays and whether schools should be a part of that isn’t unreasonable.

I know it’s more than that obviously, but it boils down to the same thing. If you’re not HEing, you have to send your children to school at the prescribed times and your life has to accommodate that.

Are other countries concerned about learning loss? I have a few friends living abroad and I’ve never heard anything about that over their much longer holidays.
Is there something better we should be doing here?
I’ve never heard anyone worrying about it personally here either but seems to be a huge issue here.

In in Ireland and I’d be concerned about it. I assume you mean countries like Finland etc?

This debate is going to become less and less pertinent over the next few decades. Due to falling birthrates, schools will be closing in their droves and the ones that will survive will be those offering a "full service" to parents, in terms of breakfast club, after-school club and holiday provision either onsite or nearby. Governments will increasingly have to incentivise people to have children through increased childcare funding.

I think 4 weeks in summer and add those remaining two weeks elsewhere makes sense.

My child's SEN school is starting this from sept.

Extra week in Oct and may.

I personally think that we should have the holidays even more spread out. Regular terms with 2 weeks holidays every so often, to be determined by LA. Then students and teachers don't get burned out as easily, as they have regular time off.

Alongside, I think curriculum needs looking at, and teachers ways of working/working hours looked at. More planning time paid if needs be. A paid full time week, if it's not already. The curriculum is huge, and covers vast amount more than if did for me in primary school, we expect far too much from kids these days, a lot of the reason why kids struggle in mainstream.

My utopia TLDR:
Regular 2 week holidays that add up to the current 13/14 weeks.
Curriculum overhaul to be less demanding.
Teachers paid for a regular work week and not expected to work outside these hours for planning etc.

As I frequently say, society needs to stop being organised around how men can work and rather be organised around how women have to work, doing most of the unpaid work that keeps economies running as well as going out to paid work.

Not everyone has school aged children and would want to take their holiday allocation in school holidays...

Nowhere did I suggest it was likely as a capitalist country that it would be possible or the government would do it either, it's nice to dream.

Clearly you haven’t read the multiple threads online about people with children feeling entitled to leave in school holidays. Other employees do not want to feel they are being treated differently to parents with school aged children.

The options are 1) somehow radically change the working world or 2) look at the school year. Option 2 is less radical. “Schools are not childcare” is a soundbite because teachers don’t want less holidays. And if I was used to those holidays I’d probably fight for them to.

But I only get paid for 41 weeks out of the 52 that you get paid for. I get paid an hourly rate. 30 hrs x 41 weeks plus a small amount for the pro rata holiday I would get. If I want a summer holiday I have four weeks to choose from and DH has to try to get the same time as me. Fortunately I love my job because it pays a pittance compared to a similar role in the private sector (remember I’m NOT a teacher).

It should not be normal to have to check emails when not being paid. DH doesn’t and he earns nearly 4 times what I do - he tells his team not to work on their time off as well.

It should not be normal to have to check emails when not being paid.

Whether it should be or not, it's absolutely the norm in many graduate professions.

At first glance, it doesn’t seem like a bad idea. Teenagers working and earning salaries, even at minimum wage, could help reduce the significant financial strain on parents. Children of farmers often assist on the farms from a young age, doing simple and light tasks while gaining valuable life skills, even though they aren’t paid. The school holiday system in England still largely follows the farming schedules and workloads of a century ago, with little change over time. But maybe these are just ideas for the future.

Exactly this. Absolutely no consideration for what's best for the child's well-being, learning and development. Look how burnt out adults are, and now we have all these people advocating that children follow a similar busy structure. It's actually quite disgusting that it's the parents who want this.

It’s not in the child’s best wellbeing to be off for so long in the summer that they forget what they’ve learned.
If the parents are working they’ll be in some form of childcare anyways. My 7 year old was happy out his last few weeks in school having fun during the wind down. It’s not a slave camp.

We don’t live in a utopia. People have to work. That’s life.

It’s not in the child’s best wellbeing to be off for so long in the summer that they forget what they’ve learned.

Assuming everyone here is an adult who went through school with 6+ weeks of summer holiday, how on earth did you manage to retain your learning - which you clearly did to be literate, numerate and employable. I wasn’t doing any kind of learning during the holidays, my parents had an attitude of benign neglect as was often the case in the 70s. I read for pleasure, that was about it - and not only managed to retain my primary and secondary learning, but also learning through university for 10+ years with much longer summer breaks.

The long summer break is hard to manage for parents, but it’s hardly an unknown, unexpected thing.