Summer holidays should be longer

[noblegiraffe]

Our kids have the shortest summer holidays in Europe, Italy have 13 weeks, even Ireland has 9.

They're under pressure so much at school they need more time to just be kids. Classrooms are so hot in the last few weeks of term that it's impossible to learn effectively anyway.

I think we should add at least an extra two weeks to the summer holidays, so break up near the start of July. This would bring us more into line with private schools too.

And with longer holidays it might help recruit and retain teachers, and reduce competition for summer annual leave slots for working parents. It could even reduce the cost of holidays as 'peak season' would be longer.

I think it’s more the lack of monitoring of children in the school holidays and lack of free school dinners for children on social services radar.

Add to that the cost of summer clubs £230.00 per week at my local one per child per week, which can be crippling for families with two or more children who are working but just about to make ends meet each month.

Not everyone has family members who can help, for example both of my parents sadly died of cancer, so I don’t have the option of grandparents and no close family.

I have annual leave, but obviously leave has to be shared amongst my team as we all have school age children, and there is work to do so term time only working isn’t an option!

In what way does the fact that teachers will need to be paid for working on days which are currently unpaid leave not make sense?

Have you been drinking?

If you had to work extra days at your job, would you expect to be paid more for those extra days or would you do them for free?

If teachers were paid for the holidays, schools would be able to instruct to them to attend. But as they aren’t, they don’t.

In no way would schools want to draw attention to the weekend work in term time already done by teachers in case they stopped doing it.

Retired teacher here - 32 years service, the vast majority in state schools. Without a minimum of 6 weeks summer holidays (& it should be 10 in my opinion) I wouldn’t have even considered a career in the state sector but would have honestly into the private sector.

I suspect a fair number of other well qualified teachers who have a choice would also do the same. What effect would that have on standards in state schools?🤔

Well, yes.
Because we would be working more hours...
We are only paid for a certain number of hours in a year. Reduce holidays = increase teaching days = pay us more.

Most professional jobs where people are on salaries they work many hours for free, every week, without fail

But we are not paid full time! In other jobs, people are paid for the full year. We are only paid for term time plus statutory holiday pay. The other 8 weeks are unpaid.
We do a lot of unpaid overtime as it is during the year. I'm not working extra weeks for free.

It must be lovely living in a the type of naive world where you genuinely think an extra 2 weeks off at summer would improve children’s mental health.

She wasn’t claiming to be a teacher. Not all decisions around schooling should be centred on teacher wants.

As do teachers, who do work in evenings and weekends unpaid.

And salaried people shouldn't be doing overtime for free either - my overtime is either converted to TOIL or they pay it at 1.5 or 2x a certain rate that they calculate from my salary. I would not work for free.

I say this as a teacher who loves the time off to spend with my own children. If anything the holiday needs to be less.

The main reason for this is safeguarding. Too many vulnerable children spend time out of a stable environment leading to involvement with many problematic influences. In younger years specifically, the number of children who actively do not want to be outside of school for an extended time is growing. Schools are safety for them.

Solve social inequality first then OP before coming up with silly suggestions.
You appear to be very anti school. Why don’t you home school your own children and then you can give them as many holidays as you like if you’re so concerned that they have to attend school too much. Or go live in Italy. The idea that attending school is affecting children’s mental health is ridiculous. If that is the case then there will be another issue at play eg bullying. Definitely not because they’re doing too much learning!

I had three months. In junior school they can start later, but my school had secondary as well, and we had the same holidays.

Edit: I misread your post as you asking how long the holidays were for ages 4-6.

I agree wholeheartedly with OP, was brought up in Ireland and loved the long summer holidays.
I think our system is fooked up, we need two parents working full time and our kids loose out, the state has become de facto parent, it’s sad really. Years ago when the shortened holiday time, the reason given was kids were losing out academically, but across the pond in Ireland kids were doing better with better (at the time) O levels and A levels and had higher and more degrees. Same applies to early years, our system and education is more detrimental to the child.

Well it certainly isn't going to do any harm? Wouldn't you benefit from an extra two weeks of work, or would you say no thanks?

Children in Ireland get a ‘Junior Certificate’ then a ‘Leaving Certificate’ at school.

Irish Examinations:
Irish examinations, particularly the Leaving Certificate, are known for their emphasis on essay writing, particularly in subjects like Irish and English. The Leaving Certificate Irish exam has three parts: oral, paper one, and paper two.

English GCSEs:
While some GCSE subjects still include controlled assessments, the trend in England has been towards more exams and fewer coursework components. There can also be differences in specific topics covered, particularly in science subjects.

Irish Examinations:
The Junior Certificate is taken a year earlier than the English GCSEs, so the academic standard is often considered lower, internationally.

English GCSEs:
Some argue that the reformed GCSEs in England, with their increased focus on exams, are more challenging than the older O-levels.

In my experience the last couple of weeks of the summer term is pretty relaxed. Most schools do day and residential trips around that time of year when the weather is nice. It’s free babysitting. Our local sixth form college has a skills week where all the pupils do some sort of work experience (either a college offering or something they organise themselves).

The standard academic year and mindset needs to change - it helps nobody, except the minority who can afford or have the circumstances to accommodate a long summer holiday. If I was Education Queen for the day, I'd announce:

-No long summer holidays. Instead every child has an annual leave allowance, like a workplace (except more weeks, obviously). Annual leave taken in one or two week blocks, requestable via an online lottery with an October deadline.

-A similar arrangement for teachers. An uplift in salary because they would now be working 52 weeks a year, just like any other public sector employee.

-There would need to be isolated blocks for statutory exams, GCSE etc., but these would be the only fixed, unbookable periods. This said, my longer term goal as Education Queen would be to get rid of end-of-year exams and Ofsted.

As a kid, i remember the summer holidays were long. They shortened them by having week long half terms in Feb and May. One year, half term in Feb was ONE day!!! Usually the length of the half terms in Feb and May was a week between them.

At school in the 80s and 90s, in Leicestershire, we broke up for the summer holidays around 28th June - 4th July. As traditionally, factories closed down the first two weeks in July. Hence the term ‘Leicester Fortnight’. I think the factory workers had another week or so to book elsewhere in the year. We went back to school around 21st Aug then had the August bank holiday and the day after off.

Most of my friends and myself went on holiday usually a few days of breaking up as cheaper. Got back about now. Most of the time in July was spent going to friends’ birthday parties. What happened in Oct 1980 to cause half of my class to be born in July 1981??? Then the first week in August, there was a playscheme at my high school. You could do loads - paint t-shirts, play games, make clay figures etc. Then after that, the next 2.5 weeks we were bored.

Reduced holiday means an increase in the number of days worked by school staff, all school staff would need to be paid for these additional working days.

I am salaried, if I had to increase my working days my salary would increase. Can you provide examples of careers where enforced additional working days do not lead to an increase of salary.

Academia. My contract used to read something like, "Your nominal working week is 37 hours and the working year 45 weeks. However you are expected to work the hours required in order to meet role requirements. This means regular weekend and out-of-hours work is expected".

For 20+ years I've worked every weekend, during most holidays and late into the night most evenings. Teaching during the daytime, grant applications and research during the evenings and weekends. Oh, and then we started recruiting lots of overseas students, so teaching in the evening now, too.

Why would anyone want two weeks in Oct? One week that time of year is bad enough, the weather's always dreadful so you can't just do the park / beach / countryside or turf them out into the countryside.

Dh and I both work and already struggle with the summer holiday as is but we just about manage. If it was extended we would likely have to give up our lovely two week uk holiday, instead would have to take the two weeks separately . The kids would be gutted and and as a family would miss that time with us all together.

Camps are not the answer. Dropping a 5 year old at a day camp run by inexperienced teenagers, where she knows no one, is completely heart breaking.

For one it would help if the government stopped pushing the retirement age later and later. Where are all the grandparents to help, you ask? Still working at 66 years old.