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.

If school was childcare it wouldn't run 8:45-3:30 190 days a year. The purpose of school is to educate children, and that means for that period of time parents don't need childcare. But childcare would be designed to fit parents' needs, whereas school is designed to fit children's needs.

This talk of charities and churches filling in the gaps for vulnerable children is what I mean by muddling through. Utterly unacceptable.

If the question is 'should the school holidays be extended to 8 weeks' and the response is 'but what about feeding vulnerable children and keeping them safe' then the immediate answer should be 'easy, just extend the normal out of school provision for another two weeks'. What this concern highlights is that that provision doesn't exist.

And yet you’re the one suggesting the holidays need to be longer but you can’t really provide any tangible reason other than wahhh some European teachers get a longer summer than me.

See my OP.

I'll put it in the simplest form possible:

"should the school holidays be extended to 8 weeks" - NO!

You've been voted as YABU anyway, so not sure why you're still carrying on.

@noblegiraffe

The purpose of school is to educate children, and that means for that period of time parents don't need childcare

Sorry - but that is stupid.

Because this is a discussion forum?

What a strange comment.

I'm a secondary maths teacher, how much childcare do you think my sixth formers need?

I think this is part of the problem — you're stuck in a delusional bubble, only thinking about yourself and sixth formers.

Guess what? Not all "children" in school are sixth formers.

Not really - 30 pages, plus the following:

I think the discussion is done, right?

Forgot the image...

Guess what, not all teachers are primary school teachers who need to be concerned about the childcare arrangements of the parents.

However teachers are providing education, not childcare and it is insulting to primary colleagues to suggest that this is their job.

Who the fuck made you thread police?

LOL—well, you're not listening to other people's opinions, are you? So we should help you out.

Is this your first time on MN?

No, it's accurate. School isn't there in order to let parents work; it's there to give all children a set standard of education. It obviously means that adults are freed up for those hours (around 1220), but the entitlement doesn't neatly reflect the requirements to attend a full time job over the course of a year.

This is the bit where you fall short in understanding the two main functions of a school. Whether you believe teachers are providing childcare or not, schools serve as both a place of education and a form of childcare. That’s just a fact. I don’t give two hoots if that offends you.

The fact remains, while schools are fundamentally educational institutions, their structure and schedule also play a vital role in providing daytime care and supervision for children.

Ah so you are continuing the discussion? I thought you had declared it over. 🤷‍♀️

I’ll stop here.

P.S. Keep up the good work with the teaching — and the free childcare you provide.

The UK government spent over £130 billion on education last year, second only to health. Definitely so you can have free childcare.

And the government need as many people working as possible to pay that bill!

Here in Ireland there is an army of grandparents who look after the children.

But in Ireland they dont start secondary school till they are 13. The long holidays and short days do impact their learning, so they are behind compared to the UK.

Our school opens at 7.45 for the early morning club and runs activities every day after school till 4.15. I’m lucky my own job fits into school hours but I see alot of grandparents on the school run day after day, year after year, and other parents share childcare (kids going to each other’s houses till there’s a parent to pick them up). I imagine if you look around the school run at all Primary schools in the UK, you will see how much parents are juggling the hours after school in different ways to fit around work.

School IS childcare aswell as all the amazing reasons kids go to school in the first place. It allows both parents to work which is what pays the mortgage/rent/bills and everything else in 2025. There are very few families that can survive on one income the whole way through raising kids these days. The average house price in our area is £420,000 and we’re a few hours from London in a touristy area (so you can imagine the struggle for housing in our area if you are on anything less than a very good middle income).

We are a changing society - 30 years ago my Mum was home all Summer, every Summer, until teenage years. There wasn’t a nursery in our town until around 10 years ago - pre-schools that followed the school pattern, but not year round nurseries. We now have several pre-schools that all take the children from 2 and a nursery that runs all year round.

Holiday clubs have massively expanded in our town too and there’s now a really good choice.

Like everything, school will have to change to fit with society now. I dont believe teachers should work any more days (they deserve a break as do the kids), but we will need to look at more support staff to run morning/after school clubs and look at how best to divide the holidays up. It will become even more of an issue as older people work until later in their life (and can’t help if they live close by). It will also affect those in lower income jobs disproportionately more, as they are often the ones who can’t work from home and pop out to pick up the kids. School patterns were decided in a different era - school needs to change as society changes.

But if the purpose was to educate children as efficiently as possible, this might mean they all get an hour a day in a class of 5, and don't do anything fun, because they can get their 3Rs in that time and they can play/go on trips on their parents' time. This would almost certainly be cheaper because the extra equipment and travel for play and trips wouldn't be needed. Many home educators - and lots of us in lockdown - found an hour or two a day was all that was needed for formal teaching if in a small group/individual.

Except that is NOT how school is set up - it's set up to provide 6+ hours a day for 192 days a year of child supervision in which approx. 1 hour is still the mean time per child of direct instruction, but the children are cared for those other hours of the day.

So either the real purpose of schooling is in addition to provide childcare and/or enrichment, or someone has gone a bit wrong somewhere. I'm guessing the former.