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 would love longer summer holidays but I am in the fortunate position that I can work early mornings / late evenings when the children are in bed. The disadvantage is it's exhausting and long, long days for me.

I also accept though that for some children / parents holidays must be unsettling / boring and stressful / financially challenging. There is no easy answer. Selfishly though I'd wish for more holidays in the summer.

There are issues involving the exam diet if the holidays were shorter. Young people returning to school unaware if they've passed or failed their subject. Seems a waste.

My home country has much longer summer holidays. I don’t know what it is currently, but as a child, I had off from early May to the last week of August. We didn’t have half terms during the year. Only the occasional inset day, 2 weeks off at Christmas and Easter.

Summer holiday clubs are ££££. Basic childcare with a babysitter/childminder may be cheaper, but my friends are all paying £1000 A WEEK for specialist clubs, like sports or drama. Most families can’t afford that. The ones who can can only afford it max 2 weeks per summer (£2000 per child and only 2 weeks covered).

My parents managed because my grandparents had me all summer and I sat in front of the tv for 8 hours a day. All well and good for those who have family help. Dh and I do everything ourselves. There’s no grandparents to provide childcare.

I think people who want longer holidays are SAHP who are probably clinging to still having a purpose and wanting to recreate those pre-school years of days out and play dates. Which is lovely and all. But most of us have to work, so it’s screens and junk food all day for lots of children, and not a whole lot of enrichment.

So in summary people want longer summer holidays but also to make Christmas and half terms longer. And make schools a 4 day week. They want free or very cheap childcare for all of these holidays as they don’t have enough annual leave. Or they want the cost of living to be cheap enough to allow one stay at home parent (apparently this shouldn’t just be mothers though even though in most cases the mother is the one who WANTS to stay home) AND have people work a 4 day week. (No thought for how shops that need to be open 5-7 days a week like supermarkets and other retail and dentists and hair dressers etc would work).

So a 4 day school week with an extra week every half term and other break plus 13 weeks in summer with every family having one stay at home parent. No countries have that. Everyone here is just picking the best bits from each country but ignoring the other issues. EVERY country has issues. No country is perfect.

Scotland dates are end of June till mid August so you could just align. They don’t t get the end of May half term.

Nope, if anything there are too long as it is!

all well and good if there is a stay at home parent present but realistically these days both parents have to work. The cost of childcare is ridiculous.

so YABU, OP @noblegiraffe

I’m in Cornwall in a large town and we don’t have any holiday clubs locally (we did before Covid but they never restarted afterwards)…

Like most families down here we don’t have a huge income and couldn’t afford what PP are quoting anyway.

I spent some time in Europe in the 00s - 10s and while they have longer summer holidays many of the families had a SAHP. And the school day was 8am - 4.30pm or longer throughout the rest of the year! (And fewer half terms!)

So it’s not quite fair to compare like for like but an interesting thread nonetheless

But England is bottom of the table for summer holiday length and bottom of the table for child life satisfaction, bottom of the table for enjoyment of school.

https://www.childrenssociety.org.uk/information/professionals/resources/good-childhood-report-2024

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2025/apr/secondary-pupils-england-among-least-emotionally-engaged-school

so, you know no country is perfect, but we seem to be doing particularly badly.

Who do you propose is going to look after the DC esp if they have severe disabilities and there is barely any childcare available. We just manage to muddle through with a bit of WFH, annual leave and unpaid parental leave. I wouldn't be able to work in that scenario and I know many other parents of disabled kids who just hang on to their jobs. 13 weeks would be a killer.

I didn't suggest 13 weeks, I suggested 8.

Clearly childcare provision and employers would need to step up to support this.

I think if we're doing what's best for the children, their mental health and their learning, then shorter terms and more frequent 2 or 3 week holidays would be better than an 8 week summer holiday and the rest of the year being long terms with minimal breaks, surely?

Plus, I don't really understand how it would help to recruit teachers by adding an extra two weeks of unpaid holiday to the year? They already bitterly complain about their salary, reducing it by a further 2 weeks pay is unlikely to help.

My parents had to work. My brother and I were alone by the age of 8 and 10 j t my mum got home at lunchtime. We weren’t allowed to touch the cooker.

Where is the childcare for disabled children? There isn't any! I can only assume you don't have DC with complex needs and have no idea about the realities of families like mine and therefore don't care.

That's not what I said, is it?

What did she do when you were 8 and 6 though?

I get stat holidays = 28. Those 8 are BHs and I have to take a week at Xmas which leaves 3 weeks annual leave that I can choose to take throughout the year, it's most definitely not enough. DH is pretty much the same. Thankfully my kids are now teens and can be feral look after themselves in the holidays.

Clearly childcare provision and employers would need to step up to support this.

My employer just made 10% of our workforce redundant due to extra NI and other costs. I think asking employers to “step up and support this” may just mean more redundancies and unfortunately more families falling into poverty.

It’s a tricky balance - that’s for sure!

But what about before secondary school? The OP obviously isn't asking about kids who are old enough to look after themselves. You and your brother weren't always 14 and 16.

I feel for the parents that don't have enough holiday entitlement, family support and have expensive childcare to pay for over the school holidays.

What about before you were old enough to be left alone?

The government is worried about the falling birth rate so should rather urgently concentrate on making England more friendly to people who have children.

The minimum is 28 with bank holidays

My DC are in private school and have 19 weeks of school holidays, including 8 weeks in the summer and nearly 4 weeks over Christmas and Easter.
We LOVE it.
Term time is very full on - they are at school from 8.15-5.30 most days with extracurricular activities. Then homework. For us, it is the school-related admin - emails, concerts/fixtures, laundry for various kit, supporting homework esp projects that require creating (mess). All that completely stops during the holidays.

Neither of our jobs are ones where we can generally wfh - max is probably 1/day per week each but that is not guaranteed.
Organising childcare when they were primary age was not easy and if you don’t have the family who are willing to help, flexible employers and money for clubs then it is very very difficult so this needs to be considered if this is to be general change across the state sector. I would have thought that most families nowadays have two working parents but I maybe wrong.

Now they are teenagers, it is so much easier. They sleep until late and can be left home alone or can take themselves off to activities and meet with friends.

Because they have longer school days! My DD doesn't finish until 5pm. Bet there would be uproar if state schools didn't finish until that time!

If we put aside the issue of annual leave and the cost of holiday clubs, for my daughter, sure, a longer holiday would probably be fine.

We do a little bit of maths and a little bit of writing every day, read with her and to her, and incorporate learning into our day. We go out to places and she gets lots of time outdoors and does physical activity. We also have the odd TV day and sometimes she gets bored, which I think is good for her. She will go back to school in September having had lots of educational experiences and ready for the next academic year.

However, consider that there will be other children in her class who haven't picked up a pencil or opened a book since July. They're going back to school a whole term further behind than they were when they left. They've played a lot of computer games and done little to no exercise. They may not have eaten every day and what they have eaten has been low quality. They've been left home alone a few times because their parents couldn't afford clubs and activities.

The summer break is one of the biggest factors in educational inequality, with middle class and more affluent parents spending the summer enriching their children and children from poorer backgrounds sliding back, forgetting half of what they learned the year before and certainly not building on it.

Meanwhile, you are completely right that the last week or two of every term is a waste of time, children are often too exhausted or excited to learn. Splitting up the holidays more so that children have regular breaks and aren't doing 7 week stints of school with only a 1 week break at the end would be much more productive for everyone, along with more options for low cost, high quality childcare for parents who need to work.

And whilst we're at it, we should be improving conditions for teachers so that the 6 week holiday is the only perk that makes them put up with the rest of the year.