Changes to holidays - debate on woman's hour

[fivecandles]

Apparently Nottingham LEA is piloting a change to school holidays such that the long summer holiday is reduced to 4 weeks but the half-terms become 2 weeks long so no time lost in total, just redistributed. I think it's a really good idea for all the reasons given on the programme and I'm a teacher. Anyone else got thoughts?

[Eglu]

Our LA in Scotland discussed this a while back, but it seems to have disappeared. I don't think the half terms were going to be longer though, it was an extra week at Christmas and Easter.

I personally am all for shorter summer holidays. Our HT at the time did not like the idea as she said the only decent break teachers get is the summer. I agree that 4 weeks is still a decent break.

[ivykaty44]

I think it needs to be changed for the sake of the children and their education. Whether I like the change or not as a parent is not relevant if it means that the education will be better for the child - as that is why we send the children to school.

I don't think people like change but they have to think in this day an age about why they are doing what they are doing and we need to raise the bar with our education to meet the higher standards in the rest of the world

[fivecandles]

But the long holiday doesn't benefit ANY child academically. At best middle class kids plateau and that's only because of holiday clubs or the effort that mummy and daddy or nanny put in to keep them learning.

That is not to say that holidays are not beneficial but there is really very little that can be achieved in 6 weeks that cannot be achieved in 1 month (and the 3 other 2 week holidays).

[fivecandles]

'Schools accept that a few children may regress during the long break and teachers will teach accordingly. The majority are fine IME (infants).'

But that is simply not true. The majority of children regress during the long break and a few kids plateau is what the evidence says.

[fivecandles]

'It just wont work logistically for examination courses.'

Why on earth not? In fact, this is the model that has already been adopted by schools in Nottingham. And I think you'll find that Mr Gove is in the process of getting rid of all modular exams anyway. GCSEs are being replaced by terminal exams from 2012. The amount of teaching weeks remains the same, they are just distributed more evenly.

As a teacher I would welcome this. It's really hard to adjust to a 6 week holiday after an incredibly intense summer term and then the autumn term is unbearably long and hard.

My kids already have a 2 week autumn half-term and I think that's hugely beneficial during that long difficult term.

'When is anyone going to get real and work out that some kids do not do well because of other factors?'

This is ONE factor which is easily soluble though and it would benefit ALL kids.

Nobody has come up with a genuine argument of why 6 weeks of holiday is more beneficial than a more even distrubition.

Rain in February is a really silly reason. There's also rain in August. England is a very rainy country and not much can be done about that except for investing in wellies.

Can we all agree that 1 month is still a very long holiday??

[aquos]

My children and their teachers were exhausted when school broke up for the summer last week. The last few weeks of term were very intense with lots of plays, concerts, outings, summer fairs etc. It's taken my children all of this week to recover. But they are both already pining to go back to school. They are 10 & 11 and love school. The social side, the learning and the routine of it.

We have lots of plans for the holidays. A weeks family holiday, a couple of days on the coast at grandmas, 4 nights activity break at PGL and a meet up at a theme park with other family. But they'd still rather be at school. For them 6 weeks holiday is much too long.

I walk and cycle a lot and notice how the petty vandalism and damage increases during school holidays.

A shorter summer break would work for our family.

[wheresthepimms]

well the long summer works well for us. My DH is often away for long periods and when he is home over the summer his job allows him time off (not this year but most) we plan trips out, maybe to museums (they are free so poor people can go), we use paper and pencils (know these cost but not much) and do drawing,writing etc, we join the local library and do their summer reading activities (all free, educational and fun) and we take time to chill out after the hard academic year, my DCs do not plateau over the summer (at least I have never been told they do) they learn a lot of stuff that school could just not fit in, it doesn't have to be expensive (we have a tent) to go away to somewhere new look at the geography of the area, the history, take in the local museums and go for walks that you can incorporate lots of educational ideas into. I am not a teacher but I do teach my children things that no school could. The whole world is an educational playground letters on signposts, car colours to count etc etc. Multiplication and division are hard to get in but we manage it somehow even if it is just sharing out some sweets.

MMM maybe I should start HE the 4 of them I'm selling the no school to myself

Not having money to do things is an excuse made by lazy parents who don't bother to do things with their children.

[ivykaty44]

you really don't get the poor children do you wheresthepimms?

The parents don't care about the library or the museum and haven't set foot in one for a few decades if ever in this life or a past one

[cory]

Just looked up Finland, since they are supposed to be top of the educational leagues: apparently they have 10-11 weeks summer holidays. And presumably not everybody in Finland is wealthy middle class either.

[hocuspontas]

Yay! 10 weeks summer break sounds brilliant.

My own choice would be 6 months school (October - March) and 6 months off (April - September). Obviously only suitable for teachers, SAHMs etc!

[ivykaty44]

cory - how old do the children start school in Finland? Proper school rather than kindergarden?

[OddBoots]

If we are adjusting school to suit the children better then doesn't research show that secondary age children would do better with a later start and finish time to the school day?

[AandO]

Yes Old boots,I've read that about teenagers. Supposedly a secondary school somewhere in the US altered their hours and the teens did way better academically.

Ivy - I think it's 7 but I'm not sure.

[ivykaty44]

So why not let our children start at age 7 if Finland gets better results by doing this then we may get even better results if we follow the best practices from other countries.

[jabed]

Its any new idea for some isnt it? I think you need to think through very carefully exactly what this might mean - not just jump at the fact you wont have to find baby sitters for the summer or for some teachers think its the magic bullet that will fix your exam results or your SAT tests / progress grades. Let me tell you now, there is no magic bullet.

I worked in a school where they tried this ( very deprived rural school). It did not work. Yes, initially it seemed that there were benefits in academic achievements but soon it became clear that they children were having more time off for ( alledged) illness than before. Whilst there was some initial omprovement ( and change will bring that kind of improvement) in results , they fell back the following year and were even slightly worse.

Everyone thought it would benefit parents but even they complained about the long half terms and child care m so the issue was just re distributed.
At the end of the day they changed back because it simply was not popular with parents or children or even teachers , many of whom didnt seem to feel they had any holiday at all, were permanently tired and had more time off for illness also.
Thats just my experience of what happened. It was an experiment and it was a three year one off plan which was dumped as failure at the end.

I cannot say if there were any useful social spin offs like less vandalism.

Most countries have longer holidays that us and they still out perform us in the league tables so lets get real. OK a few countries do take shorter holidays and perform ( lets just say SE Asia for example) but they are few in number and if you look at the culture of those countries you will see that their attitude to education is very different. Kids from SE Asia do well in our system regardless of the long holidays ( and they love those holidays too once here) so problems in Britain wont be fixed by a few cosmetic changes to holiday patterns. Its deeper seated. Its in the attitude of children, the attitude of many parents and in the stupidity of teachers if I might make so bold, who do not not follow good educational practice when teaching. They are full of eduspeak and new methods and they dont seem to work. Its all fanciful , just as the holiday magic bullet is a fancy.

Seen it , done it, got the tee shirt and the DVD is an ineffective bird scarer on my bean patch.

Its just one more nail in the coffin of why I wont be sending my own DS to a state school any time soon.

[cory]

One very substantial difference in British and Scandiavian thinking, it seems to me, is the assumption that unless they are very middle class, a child cannot possibly learn anything worthwhile from spending time with his parents or other relatives or from playing with his friends. I don't remember this attitude at all as a child. My best friend's parents were semi-literate immigrants (Finnish actually) working in low paid manual jobs, yet no one thought that this would automatically mean either that they were less good at parenting than my own university-educated parents or that they had nothing useful to teach us as we grew older.

The British assumption is that the only things worth learning are the things that look like school work and can be measured in book bands. In Scandinavia they seem to have more of the attitude that any learning- whether it is reading your school reader or helping your dad with diy- is going to support your longterm overall learning because it supports your mental development. It is a far more holistic approach- and it seems to work for the Finns judging by their results. But probably requires fairly high levels of mutual teacher-parent respect and a less class ridden society.

[wheresthepimms]

ivykaty that was my point,we are on the same page, earlier someone said that it was ok if you had the money to do expensive outings, I was pointing out that they don't have to be expensive just cheap and that poor people use this as an excuse because they can't be bothered and never have been bothered to do all the free things out there that could help their children up the ladder and stop them having poor children. Although I suppose there must always be someone at the bottom of the pecking order so there will always be poor children. The poor children are poor in more than financial ways. :(

[wheresthepimms]

Cory you have it right there, my DCs were educated in the US for 2 years and whilst the older ones came back on track the youngest was behind academically as he had learnt things like how to tie laces, how to be polite and respectful, to have a sense of pride in his country (we did have to stop him singing their national anthemn each morning though . There is more to learning than times tables and neat handwriting

[cory]

The funny thing is that those Finnish children don't even seem to end up academically behind.

[wheresthepimms]

Cory youngest DS picked up his reading etc in 2 terms. He got back to the UK school assessed him as level 1c in every subject and has just (after 2 terms) done his satsuma and got level 3s in everything apart from writing where he is a 2c (boy who doesn't like writing so is never going to be great at it). I thought he had done really well but teacher said no he was ready to learn so did and that the easy relaxed pace in the US had made him eager to learn as much as possible, unlike other children in the class who were bored of learning

[wheresthepimms]

Sorry that is SAT tests not satsuma iPad autocorrect working overtime

[cory]

pimms, I wish my ds could have had that experience. He was a prem spring baby, too young to start school at 4; what he learnt in Reception was that "I'm not as clever as the other children" He is now in Yr 6 and still struggling with that attitude; he's never really developed the confidence to try to catch up.

[wheresthepimms]

Cory so sorry for your DS I would say a lot of my DSs catching up has been due to his wonderful teacher and the confidence he gained from the US school, confidence, manners and a belief in yourself was very evident in all the children at the school, there was also no shame in saying I am not ready and staying back a year as they said they would catch up in a year or so. They had tests at the end of the year but these were sold as seeing how the teacher was doing and if you "failed" them and were held back a year it was not you it was the teacher hadn't taught you well enough and could you help that teacher teach you better the next year, all geared to those who were not ready.

[fivecandles]

I do think people need to be clear about what's being suggested and why without starting with the anti-change agenda.

Firstly, nobody is arguing that there should be any less holiday or that holidays are not valuable. The holidays would simply be redistributed. There are all sorts of advantages to this but we need to be absolutely clear that there would still be ONE MONTH HOLIDAY IN SUMMER. Whichever way you look at it that is still a very long holiday.

Secondly, in fact, a lot of the research that found the negative effects of long holidays came from Scandinavia and America. I'll have a look for it in a moment.

Jabed, you really must stop assuming that your miniscule and unique experience of education applies to everyone. Just because your school tried it and according to you it failed does not mean that it would necessarily fail for everyone. It has been agreed that to be truly effective it would need to be national.

Finally, once again, in spite of what your personal experience might tell you, the RESEARCH suggests that most children go backwards during the 6 week break losing a great deal of the knowledge and skills they had gained during the previous academic year. This has a cumuluative effect over time such that many children are not achieving the sort of progress they could and should be.

Where this is more pronounced in kids from more deprived backgrounds (and I do find the sort of dismissal about such kids on this thread really quite disturbing) it actually affects ALL kids. Middle class kids plateau and that's only because mummy and daddy can afford the time off or the holiday clubs and nannies in order to intervene.

Even though dp and I are teachers and we share the long summer holiday with our kids and do lots of lovely and subtly educational things together, I notice the effect on them. They make massive progress all year and often especially during the summer term and then a lot of this is lost rather than consolidated over the holiday before they make the transition to the next year. It's also a very big adjustment back into learning in September and each year teachers spend a good few weeks just reestablishing routines and catching up on last year's learning.

By the way, the research says that there is a particularly marked backward jump between year 6 and year 7 when children have to cope with the psychological upheaval of a school more. It is absolutely typical for children to regress during year 7 rather than making progress. I would also say the break between year 11 and year 12 and year 12 to year 13 is far, far too long and disadvantageous.