What's the educational argument for so many holidays?

[TinTinsSexySister]

Just that really.

Are there any educational benefits to frequent school holidays or are they just an historical hangover? Educationally speaking, would we be worse or better off adopting the US system?

I always tell HEers that it is unnecessary because school is only a short part of the day- if they have longer terms and longer days I can quite see why people want to get off the treadmill and do it themselves. You would never see your DC if they are in childcare all the time.

All these long hours and long terms would have to be flexible so that they could leave early for private after school activities and Cub camps etc.

If our school was open longer it would cost a bomb.... there are 14 teachers at our school, 5 TAs, 4 HLTAs, one non-teaching Deputy head, one Headteacher, 3 admin staff, 1 caretaker, 7 Mid-day supervisors, 3 cleaners, one financial bod who also deals with the governors. So 14 teachers and 26 others

Changing school hours does not just affect the teachers...

A good point ByTheWay. These people would have to be on duty. I went to a school last week and the office person was ill- it was difficult to man the office and it was chaotic.

i am interested in the idea of flexible terms

so, the 13 weeks out if school would still exist, but people could take them whenever?

how does this work in secondary? e.g. when i am having a week or two on hols but my students are not, who is teaching them during that time? who is preparing and assessing their work? is it me or the other teacher?

if it is me, that represents a major addition to my workload. if it is the other person, with the best will in the world, how effective will the lessons be when they are planned for students they don't know, know and who they may not return to? also, who is covering the other teacher's classes, while they are covering mine?

finally, how might this disruption affect how well students are prepared for their exams?

'The modern economy and business hours are not standardised though. There is no one-size-fits-all.'

Exactly. Which is why schools need to be more flexible and tailored towards the needs of individual learners. At the moment school hours and terms ARE standardised according to medieval harvests. I mean, come on!

Arisbottle the cost of keeping the school open for the sake of the handful of people who may use it over the holidays is astronomical - honestly, it's hundreds of pounds but also, think of the sometimes billions it cost to build these things in the first place, often with state of the art equipment and facilities. You must be able to see how that's a massive waste of taxpayers money when it lies fallow for 13 weeks of the year.

The only way I could see it working is if secondary schools worked on a modular basis - say 6 week long courses and parents/children chose what they wanted to do, say a particular novel in English, a particular sport in PE. Teachers would have breaks between teaching certain modules, parents would choose when to take a break as well. They could be graded beginner/intermediate/advanced and children from different year groups with similar ability could work together. You could even factor in a bit of work experience in there too. You could assess by a final exam or a project/coursework.

Sounds wonderful in a sense and much more flexible. But it requires far more self discipline than your average teenager possesses, and I dread to think how much it would all cost to organise and staff. You couldn't have a situation where lessons continued as normal whilst children/staff took two weeks off unless it were also acceptable to write on an exam paper 'sorry, I was in Tenerife when they did this'.

can anyone explain how this kind of flexibility will work at secondary, where a child might have 10 or more teachers?

' my work seems to expand to fill the gap, and that would be the case here.'

Of course work always expands to fill the gap but the key here is less contact time allowing teachers more freedom to be creative and work smarter. It's the actual teaching time that generates most work that has to be done immediately - planning, marking, dealing with absent and naughty students. I've not done any research into it but my guess is that we have more contact time than teachers in other countries and this means less time for professional development, collaboration, long-term planning, working with individual students.

how will this work in subjects where the learning is built on previous work?

if a student misses the module on one novel, they can study another and still develop the same skills. if they miss the module on say solving algebraic equations they will really struggle to do all the maths based on this

exotic, you resent the idea that schools should represent the way that society and working parents operate generally but why?

Can I remind you again that schools are currently structured around the agrarian calendar. There is no other reason for the long holidays. It was originally there because of the economy as it was historically. Why shouldn't it change to reflect the economy as it is now?

Especially given that there would be enormous benefits to children themselves.

It really is very odd that you wouldn't want school to be structured so that it better met the needs of the taxpayers who pay for it rather than the convenience of teachers who feel oddly entitled to longer holidays then every one else.

Oh, it's a complete pipedream, chibi. As a languages teacher I'd find it very difficult to teach my subject in a modular way as like maths it relies on knowing the basics and slowly building on it.

But teachers have been accused so much on this thread of being stuck in their ways and resistant to change, and I thought I'd throw the idea out there.

'I love unstructured holiday times with nothing to do. As a child I loved the prospect of time to do nothing for weeks on end!'

Of course you do. But only teachers have this luxury. Only teachers.

It really bugs me that teachers are so lacking in empathy for the nightmare that other working parents go through (honestly, it brings me out in a sweat thinking about it). Why can't you be more sympathetic?

And it's actually more than a lack of sympathy or even empathy it's the suggestion or implication that parents are somehow at fault for finding it difficult to manage childcare and should shut up about it.

Why? Why are so many teachers so incredibly lacking in basic understanding?

Especially when these same parents are funding them to spend 6 weeks at home with their own kids and especially when the kids that they're then going to teach might end up unsupervised and getting into trouble and going backwards academically.

'These people would have to be on duty.'

Caretakers and administrative staff often work year around. As for TAs, dinner ladies etc - many would love the opportunity to get paid for more hours.

Yes, whereare, that's the system I would envisage. It would actually enable kids to access a broader curriculum and more extra curricular activities. It would also, and I think this is crucial, allow more opportunities for catching up kids who are falling behind. It would enable parents and teachers to take holidays flexibly at the end of modules, again, another advantage.

I like the holidays: they allow the children to do intensive activities that allow consolidation of skills through application in situ and/or rapid progress; to travel and see new places and learn about other cultures; to rest.

Desk-based classroom learning is only one sort of learning. There is a lot more to education and the acquisition of knowledge and skills than that which takes place at school.

I've got an excellent idea that will solve your angst. All those private school teachers who get 17 weeks of holiday will 'donate' 4 weeks of their summer to run clubs for underprivileged children for free. Problem sorted - state teachers keep their hols, private school teachers can share their genius, underprivileged children don't slip back and those parents only need to find 2 weeks childcare. You leading the charge on that one fivecandles???

I suspect that if teachers were more respected in general by the press and government (I don't mean in regard to holidays, I mean the way in which we are generally perceived as thick, lazy jobsworths who set out to make the lives of children miserable whilst still being responsible for all the ills in society) then they would be more willing to be sympathetic and listen to opinions on the holidays.

We assume any change to the system is basically intended to make us work more for less money, which puts us on the back foot immediately. Perhaps if this government were more respectful towards teachers rather than constantly issuing statements telling us how crap we are, they would find a more measured response. We are defensive because we are being constantly attacked.

"It really is very odd that you wouldn't want school to be structured so that it better met the needs of the taxpayers who pay for it."

I want school to be stuctured around the optimal developmental path of my DCs, not around the workplace.

Yes, the need to harvest was a worldwide phenomenon and not specific to ye olde england!

Still pretty bizarre to continue to use this as a way to structure the school year though.

America gets round it by the summer camp and the summer school but there is research that says kids typically go backwards academically during the long break (and the more disadvantaged kids go the farthest back without mummy and daddy to take them on educational holidays). Not to mention the opportunities for getting into trouble. It's widely believed that the riots that happened a couple of summers ago causing millions of pounds of damage not to mention the ruined lives from having kids with criminal convictions, would not have happened if it weren't for the summer holidays.

'I want school to be stuctured around the optimal developmental path of my DCs, not around the workplace.'

The two are much more likely to be compatible than structuring the school year around the harvest!!

fivecandles - the research shows that in the US MC DC improve academically during the summer break (though not quite at the same pace as when they are at school, at least not on traditional academic measures).