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 leave at 4:30, but parents don't see me arriving at 7

or the amount of time i put in at home, after my children have gone to bed

or weekends i give up, taking students on trips

but hey, i'm just a typical part time unprofessional woman teacher, defining my job however i want, right

Surely a starting point is a properly defined and properly salaried number of hours and holidays per year. It all seems too ad hoc.

This already happens. Teachers must be available for work 195 days of the year and for 1265 hours - most teachers work far in excess of this in term time and for some of their unpaid holidays and a few teachers who charge you a fortune just to teach your child from a textbook stick to their contract.

But the wording of the contract is far from ad hoc - it couldn't be clearer, actually.

chibi - but that is wrong. Your day is madness.

Your day should not start at 7 pm and it should not involve working until 9 pm for others.

I want a standardised set of hours evenly spread throughout the year and all working hours recognised and what seems to me to be an extremely inefficient process of delivery rationalised and systematised.

Teachers work could surely be done in standardised hours, more standardised delivery in at least teaching materials delivered via internet and more evenly spread throughout the year. Just more business like really. It really isnt about lazy teachers who get more holiday than anyone else. The whole process of when and how delivery of teaching needs reform to make it work for society and children.

More Beta I see that you jerk referring to someone like me as working part time . I hate dragging up my working hours because it confirms to the stereotype of moaning teachers.

But I work four days a week from 7am until 6pm and then from 9pm until midnight. On a Friday I take it easy and do 7am until 6pm and then I will do a few hours on a Sunday evening. A conservative estimate of my working hours over 40 weeks a year would be 70 hours a week . So 2800 hours a year.

My husband, in the private sector has five weeks holiday a year. So if I divide my salary by 47 that is 53 hours a week which is just over a 10 hour working day.

Hardly part time and I am giving the tax payer quite good value and working more than double my contracted hours .

If you want to pay me for the hours I do that is fine, but I will be earning on the region of 100k a year. Ironically that would put me about where I would be if I had remained in the private sector.

I chose the lower salary so I could work around my children. That means I work flexibly not part time .

Although I would support a revision of the current holidays, I don't think that an 'opt in / opt out' system of modules etc is a feasibla way forward.

What I feel would address the learning needs of children, as well as the working needs of parents, better would be some 'tweaking' of term and holiday lengths (to even them out throughout the year, rather than e.g. this year where some half terms are 8 weeks long and some are 5) with optional sessions available in the longer holidays for those children who benefit least / suffer most from the current system (so targeted at those who currently receive pupil premium, for example - no pupil premium paid during term-time, but such pupils receive the optional 'holiday' sessions free while other parents can pay, as they do for existing childcare).

I suppose my primary motivation is to improve outcomes for all children. So for those children whose parents are in a position to provide 'wider beneficial experiences' during the holidays - holidays, travel, sports camps, lazy days spent in homes which contain books and pencils and toys and adults who engage with the children - then a slightly shorter summer holiday would still be completely available. For those children whose parents are NOT in that position, then equivalent experiences would be available within school premises + day trips - provided both by those permanent school employees who wished to have year-round contracts [as e.g. our caretaker does] and by others who wanted holiday contracts. Some teachers might well prefer to work 2 days a week year round, while others might prefer to work 5 days a week term-time only.

The thing is, TAs, dinner ladies etc currently want term-time contracts because of the current school year and the needs of their own children which are linked to it. If the school year were to change, then the desire for such contracts may well decrease.

More beta I don't know why I called you a jerk I think I meant keep. Blame cold chubby fingers on an iPhone . Sorry

Divide my working hours not salary.

I give up! I am going inside for a cup of tea.

my day is not madness. it suits me and my family to do my planning early in the morning. i finish at 4 or 4:30, go home and enjoy time with my family, and then if i need to, can do more after the kids are in bed

i frequently don't need to.

it would not benefit my life one iota if i were forced to do my prep and marking during some other arbitrary set of hours

i mentioned my working practices because you flat out said that if you (and mostly women, let's not forget-nice touch) leave at 4 you are unprofessional

Chibi, my current working day is very like yours.

I get to school at c. 7.30 am (having dropped my DD at the childminder), leave school some time between 4 and 5.15 - depending on the needs of the Mummy Taxi Service - and complete my day's work in the evening between c. 8 and c.9 or 10 - later on the days I leave school early, earlier on the days when I have longer at school.

I would not benefit in any way from standardising my working hours within a day BUT I do believe that the children who need it most would benefit from an overall change to the school year and rethinking the use of the school premesis over the longer holidays. And I would certainly consider e.g. a 3.5-4 day a week year-round timetable rather than a 5 day a week term-time contract in order to facilitate that.

(I work very similar hours per day to my husband, who works in a completely different profession. So typically I work 7.30 - 4.30, then perhaps 8-9 - a 10 hour day. He typically works from 8.30 - 6.30, a 10 hour day, but without the 'Mummy Taxi' bit in the middle, which is the part which makes our lives possible and enjoyable as a family)

teacherwith2kids exactly! Your proposal would give parents and staff more flexibility and offer students quality experiences in the "traditional" holiday periods.

My working day is exactly the same as yours and Chibi's , drop DS2 at breakfast club at 7.15, teach until 2.45, run enrichment until 3.45, sometimes have meeting until 5 but usually leave at 4.30. (but that's only to keep my membership in the unprofessional women's club), work from 9pm till 11 pm weekdays and Sunday afternoon. I juggle 2 weeks childcare over the holidays so that I can teach holiday school for Pupil Premium students. That's my choice, I get paid, but I do it because those students' life chances matter to me. I am lucky to have the choice to do it.

I am in the fortunate position that DP can collect DS2 from school as he works nights and so no after school childcare required. So I get the whole evening with the DCs until their bedtime, and our routine suits us. I do feel for parents who have a commute, and don't get in until bedtime, or who struggle in the holidays.

But there is a reptile bit of my brain that gets affronted by the "teachers don't get how it is for other parents" comments. I KNEW before I had DCs that childcare would be an issue, and we have planned our careers/ working schedules to accommodate this. I do sympathise with parents who haven't had the luxury of career choices, or cannot facilitate high quality childcare for economic reasons, but not with those who just think schools should sort everything out for them.

NB it is DP who works nights, not DS2. Although, if he would get up off his 6 year old bottom and do a few night shifts, we could afford much naicer holiday experiences for me him. Honestly, he's just inflexible.

morebeta - I was amazed when I read your post; since when has 'being professional' means being seen to be on work premises?

I am at school at 7 in the morning and I often leave not long after the bell - I do not do extra clubs etc as I have my own family to look after! When my dc are fed, watered, listened to etc I than have to continue to work on some nights. If I stayed on the premises to complete work, that means my own dc are in after school care for longer - how is that beneficial?

The notion that if we have longer hours/weeks etc then we would not have to work in our own time needs to remember that being in a school is not like a standard office job - there are times when extra work has to be completed, for instance marking internal exams, writing reports, completing safeguarding paper work, attending meetings to name a few; when would these get completed?

'his is a solution that would solve the issue but not affect those teachers that want to keep their holidays (one of the only but definitely a real perk of the job).'

In fact, I have responded several times. A flexible system would be flexible for teachers too.

Some teachers could continue to follow the burn out/6 weeks off model, others, like me, could balance out the hours over the whole year.

In fact, my school doesn't have 17 weeks holiday per year but I don't get why teachers at private schools (often on less income than those in state schools which is certainly the case at my school) should be made to work even more unpaid hours for free than state schools???

'I really don't agree that parents would prefer year round schooling with an opt in/opt out rolling system of modules and classes.'

but, tiggy, I am arguing there are as many parents on this thread who are saying they do want change as those (primarily teachers) who say they don't.

I have offered my suggestions for how that change might work but I am open to others' suggestions. However, if we want to move forward as as society and an economy we are going to have to do better than working with a system that is centuries old because that is the way it's always been and because teachers seem able to hold the rest of the country hostage.

'It would also create other issues that are not in a child's interests at all such as losing continuity of friendships and peer support, losing continuity of teaching staff, disrupting setting by ability or the bonds formed of sharing consistent tutor groups together each day. If you have people popping in and out as it suits their parents working life, parents by definition will be forced to choose what suits them not what suits their individual child. '

That's all rubbish. I am not suggesting 'popping in and out'. I am suggesting that each child can take one 'unit' each year either off as a 6 week holiday or as a combination of a 2-3 week holiday and 3 weeks leisure/sport/cathc up/extra curricular to suit their and their families particular circumstances and interests.

This would also have the advantage (also for teachers) of not having prices rocket at one time of year but also families could arrange their time off to suit events in their lives like attending a wedding or visiting relatives in other countries. This would also have the advantage of avoiding unauthorised absence since there would be no reason for this to happen.

It's that last bit that makes me chortle, five. Many of the kids I teach don't get taken away in the holidays anyway, and so would be dumped in school all year round. They would hate it and would resent chldren who DO get taken out for 6 weeks by parents who want to spend time with them. Certain parents would start to take for granted that the school would be there to look after their children. If we're advocating taking on child rearing from the age of 4, all day, every day, removing all parental responsibility, do you REALLY think it will be better? How is it child-centred? It's full-on institutionalisation.

There are some good suggestions on here. I know that teachers don't only work the 'school hours' i.e. when the kids are there.
I think that much of the problem is that because of the long holidays the teachers are then expected to fit the work into the term times, giving them long days of work in short time periods. (I'm not saying they do nothing in the holidays, but it's certainly a reduced work load)

If there was better spacing of the holidays / one or two weeks fewer this might give teachers a better opportunity to get their out of classroom work completed during the 'school hours' and not give long days.

I would also prefer one week less in the summer and a two week October half term.

I'm using this thread as a concrete example, tiggy. I am quite sure that in RL the majority of parents would welcome a change and the pressure for change will only increase.

There are a signficant number of parents who would like to work but who cannot because the cost of holiday childcare would make it financially pointelss.

There are a signifcnat number of parents who find childcare a nightmare for financial or logistical or quality reasons.

There are signifcant number of parents who leave their kids entirely unsupervised for weeks at a time.

I know people in each of these categories as well as one couple whose marriage is on the rocks because of the financial and logistical pressure of organising childcare.

And why should workign parents pay for teachers to have a longer holiday than any other job when the system is so needlessly unhelpful for them?