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?

DadonIce....It already does happen. The primary schools now seem to have slightly different holidays to the secondary schools around here. But parents with only 4 weeks holiday per year have a similar problem. There are holiday clubs and family and other parents help each other out.

I don't mean this to sound flippant, but... when you have a child you know this is going to happen, right? I mean, people are aware of the fact that there will be 13 weeks of holiday to cover somehow in five years' time. OK, I know we don't have crystal balls to foresee our personal and work situations in 5 years, but people always talk about the childcare issue as if it has come as a great shock to them. (Maybe I'm speaking from a lucky position as DW and I had a lot of flexibility and ours are now old enough to stay at home on their own anyway if they had to, but it seemed to me that a lot of our friends made a huge deal out of something which they must surely have seen coming.)

I wish we could just "put aside" the financial implication. It is surely the single biggest barrier to this happening before we even begin to talk about the possible benefits. People do rather talk about shifting term dates and reducing holidays as if it is something that can just be decided on and made to happen overnight. It will require a renegotiation of all staff contracts - and the unions won't make that easy - and an injection of millions (maybe even billions, I don't know) into the Education department budget. Because teachers, TAs and ancillary staff are not going to work 10, 20 or 30 extra term days a year unpaid. And nor should they.

wish - have you witnessed teenagers a towards the end of the Autumn half terms? They get very tired and lose their concentration span very easily; towards the end of the day is difficult given the amount of learning they have to do do

I think eventually newly employed school staff will have to work more days in a year. I'm sure some will do it if they can't get a job without agreeing to it.
The best way would be to employ more teachers. But that is not likely to happen.
Lots of jobs are now put out to contract. It's not impossible to do that with teaching....a sort of permanent suppy teacher arrangement employed by school managers.

I'm not saying that should happen by the way!

I am still trying to square the large gangs of bored, aimless teenagers I see hanging around outside the local Tesco half way through July with the 'children need time to play, to use their imaginations, to be, well, children' argument , presumably one of them is in the Tesco buying up the lashings of ginger beer....

As I said ages ago, I am of the 'more even length terms and similar length holidays' persuasion. I am not arguing for shorter holidays but I am arguing against 6-9 week holidays, when offset against a week in June and October.

I have already made the point that the weather in August has been consistently rubbish over the past 5-7 years, that 2 weeks in June and 2 in October increase the likelihood of getting at least one of the holidays with reasonable weather; that 2 weeks is a good, sensible length of time off in order to unwind and recharge, better than 1 week.

I have seen plenty of examples here, too, of people saying, as I predicted they would, 'I love the 8 weeks my DC get! Once they've done a week's art camp, a week's science camp, a week's adventure holiday, we've spent 2 weeks in our villa in Provence and they've spent a week with my sister in Spain- well, they're good and ready for school again!'- in other words, it works for me therefore it shouldn't change- and the fact the 'art camp' or 'science' camp would then probably be also offered in the 2 week June or October break is overlooked.

As for the 'you knew what you were signing up for when you had DC' re holidays etc, well, just because one aspect of having DC is the way it is doesn't mean it has to stay that way forever, especially when we pride ourselves on being sane, scientific, rational beings- yet our school holidays are predicted by a) the agricultural year and b) the Christian church year!

Finally, well, if we take the 'the knew what you were getting into' argument, surely that applies to sending your DC out of catchment and LEA to different schools to each other? That wouldn't be a problem if all schools took the same time off!

I think that supervised homework clubs are better for teens than extra school. Teachers need time to plan. I think that having home work clubs say 3 times a week staffed by TAs would increase achievement more than lessons.

It is nightmare finding childcare for secondary school level kids. They don't take kindly to being put with a childminder or a holiday club. An eleven year old is pretty independent, but personally I would not want my eleven year old hanging about on street corners smoking and possibly getting into trouble.

Yes re 11 year olds and school-holiday clubs! I am lucky that ours has an "11+ club" which takes them to 14! I have told my 2 that once they're 12 and 14, they can stay home whilst I'm at work.

I also wish there was an extra hour in each school day in Secondary so that DC could do either homework or organised sport/craft/etc, but I recognise the cost implications of that- though I'd pay extra for it! (but that's because I can though many couldn't).

Cricket balls I have witnessed teens all over the town center for hours on end. When I was 11-14 I would hang around parks and playgrounds between 3 and 7 each afternoon smoking and generally getting in to trouble. Would have been much better with organised sports or homework as in the private sector.

When I was 14 I worked 3-6 everyafternoon. Teenagers do not need to finish being productive at 3pm

Teens are set quite a bit of home work. Unless there is a stay at home parent to make them do it it often doesn't get done. I believe that homework clubs staffed by TAs would raise achievement and keep teens out of trouble.

The long term savings of not having so many teens smoking, getting into trouble, less teenage pregnancy, getting better GCSE results would pay for the home work clubs. Many parents are unable to help their teens with their home work. A TA would help distinguish the teens who are honestly stuck from the down right lazy.

I used to my homework in the back of the hairdressers :)

Tansie - I agree with you.

DadOnIce - what are you saying? That people who when their children are 10 say they are finding it hard paying for all the childcare needed in the14 weeks school hols plus inset days only have themselves to blame because they knew this would happen when they had the child 10 years ago? So they shouldn't have had children at all then?

Dromedary, congratulations on this thread's "completely rewording what someone said in order to disagree with it" trophy. :)

When I was TTC I worked out exactly what tax credits we would receive, and the help we would get to pay for the cost of childcare.

Then there was a change of government, and it was all taken away.

Expecting people to predict the cost of these things ten years in advance is impossible.

I'm not sure who so rudely cited the "PIIGS" countries as poor examples, but considering that in Ireland we start children later, have shorter days, longer holidays etc, and yet we still totally trounce the UK on every objective measure of educational success, I'd take that back if I were you.

So what are you saying then, DadonIce, that parents know they need childcare so shouldn't complain about the cost or the length of holidays?
People do tend to complain about things that they don't like and that are outside of their control to change. Especially when they've been asked to comment on the issue on a discussion forum.

I suppose I'm just saying it's part and parcel of the whole business of having children. DW and I had two, needed childcare for both and assumed we'd never get any help with paying it.

In a broader sense, the childcare argument is a bit derailing when it comes to discussion of whether school holidays are good for children as they stand or if they should be altered. It sort of equates schools with childcare (albeit unintentionally) which is something which rather gets teachers' backs up.

What are PIIGS countries??

The ones in financial crisis - Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, Spain.

What teachers sometimes don't get, I think, is that children and parents are a package. For instance our school made Reception children start school a week later than everyone else (including their older siblings). During that week, the reception teacher did home visits - 20 mins per child.
I pointed out to the HT that this practice meant someone in my position would have to spend a quarter of their annual holiday entitlement staying home to look after their younger child during that week. The HT responded: "Our concern is for the best interests of the child, not the parents." Also: "Oh, it's only a week." (she gets the usual teacher 13 weeks). I explained that this in turn meant that both children would have to be sent to holiday club (minimum of £30 per day at the really boring club they don't like much) for an extra week in the school hols, instead of having a week at the beach.

Long holidays means that parents who don't have much money have to spend what little they have on cheap holiday clubs, instead of on nicer holiday activities during a shorter period. And if they can't afford the cheap holiday clubs, or their children are 11 or over, the children are left at home / on the streets. This is not in the interests of the children and their development. The successful development of children is something teachers are supposed to care about.
I don't think it's right to give long holidays on the basis that the wealthy want their children to go on expensive holiday courses. Let's at least use educational arguments, not arguments based on what the rich only like to do for their children educationally outside of school.

Bearing in mind that many other countries have far longer summer holidays than England-I wonder what parents in those countries have to say about them?

Do US parents, for example, want their school summer holidays to be 3 weeks long?

Funnily enough, I was having this conversation with my DS today and I suggested that the six week holiday could be cut down to three weeks and the three half term one week long breaks could be increased to 2 weeks.

One week never feels like enough, just as your starting to power down, you have to start getting back into school mode. I also think that due to the amount of pressure the kids are under they need a longer break (or maybe it's just me getting older that needs more breaks!)

I will now have to read back to find out what financial crisis has to do with educational achievement and length of holiday! And get wound up again by ignorant comments about teachers' holidays.

I suggested that the six week holiday could be cut down to three weeks

As discussed further up the thread-this would prove incredibly difficult for people to book their summer holiday as, let's face it, people want to go in the summer (not in June or October) as it's generally warmer.

1. They'd be fighting with the rest of the office for just 3 weeks leave.
2. Everyone would be trying to book travel agent/flight/holiday home/camp site for those three weeks-there wouldn't be enough of them for the same number of people.
3. Prices would absolutely rocket in those three weeks.

I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons why it wouldn't work. If you tried (as someone else suggested) to stagger the holidays by LEA, then you would have parents with children or other family members in more than one LEA unable to holidays together, or teachers in one with their children in the other-never able to have a summer holiday together.

LaBelle - not ignorant about teachers' holidays. My sister and brother in law are teachers. Brother in law has mostly taught in very tough secondary schools - very stressful.
I get it that teaching is hard and tiring. I get it that some time in the hols is spent on preparation (but judging by the teachers I know not all that much time). What teachers don't seem to get is that some at least of the rest of us also have tough, stressful jobs, worse paid (often much worse paid), no benefits to speak of, little job security, no union support. Those people are expected to manage on 4 weeks' hols a year and if they moan about it they don't do so in public. Teachers have had a lot of public sympathy for a long time, in part due to very vocal union representation, in part due to the fact that we can put a face to you as you look after our children. But you don't necessarily NEED 13 weeks' hol.