What do we think of this? (The DM has just noticed, there's no point in linking to them though)
This is the school term for Newham schools:
Tuesday 1 September 2009
To
Friday 18 December 2009
plus
EID-UL-FITR
Monday 21 September 2009
GURU NANAK DAY
Monday 2 November 2009
EID-UL-ADHA
Friday 27 November 2009
there are the usual Teacher Training Days scattered throughout the year.
Haringey's term, for comparison, starts 2 days later, so the net result is that Newham children have school year that is 1 day shorter.
Diwali is also scheduled, but it falls on a Saturday so no days off are scheduled.
This year the holidays all fit in well with weekends, being either on Friday, but they are all movable feasts, so in future years they could fall mid-week, weekends, whatever.
A quick look at the banner on Newham's website suggests that the local population is perhaps more interested in some of these holidays than the traditional ones, so I guess many would take the day off anyway.
Obviously there are issues - on the one hand, summer holidays are very long, and moving a few days out of it to make up for these holidays wouldn't make much odds, on the other they are imposing additional childcare obligations on parents potentially in the middle of the week, and an extra holiday on say a Wednesday in January is of little use unless you are celebrating the associated holiday.
The complaint appears to be that these have been forced upon schools (they cannot opt out), I guess it must reduce absence numbers, but should schools have more freedom to set their terms anyway, those (nationally) with significant Muslim populations could set these Muslim holidays, while other schools would not. And I guess in Jewish areas, if they want to have days off for Yom Kippur, they could do that too.