Eltern wollen vierwöchige Sommerfeiertage, um die Kosten zu erleichtern
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/parents-want-four-week-school-summer-holidays-to-ease-costs-6bvzgg8hf
Von Alert-One-Two
Eltern wollen vierwöchige Sommerfeiertage, um die Kosten zu erleichtern
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/parents-want-four-week-school-summer-holidays-to-ease-costs-6bvzgg8hf
Von Alert-One-Two
44 Kommentare
One school my wife worked at moved one week of the summer holiday into the normal one week October half term.
Very popular move as it really helped parents get a cheaper winter sun holiday.
„Parents want to spend as little time with their children as possible“
Please don’t. Those 6 weeks are a blessing for the commute, and quiet weeks at work to get through the backlog without a bunch of meetings or useless emails.
If only. I live in Turkey, our school summer holidays are 11 weeks. You should see the high fiving parents on the first day back.
Makes perfect sense why parents want a shorter summer holiday. Employers don’t provide 6+ weeks of annual leave therefore parents either have to take unpaid time off or pay to put the child into summer clubs. The summer clubs can get pretty expensive and take up a whole month’s pay.
With the cost of living rising so much it makes sense why parents want the financial burden reduced, it’s already so expensive raising children with the cost of childcare being higher than many other developed countries.
I’ve got a better idea let’s just align work holidays with school holidays. Easy fucking peasy.
Would just make the recruitment and retention crisis in teaching even worse – that 6 week summer holiday is one of the biggest perks of the job, and taking two of those weeks and moving them to times with much worse weather isn’t going to be welcomed by many teachers.
Ah yes, let work take a little more life away from us. This time let the children suffer.
One of the best things about being a kid was the 6 week holiday! Would be better for government to lower the cost of childcare during the summer break.
Teachers will kick off if this was to change
I loved my 6 weeks holidays as a child felt they went on forever
I absolutely wouldn’t want this unless they actually become a floating 2 weeks to be used through the school year as the parents see fit
This just in, parents look to your children and laugh out „fuck you, got mine.“
Something needs to be done about the holidays, the country **needs** people to have kids and the birth rate is falling.
It’s unaffordable for many to have children, and the lack of support, insufficient annual leave policies of work and costs of childcare make the holidays particularly difficult for parents.
Until we bite the universal child care bullet – we need to do something about theses other issues, or the long term economic strength of the country will continue to flounder.
Just average the other term breaks out to always be 2 weeks. Also, have different counties shuffle about which weeks they take for term breaks.
Getting a summer break is lovely. Spending a week to 10 days away as a family has been brilliant. However, that leaves 4 weeks where my wife and I need to shuffle around work because we don’t get the amount of time off that kids do.
It doesn’t overly matter though, holiday companies will just up their prices during term breaks as they do now. The same as commuters get the harsh end of travel costs on trains because people generally have to be at work for between 8-9:30am. It’s all about profit.
I think there’s something to be said for shortening the summer holidays by one week and having a two week autumn half term (as that’s the longest term and it has no Bank Hols, so breaking it up a bit would be nice)
The school year will remain 190 days though, so shortening the summer holiday means lengthening or adding others
What sad bastards. Kids need time off school to just be kids.
No! Fuck off! I want to spend time with my kids! It’s 7 weeks of fun. They’re already stuck in school far too much, kids need more play, not less.
They can fuck off. The moment this happens is the moment I put in my notice
My son has 5 weeks in summer and 2 weeks in May. It is great. The non-standard week in May is more affordable so that’s when we have own main family holiday – couldn’t afford to have it in August.
Before the pandemic, I doubt that parents thought of schools as their childcare solution. Once schools closed, they realised that they can’t work without the school minding their children for the majority of the week.
I don’t know what the answer is, but it’s a strange situation that parents might want their children to go to school during a hot summer, rather than enjoy time off with them/with extended family.
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*some* parents want four-week school summer holidays.
IFIFY.
A very large number of parents absolutely do not want this. And many who think they do will take their children out of school for a summer holiday when the costs of holidays inside the 4 week period spike.
The thing I don’t understand is why given a lot of schools already moved to a more structured model that is closer to that in a college or university they don’t simply copy a 3 semester model and introduce more flexibility in the courses with shorter modules you build to a qualification. That offers the student more flexibility, it also potentially offers the parents more flexibility, including the ability to take time off work if you agree the childs coursework in advance.
Give the really bright kids the chance to hammer through work, the less bright ones more time to study, flexibility to have more or less school time and sports, and get them familiar with the model of education they’ll need as an adult. And as a bonus taking away the looming „studied for 2 years and only get one chance“ level of stress away from kids that you don’t actually replicated anywhere else in your life.
Coming from Ireland, still not used to how short English school holidays are. So thats a nope from me, give the kids at least 2 months like the rest of the world. Its not as if English kids are getting any educational benefit from the longer school year, plenty of league tables to show that.
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Ridiculous imo. All it does is mean even more staff issues fighting over 4 weeks leave not 6, and no matter how the divide it, there will still be 13 weeks of holidays to cover!
This was proposed in wales last year. Successfully put back in the leave it alone pile. Largely because of Nasuwt union campaign on the matter.
Everyone calling for it is forgetting they enjoyed the 6 week break ( smallest summer break than any other European country)
The honest truth is this boils down to believing teachers have it to easy and many see school as free childcare.
I wonder if the cost to keep the schools running, transferred into taxes, would bring it right back.
Fuck that. The Uk already has the shortest summer holidays in Europe. Just make childcare affordable. If they did that the already recruitment crisis in teaching would go from bad to catastrophic!
I hate articles that say „parents“ want or „teachers“ want or „commuters“ want. All it means it „we managed to find two people of that group who want this“. Not lots, not a majority – just two. And yeah, they’ll always back it up with some nonsense study with a tiny number of people where the results weren’t overwhelmingly in favour. The could write the headline in reverse and it would still be true.
I’m pretty sure I could find the requisite amount to release the headline „Redditers want Donald Trump to bomb the London eye“ or „Jockeys want horse silhouettes added to the English flag“.
Can you imagine the cost of holidays for those four weeks?
As in kid in Canada we got at least 8 weeks! I think kids have it rough here only get 6 weeks off
Could do some more practical things to help:
Take away the need for expensive school uniforms
Take away the need for holidays to be in school holidays
Pretty sure. 99.9% of those kids are not going to agree with that, I mean kids generally don’t agree with their parents most of the time anyway, but to reduce their 6 week holiday to 4 yeah, right. And I also think the teachers probably would not want it reduced to 4. That gives them time off to catch up.
“Some” parents, not all parents, most likely not even “most” parents. What a stupid idea. But then again, this country’s populace is pretty stupid.
Do what the Dutch do, they stagger their holidays by location blocs, there are three i believe. So everyone gets a week or so where not all the kids in the entire country are off in summer and other holidays stagger where appropriate.
Every single year this comes up and doesn’t happen.
Wait until you hear how long school holidays are in the Republic of Ireland.
As a European living in the UK i’m always surprised how school breaks work in the UK. I think most EU countries? There is no school in the entirety of July and August, with it ending basically by mid June. For every school.
However there are a lot less breaks during the year in general. One week at the end of October (Halloween basically) during christmas and new year, then a week for Easter and that’s it.
Just fix child care costs. Basically this approach is the government using schools as childcare anyway. Probably cheaper to employ carers than teachers. They could get really radical and even share facilities.
It is worth remembering why 6-7 week school holidays came into being. Harvest time and child labor.
It’s is not relevant now. But saying that, children need a break – perhaps spread throughout the year. At the moment it seems that parents are more concerned with child care issues due to their work/life balance than the well being of the children. Such is modern life.
Alternatively, give adults holidays too. One of the hardest things about leaving education and entering the workforce is getting used to the endlessness of it all: Monday to Friday every week, every month, every year, forever. We spend childhood with our year punctuated with short breaks and divided into terms which give us a sense of closure when they end and renewal when they begin again. As an adult, what even is a year? There’s no Year 1, Year 2, etc in a job. It just goes on and on with no meaningful divides. For adult mental health, adults should also get term times and breaks in between!
I assume the teachers unions are going to all just say „no“ and then that’s the end of this.
The alternative is „Sure, but it’s at quingentuple time…we’ll wait while you google that“
You do know places like Ireland and the US have three months off…