On Jeremy Vine's Radio 2 show yesterday, they were discussing school holidays and whether schools should just be allowed to decide their own dates.
At the moment, most State Schools have roughly the same holidays and the travel companies add on a huge price hike to go away in those weeks.
If every school just does their own thing, imagine a family with three kids, one at infants, one at junior and the other at senior school, all with different holidays? You'd have one of them at home virtually every other week! You could even end up with a couple who both worked as teachers but never had any time off together. (In some parts of the Country, statistically you would have at least two children and four grandchildren off at any one time with only three partners out of prison to help look after them).
However the bit I liked best was the person who said that teachers spend a great deal of the long Summer Holiday going into school and preparing for the next term. Maybe you need to if you are the Head or in the Senior Management, but any ordinary teacher who does this needs to get a life. One of the great perks of teaching is the long holidays and by refusing to admit this, we just make ourselves look silly.
4 comments:
"One of the great perks..."
I would love to know what the other "great perks" are.
We've had the same idea floated here too — and it gets a lot of support from parents who don't want to pay for babysitting during the summer.
I currently work as many hours per year as I did when I had a more conventional job with an engineering firm. Being forced to work during the summer wouldn't magically make me work more hours; I'd just stop taking marking home so I'm working the same hours a year.
I agree that the holidays are fantastic, although I believe that the summer holidays are too long. I would prefer four weeks, with the other two weeks being redistributed to other times of the year.
Surely the answer is regional holidays...lower the cost of holidays by spreading the numbers but avoiding the parent nightmare of multiple scholl holidays.
Post a Comment