Surrey County Council has come to its senses. Next year, it will revert to the single-week half term and abandon the dreaded two-week break. If only our Academy Trust in Suffolk would do the same.
For the past three years, we have been subject to a system that can only be described as the two weeks of doom. I remember feeling immense relief that I wouldn’t have to bear the blasted fortnight once I transferred my son into the private system. Yet the universe laughed in my face, and the monster grew another head when our other children’s state comprehensive decided to implement the exact same policy.
If you really want to give us working parents a break, make the school day longer
The two-week half term was originally drafted in to alleviate seasonal flu. But does flu not persist all winter? Apparently, according to the chief executive, our school academy trust noted a 16 per cent reduction in staff sickness and notably better pupil attendance. Are these figures really significant enough to disrupt a working parent’s ability to be productive? I don’t think so.
Typically, my children all caught flu last year the day before they were meant to go back to school, meaning two of them did not attend for a whole month due to the extended break. It is madness. Flu can strike at any time. Like the arrival of a new baby, it tends to choose its own schedule; it won’t politely fit around school holidays.
The comprehensive school that three of my five children attend has been running this system for several years. We were told that this was to attract a better class of teacher. What we are left with, however, is essentially a middle-class conundrum that fails the majority of working parents like myself. When you have one child at a primary school that is off on a completely different day to their siblings, followed by two weeks of half term for the older ones, you find yourself staring down the barrel of two and a half weeks of entertaining children. It just isn’t going to happen. While this setup might be better for teachers, are we not just passing the exhaustion baton straight back to working parents?
This autumn configuration doesn’t work for those who need to earn a living. I only hope that schools in Suffolk – as well as countless others across Nottinghamshire County Council and the London Borough of Bromley – also come to their senses. They need to realise that this bucolic ideal of teenagers traipsing around National Trust houses in cold weather for two weeks is a middle-class fantasy. It needs to change.
Though there are countless parents who have to work through most school holidays, we can’t get the image out of our minds of the Yummy Mummies who drive around in their black Range Rovers during half term. They rack up a small fortune in Starbucks on caramel Frappuccinos, order lunches out for the kids that run into three figures, and spend lavishly on face masks and endless clothes.
Let’s be honest: private school kids are more likely to be whisked off to Marrakesh or the Maldives at this time of year. State school teenagers are left traipsing around the local town in the pouring rain, wondering if they have enough money on their Monzo card to grab a sausage roll in Greggs. They will go home, sit on Snapchat, or meet in the local park with a ‘BuzzBallz’ alcoholic drink if they are lucky. They will argue with parents who can smell alcohol on their breath and who are – if the teenagers have any fortune left – still tracking them on their phones. They will get bored and forget all about that vital coursework. Automated reminders for Sparx Maths will be useless because these teenagers are now entirely out of school mode – and it’s still raining outside. They might hang out in the Co-op or get into an argument online, but apparently that’s okay because up to 89 per cent of staff voted in favour of the fortnight during trust consultations. The reality of the rainy two-week half term reads like a scene from Pulp’s Common People – except common people don’t live in pretty terraces anymore. That song was released thirty-one years ago, by the way, so it’s not exactly progress.
The final reason we were given for this blasted system was that it allows families to take holidays out of peak times. But the last time I checked, holidays seem to be a thing of the past for most people. Families are currently more worried about heating their homes and buying the odd Christmas present than booking a memorable trip to Paris. Offering a two-week window to save on travel is like giving someone a voucher for £50 at Chanel – it wouldn’t go very far.
My advice to the decision-makers is as follows: stop meddling with holiday times. If you really want to give us working parents a break, make the school day longer, because precious few of us can afford to clock off work at 3pm.
Comments