Split school holidays again

Just quoting myself but quite a few LEA's are thinking of another option where the 'Easter holidays' will be fixed every year in terms of dates, for example first two whole weeks in April,  and if Easter itself falls outside of of those dates they will given as BH days off on the Friday and Monday. This actually happened some year ago and it worked very well.

The autumn half term has been two weeks for about the last five years. We get one week less in the summer. What we find, however, is that many schools tag one or two Inset days to either the beginning or end of the summer holiday to compensate. We had a countywide consultation and it seems to work well.

I do believe, however, that school holidays should generally be standardised. Although in Nottinghamshire, being right on the border with Derbyshire where, perhaps, staff teach in one Authority and their children go to school in another, problems can arise although, of late, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire school holidays seem to be standardised.  I'm sure, however, similar problems arise over in the east on the Lincolnshire border and north to South Yorkshire. Leicestershire do their own thing and the summer break seems to start much earlier than anywhere there.

With regard to teacher bashing, I subscribe to the digital version of The Times with some really nasty comments on there about teachers and their hours and holidays.  They got short shrift from me.

mbee1 said:

Leicestershire do their own thing and the summer break seems to start much earlier than anywhere there [else??].

I'm not a teacher, or a governor or an Ofsted inspector or anything connected with schools. However, I was at school in Leicester. I well recall things changing; I am not sure of the exact date, but, I think, sometime around the early to mid-sixties. Our holidays were always in line with other places in England, breaking up for summer around the end of the third week of July and returning on a Tuesday in early September - I believe the second Tuesday, but can't be sure. My birthday is on 4 September, and, as a young boy, I was usually on holiday on my birthday.

Then there was a decree, no idea who by, that Leicester should have a holiday fortnight designated to be the first two weeks of July. All local manufacturing businesses closed down. Inevitably the schools had to close too and so it was that Leicester's holiday started earlier than everywhere else and our summer holiday was extended to eight weeks. Later, again no idea when, the end of the holidays moved back to around a day or two after the August bank holiday, so it became six weeks, or thereabouts, once again. I am a little vague on the precise details, but that is broadly what happened. 

The concept of a holiday fortnight has since frayed at the edges; not many companies now stick rigidly to this and school holiday dates have become less precisely defined as well, but they still break-up earlier than most regions. 

I don't really have an interest, except to try to avoid sites during school holidays, but it always irritated me that our holidays were out of line with the rest of the country. Especially later when I moved to Hampshire and found my friends and relatives in Leicester having different holidays. Now the whole thing is a mess with dates all over the place - one of many consequences of the commodification of schools and colleges. 

If all schools and all work places in all areas had identical holiday dates that would simply put intolerable pressure on transport, travel, and holiday bookings at resorts as well as at caravan sites. Luckily holiday dates are sensibly staggered.

But not staggered for those reasons. Luckily is the right word.

They’re not that staggered either.  The autumn half term is the one most likely to be staggered but only by one week.  Christmas, Easter and summer are nearly always identical apart from an odd day, except summer in Scotland which is earlier.