General Chat

It's only half way through the school holidays and it's getting dark at 9 o'clock.

Why can't the holidays start a month earlier to take advantage of the longer daylight hours in July?

OK, the Spring and Summer terms would be a bit shorter but I am sure the teaching profession would be able to shuffle the timetable to compensate, maybe with the Christmas holiday being in the lead-up to New Year and a shorter Easter holiday.

To fit in the current 6 terms a school year would take some organising, especially between Easter ( April 20th next year) and the beginning of the new summer holiday.

There would not be many full working weeks, once you take out two Bank holidays in May before the holidays would start around the 3rd week of June.

It would have been a bleak summer holiday this year if they had shivered through the school break and had to be sitting at their desks in the current heatwave, but then one takes pot-luck in UK at any time of year.

Presumably the August-born children would be the eldest in the class instead of the youngest, as children generally start primary school at the beginning of the school year in which they reach five years old.

Do the darker evenings really hinder enjoyment of the school holiday?

When we moved to Industrial Lancashire, towns had 'shut down' holidays, known as 'wakes weeks' when the mills had maintenance work done. This varied from town to town. The schools were closed then too, and families all went on holiday to the seaside towns like Blackpool or Scarborough. Where we lived near Morecambe, we used to be able to tell which town was on holiday.

Our town holidays, which our children had, were the last week in June/first week in July. I loved going on holiday then, it wasn't crowded and everywhere was clean and fresh. Then they went back to school for 4 weeks, finishing in the first week of August. They had 6 weeks holiday then which included the first week in September which was another wakes week.
This system must have finished in the early 1990's. I still miss it.

Scotland has always had earlier summer school holidays.

The schools are restarting this week or next, depending on area.

These days, allowing for slight regional variations, they have a couple of days in February, a fortnight at Easter, 6 weeks in summer (late June to mid August) , about 10 days in October, and a fortnight at Christmas, plus occasional teachers' in-service days.

When I was at school, we only had a long weekend in October, but 7 weeks in the summer.

With our 6 term system, our local primary school had a fortnight's holiday from mid May until early June.
Many parents, who were able to, used this as their main family holiday time, as things were probably more reasonable than in the longer August holiday.

My Aberdeenshire grandchildren go back to school mext week after having 6 weeks off, my grandchildren in Lanark returned to scool this week school after their 6 weeeks off.

Joan.

wakes weeks were also held in The Forest of Dean gloucestershire when our children were at school, when we lived there. My OH always managed to not have to take those two weeks as the school holidays didn't start until after the f[rst Wakes week. he was often away from the plant anyway so it didn't matter.

Our children restarted school yesterday having broken up end of June. We have had no summer whatsoever, i really feel for the children up here!