Welsh school holiday changes: Look again at the summer break but also look at childcare

Longer days aside, I didn’t have much truck with that school of thought - and was suspicious that it seemed to be driven by the experience of this year’s very damp July - but there’s another debate going on at the moment on the holidays, and that surrounds the Welsh government’s decision to launch a consultation on having five-week summer holidays in 2025 and possibly four-week holidays in 2026 onwards.

The arguments are strong, it must be said. Leave aside the childhood delight at the first few days of summer holidays, when free weeks stretched out in front of you, there are plenty of sensible reasons why we should rejig the school year.

Firstly, the holidays are too long. Children regress in them, and with no homework set even the most diligent parent finds it hard to keep on insisting their children do something vaguely academical as well as watching hours of television / iPad a day. There’s also the sad modern reason that some children from a deprived background will miss school dinners and notice the effects of malnourishment over six weeks, which would be mitigated by just a four-week break.

Giving a two-week break in October (and therefore a shorter half-term) would also benefit the younger children starting school, whether Year R or Year 7, many of whom find it a culture shock. By the autumn half-term many of the summer-birthday new starters at primary school, who have only just turned four when they begin school, are dead on their feet: I’m not saying a September-birthday five-year-old won’t be, but the difference nine months to a year makes in children that age is unsurprisingly startling; it’s a big percentage of their lifetime.

I understand there will be counter arguments that say this rejigging would push up the cost of summer breaks even more, through simple supply and demand. And I understand that many children and parents would much rather have time off in summer than the dank autumn. But we no longer release children to help with the harvest - the origin of the summer break - and if you were to design a school calendar from scratch, it’s unlikely it would look much like ours does now.

But I’d add an extra factor that could be taken into account, one that will probably strike a chord with many parents (and before you jump in, yes, we all elected to have children and no, this is not a plea for sympathy) facing logistical difficulties. The state academic year has 13 weeks of holidays (six in summer, two apiece at Easter and Christmas and three weeks of half-terms - we’ll ignore inset days for the minute). British workers tend to have 25 or so days’ holiday a year - five weeks. So even a couple have only 10 weeks in which to cover 13 - and that supposes that they won’t spend book any time off together/as a family. Working bank holidays and weekends can bank some time, but it’s a logistical nightmare. I take my hat off to single parents.

Childcare - even big organised camps during the holidays can be prohibitively expensive - some touch £50 a day - and so families without amenable and robust grandparents can find it a real struggle. 

This isn’t the most important factor, and goodness knows there are other issues surrounding education and childhood development that need attention, but if we’re going to look again at the school year structure, can we please remind ourselves that, as the days of the stay-at-home housewife mum are largely over, families could do with some assistance to cover the yawning gaps of holidays, whether they be six weeks or four.