Every now and again, the hoary old question of the length of the school summer holidays is raised by a malignant press.
Of course the sad old journos, hunched over their laptops, or muttering into their beers in some sweaty pub, can’t say the real reasons they hate the six-week break for teachers (because that’s whom they’re cross with).
So they have to look around for a high horse to climb onto.
It’s outdated, they say. The long summer holidays were built around children helping to bring in the harvest.
Where are the children merrily turning the hay? They are on screens in their darkened bedrooms. Get them back to the classroom!
In those six week, the malcontents argue, children forget how to learn. Their brains turn to mush. They not only forget all they have been taught so far, but lose the ability to retain new information. Get them back to the classroom!
It’s not fair on the parents, complain the pundits. Why should they have to look after their children for so long?
We teachers are spoiled by our 13 weeks’ holiday a year. I could expand on the exhaustion of a school year and how we – never mind the children – need a proper break, but I won’t. You’ve heard it before and might well not be convinced.
But my reasons for arguing against reshaping the entire school year are not entirely selfish.
The long summer holidays were built around the harvest, but that long holiday offers other things to those children who aren’t allowed to skulk in their dens over flickering screens. Learning is not all about GCSEs and remembering what an oxymoron is. A child begins learning from the moment it opens its eyes.
Learning comes from playing outside and looking at the sky, meeting different people and reading different books, messing around in the kitchen or the garden, playing cards and riding a bike. Learning happens while a child is making a den, whether it’s under a tree or under the kitchen table. Learning can even happen (I must admit) from a flickering screen.
One of my granddaughters was given a bug-catcher with an integrated magnifying glass this summer, and has spent hours poring over dead flies and moths, drawing pictures and looking up facts. This did not need money, space or anything but an enquiring mind and spare time.
Childcare can be difficult for working families, but parents should remember something they learned during the lockdowns but seem to have forgotten: these are their children, not ours. We are teachers, not child-carers. Yes, we are responsible for their children’s learning, but so are they. If their children become unsocial during the school holidays, that is not our fault.
And in September children don’t return unable to focus. There is something marvellous about a new school year, for us and our pupils.
Every September offers every child a new beginning. They come back to new classes, new teachers and – sometimes – new subjects. They come back with cleaner uniforms, squarer shoulders and new resolutions.
I doubt that many would put this into words, but you can see even the naughtiest, laziest, most disaffected child ready to attack the school year with new vigour.
How long it lasts is another matter.
Still, everyone has that chance.
