South West experts suggest shake-up

Researchers in the South West have suggested school summer holidays should be shortened, along with lengthening half-terms.

A report on tackling post-pandemic education inequalities, which forms part of a project funded by the Nuffield Foundation, said it was time to consider a reform to school calendars.

Experts in the report said reducing the six-week summer holiday to four weeks and introducing an extra week to half-term breaks could help tackle “educational divides” which have grown since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Department for Education said the academic year was structured to provide plenty of time for holidays and schools had flexibility to plan term dates.

Experts said they believed benefits achieved through changing the holiday structure would include balancing out childcare costs for parents and improving the wellbeing of pupils and teachers.

The report also said spreading the holidays more evenly across the academic year could prevent “learning loss” – a term experts used to describe difficulties pupils when going back to school after the summer break.

Prof Lee Elliot Major, from the University of Exeter, one of the report’s authors, said the structure of the academic year dated back to Victorian times and it was “time to review this”.

He said: “We need bold ideas and ultimately trying to find ways of levelling that education playing field so all children from all backgrounds can prosper in school.”

Mother-of-three Helen Eaton, who runs a blog called Cornwall with the Kids, said her family enjoyed the six weeks of summer holidays.

However, she said she understood other families had different issues to deal with during the break and some changes to the structure could be beneficial.

Ms Eaton said: “I know a lot of people in Cornwall work in the tourism industry, so maybe when it’s quieter at Christmas or October, it might benefit people to have an extra week off.”

She added her children – aged 11, eight and four – had been able to learn things during the holidays and put their skills from school into practice.

“Sometimes you can go out and about and the children are actually learning all the time,” Ms Eaton said.

“They’ve learned how to paddleboard and fish, and sometimes you do an activity and maths and English come into that.”