School summer holidays should be reduced to fours weeks, new report says

School summer holidays should be cut to four weeks, with longer half-term breaks, according to a report.

The new report, aimed at tackling post-pandemic education inequalities, suggests England should ditch the current school calendar which has ‘stuck in place since Victorian times’, replacing it with a shorter summer holiday and longer half-term break.

The report is part of a project funded by the Nuffield Foundation and will be published next month recommending an overhaul of the school calendar to update it to suit modern-working families, pupils and teachers.

It will recommend summer holidays to be cut from six weeks down to four while winter and autumn half-terms would be extended from one week to two.

As reported in the Guardian, Lee Elliott Major, a professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter and one of the report’s authors, says a reform of the school calendar would be an effective and low cost way to tackle the educational divides that have grown since the pandemic.

He said: “Spreading school holidays more evenly across the year makes complete educational sense: improving the wellbeing of pupils and the working lives of teachers at no extra cost, balancing out childcare costs for parents, and potentially boosting academic results for many children.”

“Reducing the summer holidays from six weeks to four weeks would still provide adequate time for teachers to recuperate, while two-week breaks during the February and October half-terms would give much-needed time off during the most gruelling parts of the academic year,” added Major.

The report says the reduction of the summer break will help pupils particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with additional learning needs who find it difficult to get back to learning after the long holiday.

Teachers also report a noticeable behavioural change and wellbeing issues after the summer holidays.

It also mentions that several school trusts and local authorities have already introduced a two-week half term or have incorporated staff training days into a week rather than being spread across the year.

Unity Schools Partnership, a multi-academy trust, said its trial of a longer half-term last autumn saw absences fall dramatically among pupils and teachers.

However, it said that it saw some objections from parents because of childcare difficulties.

Recent polling by the Teacher Tapp app found teachers were split over whether the summer holidays should be shortened and by how much. While 33% of teachers backed keeping the summer break at six weeks, 35% preferred it to be shortened to five weeks and 29% wanted it to be reduced to four.

However, it’s not the first time there’s been calls for reform of the school calendar.

Under the former education secretary, Michael Gove, back in 2013, free schools and academies were given more freedom to set their own calendars. 

But those adopting more radical timetables faced opposition from parents as well as an inability to coordinate term dates with other schools, and so soon gave up. 

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Changing the length of the summer holiday is an idea that has been posited for many years and inevitably there are a range of different views.”

He continued: “There is some evidence that suggests changes could be beneficial to pupils and parents, but other research has been far less conclusive. It’s important that the impact of any changes are properly considered and must not be rushed into.

“The report identifies some very real issues, including the growing mental health crisis and the disparity between disadvantaged pupils and their peers. It’s possible that changes to the school calendar could ameliorate these problems to some extent.

“But it could also prove a huge energy-sapping distraction from the most pressing issues of recruitment and retention, special-needs provision and funding for education.”