Wealden Times | WT197 | July 2018 | Interiors supplement inside

School’s out!
Education
It’s the start of the long summer holiday, but do our
kids really need this long break? asks Hilary Wilce
It’s July. School’s out. And pupils and teachers
- but especially teachers are ecstatic!
By this time of year most of them are wrung out,
overwrought, and maybe too exhausted even to say a proper
thank you for the many presents that parents give them.
Because this end-of-year gifting ritual has grown over
the years until it is now practically written in stone
that parents must shower their children’s teachers with
chocolates, bath oil and theatre vouchers. In fact, like so
many things in modern life, it has become a positive rat
race of one-upmanship, with some parents in wealthy
areas bestowing designer handbags and wads of cash.
But teachers often say they appreciate the
kind notes and cards far more than the presents
themselves (well, perhaps not the cash…).
This is because today’s teaching is so often a thankless
task. While many teachers love their hours in the classroom
and say it’s a privilege to be shaping young minds,
almost all now work in less-than-ideal circumstances.
Most have to deal with a trying combination of wayward
pupils, constantly changing exams and syllabuses, underfunded
schools, poor management and complaining parents. In
addition they have to read damning headlines about teachers
in the press and are often blamed for social ills like obesity and
child mental health problems, whose roots lie far beyond school.
So a few kind words from an appreciative parent
at the end of term can feel like gold dust.
But you, as a parent – even as you hand over your carefully
wrapped bottle of body lotion - might actually not be feeling
all that appreciative of a profession which goes AWOL for
six to eight weeks of the summer, leaving you to devise
numerous cunning and expensive ways to keep your child
supervised and entertained. Surely, you think, any job that
gives people that sort of summer break is a bit of a doddle?
The long summer holiday was historically there so
children could help with the harvest. But now, when
all that most children harvest is ‘likes’ for their social
media posts, there are plenty of people in and around the
educational world who say it’s time for schools to chop
the school year into more manageable bite-sized pieces.
A few have already done so, and say the advantages are
overwhelming. Pupils don’t forget so much of what they’ve
learned in their shorter summer holiday. Neither do they get
so bored. Pupils and teachers alike no longer have to crawl
exhausted to the end of three long terms. Family holidays can
be spread throughout the year. And working parents - which
these days means most parents - find it easier to plug the kind
of childcare gaps created by regular short school breaks.
But, as the headmaster of one of this country’s leading
independent schools recently explained to me, it ain’t
never going to happen on any widespread scale. The
universities and exam boards, he said, are far too invested
in how things run now to consider tearing up their
timetables. Also his “poor teachers” would be horrified
at the thought of losing their long summer break.
Perhaps surprisingly, the only group he thought would
welcome it would be the pupils. At the end of last summer
he had bumped into one of his girl students in the local
town and asked her how she was. She looked glum and she
was, she told him, “schoolsick”, and absolutely longing for
the routines and activities of school to start up again.
However no-one – not pupils, teachers or even parents
- feels like this in July, when the long, lazy promise
of summer lies ahead. Happy holidays everyone.
149 wealdentimes.co.uk