Just like an honest game of stuck in the mud being rid of in favour of health and safety. Just like complimentary cartons of milk in school being replaced by “You’ve not got enough on your token for that love”.

It seems like another once cherished tradition may to have outgrown its welcome in today’s ever shifting schools.

Soon, many parents will sit up and take notice of that email or in many cases that text sent from the Head teacher of their child’s school.
What’s this? Summer holidays commence on the 1st August? Even accounting for the usual clump of inset day squeezed in before hand? But that’s not a holiday! My kids deserve a longer break than this!

Yes it is, and no-they really don’t.

In August last year, I, like many other British holiday makers in France, woke up to headlines reading ‘Looting continues’ and ‘London’s burning’. To be sat in the breakfast room of a French hotel, croissants and all, far from the media frenzy these looters were stirring up back home, it made me realize one thing: It is embarrassing. Then across the way I saw a young family sat round the table playing cards over pots of coffee, and it made me realize something else.

These looters have no idea how to entertain themselves. They’re as bored as many creatures in a zoo, being gawped at in anticipation all day. So their coping strategy was to loot. If the school summer holidays were shorter, these youth wouldn’t have had any reason to get so bored in the first place, tarnishing young peoples reputation even further.

Alas! It is not just pupils who require the annual six week break. Their increasingly over-worked teachers call for it also, seemingly in order to refresh and rejuvenate themselves ahead of the new term. Even I, having left a Catholic High School last year, appreciate how impudent and immature some children can be. Currently in college, the workload teacher’s face must weigh like several heavy burdens on their conscience.

Then again, they are not and are unlikely to ever be part of the 270,000 public sector workers who were made redundant last year.
To cut to the chase, schools are always going to need teachers. Do the perils of that heap of work taking form on a desk somewhere really compare to the uncertainty of job security and booking annual leave faced by other public sector workers? It seems other professions in the public sector would benefit more from the six week holiday.

On the most part, changes that have been made in schools have been made for the better. Smart boards replacing whiteboards, tasty yet healthy lunches replacing other calorie and cavity inducing foods. Let’s keep this trend going, and send the six week school summer holidays packing. No doubt we’ll have to get tiresome consent first!