School summer holidays should be cut to four weeks, report recommends

Schools should extend half-terms and shorten summer holidays to improve behaviour and wellbeing, a new report recommends.

Educational charity The Nuffield Foundation is set to publish a study on overcoming post-pandemic learning disparities, which will recommend changing the current “Victorian” state school calendar.

The recommendations would cut the six-week summer holiday to four weeks and extend half-term holidays from one to two weeks, according to The Guardian.

According to Lee Elliot Major, one of the report’s writers, the reform would be a cost-effective way to combat a growing educational divide.

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The professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter told the paper: “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.”

The report’s summary says it is “time to consider reforms to a school calendar that has been stuck in place since Victorian times”.

Reducing the summer holiday will help prevent learning loss over the break and alleviate behavioural issues upon the start of the autumn term, which the report says disproportionately affects pupils from less financially fortunate backgrounds and with special educational needs.

Teachers also noted an increase in wellbeing issues within the first term and a need to revise subject matter rather than learning new things, the paper added.

The reform would echo the Welsh government’s decision to cut the summer break to five weeks and extend the first half-term in autumn for the 2025-2026 academic year.

The policy change has divided teachers, according to a recent poll by the Teacher Tapp app. A third (33 per cent) backed keeping the summer holiday at six weeks, 35 per cent preferred five weeks and 29 per cent preferred a four-week break.

NASUWT teacher’s union General Secretary Dr Patrick Roach said: “The crisis in our education system requires substantially more investment in services for children and families, not another policy predicated on placing further demands on schools that are overstretched, underfunded and at breaking point.

“These proposals to shorten the school summer holidays are nothing new. Depressingly, what is also not new is the lack of credible evidence demonstrating that such changes would improve educational standards.

“The last 14 years have seen schools trying to fill the gaps as wider children’s services and support for the most vulnerable have all but disappeared.

“Fixing the cumulative impact of the pandemic and 14 years of underfunding of our schools, children’s services and wider public services requires a future government that is willing to invest in the high-quality services that our children and young people deserve.”

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “Decisions on school holidays are made on a local basis and do vary in different areas of England already.

“There’s mixed evidence on the benefits of spreading holidays more evenly across the year and we think it is probably best that these decisions continue to be made locally with the views of families and school staff being taken into account.

“A wholesale national change would involve considerable disruption at a time when we are better off focusing on the immediate challenges in education, such as the staff recruitment and retention crisis.”