In some ways, and somewhat counterintuitively, the long-awaited summer break can be irksome when it finally arrives. That’s because of the jibes teachers are used to hearing throughout the year but which ramp up around now and go something like this: “It’s a cushy number being a teacher - look at all the holidays they get.”

If teachers heard such comments only from the type of people who clog up radio phone-in moanfests, that would be one thing. But they frequently field the same sort of digs from friends and family, ostensibly in good humour but sometimes with a passive-aggressive undertow.

Of course, teachers have to develop thick skins to do the job and such comments may not overly bother them. But, like midges on a west-coast campsite or Piers Morgan on your Twitter feed, they can be a constant irritation. And the wearisome remarks about teachers’ holidays betray an ignorance about the demands of the job.

For a start, teachers constantly have to be “on” - you can’t just tell that Tuesday morning National 5 maths class that you’re having a blue day, so could they just get on with those equations while you go out for a restorative stroll?

And the thing that can make teaching the best job in the world - the ability to shape young lives for the better - can also make it a singularly high-stakes, high-pressure profession. Knowing that your influence could be the pivotal factor in a student’s life may be richly rewarding, but the flip side is that, at times, some of those pupils you are so heavily invested in will struggle, and your concern for them can be a heavy load.

The unique demands of teaching

Of course, while a teacher might in theory have six or seven weeks off in the summer - notwithstanding any work that creeps into that period - you can’t just take a holiday whenever you want. You’re bound to certain blocks of the year, and the market forces that cause holiday prices to surge upwards during those periods.

Not that I hear teachers protesting about any of the above all that often - they’re generally a pretty stoic bunch, whatever contrary stereotypes are peddled by some commentators. However, the point remains: teaching presents unique demands that more than justify holiday arrangements different from those in other professions.

But what to do with these six or seven weeks, which, as of today, should have started for the vast majority of people working in Scottish schools?

There were some grumbles about a recent piece by former secondary headteacher Isabelle Boyd (see bit.ly/SummerIB) when she suggested that CPD could be a part of a teacher’s summer - although, to be fair, hers was a pretty broad definition of CPD that included flicking through a thought-provoking page-turner on the beach.

Others, such as primary school depute head Susan Ward, advise that it is “totally valid to have no plans at all”. She warns teaching can be such a high-pressure, frenetic job - teachers are “used to clattering along at rate of knots, firing through to-do list after to-do list” - that it is not always easy to adjust to a slower pace. Indeed, she says, sometimes it feels like there is too much “pressure to pack the summer holiday full to bursting with challenging experiences”.

As you’ll see on pages 12-17 this week, teachers get up to all manner of activities during the summer. Rest is critical for everyone in education (see pages 22-27). But what different people find “restful” can vary dramatically - some, for example, may feel that restfulness is a state of mind achieved by pushing the body to extremes.

Whatever works for you, enjoy the summer. Teachers and other educators don’t just deserve a holiday - they deserve a guilt-free break from work, without any sniping from the non-teachers of the world.

Henry Hepburn is news editor at Tes Scotland. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn

Tes Scotland will be publishing throughout the summer, so pick up a copy or head to tes.com/news for breaking news and views

This article originally appeared in the 5 July 2019 issue under the headline “The bummer about summer is the sniping from the sidelines”