Holidays who needs them?

13th January 1995, 12:00am

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Holidays who needs them?

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/holidays-who-needs-them
Della Cadman proposes a revolutionary and provocative idea. School holidays! Children long for them, parents dread them, teachers need them. But is there any real need for them?

Having recently left teacher training I can empathise with teachers. Unless you have an in-depth knowledge of the pressure which teachers are under, it is easy to sit back and say that holidays should be cut.

Many people away from the profesion feel that teachers have a cushy life. However, given the demands of the national curriculum, the record keeping and out-of-hours commitments which are required of teachers, it would be hard to match this job to any other in terms of hard work and professionalism, and hard.

In the past few years cuts have led to many teachers losing their jobs and it is getting increasingly harder for new graduates to find appointments. Therefore there is a large number of people who are not only unfortunate in being unable to find employment but are also acting as a drain on the country’s finances. Having received grant aid (however small) from their local councils for the four years they were training, they are now drawing unemployment and other benefits instead of repaying their grant in service to the local community.

If children’s holidays were cut back and more time was spent in school, teaching of the national curriculum could be spread over a longer period, making it easier to administer and assess.

However, there would probably be an uproar from teachers who feel they need the holidays to re-charge their batteries. After all many parents complain about having children off school during holiday periods, so how would they feel if they were responsible for 25 to 35 children during this time?

So if teachers need their holidays and children don’t, maybe the answer could be to set up a team of supply teachers on a permanent basis who could go into schools and provide holiday cover for the permanent staff.

In this way, teachers would get their well earned holidays, children’s schooling would not be interrupted and the hundreds of redundant teachers would be able to work and make their contribution to society in the way that they trained for.

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