Should we shorten the summer holidays?
I’ve done a little bit of media over the last couple of weeks on one of the things that I wanted to start off with was to tell you all about my chat with Claire Byrne. And I really enjoyed chatting to Claire Byrne on the radio because over in the UK the governments of Wales have decided to consult with everybody and anybody who will listen about whether they should reduce their summer holidays for schools.
The second part of that is they want to take a week off the summer holidays and move it to October where you’d get two weeks in October, rather than one week. They propose reducing the summer break from five or six weeks to four or five weeks. Mary McCarthy, a journalist, thought this was a very good idea.
I was asked to be the counterbalance on the show, where the title was ‘Should School Summer Holidays Be Shortened?’ Mary McCarthy argued for following what Wales is doing and consulting with people about the idea of shortening the summer holidays while extending some of the breaks throughout the year. For example, the midterm breaks could be extended by a week.
Personally, I don’t think it’s a bad idea. Most of us don’t get a full eight weeks of summer holidays anyway. I know for sure that I only get about two or two and a half weeks because of my other responsibilities. But if the summer holidays were shortened slightly or completely, it could be an option to have a six week summer holiday and take two weeks off in October and two weeks in May, creating a more balanced year.
During the radio interview, nobody was disputing that teachers don’t work hard enough. It was a nice conversation and I had a laugh. Since I started going on the radio a few years ago, it has been my ambition to respond to people who claim that teachers only work a short day by saying that they probably say that radio presenters only work two hours a day. During this interview, I finally had the opportunity to do so!
If you’re interested in listening to the full interview, you can find it on RTE.ie here. I had a great time on the show and we had some fun too.
