England should ditch its school calendar “stuck in place since Victorian times” and replace it with shorter summer holidays and longer half-term breaks to improve the lives of pupils and teachers, according to a new report.
The report on tackling post-pandemic education inequalities, to be published by the Nuffield Foundation next month, is to recommend an overhaul of the school calendar that could see summer holidays in state schools reduced from six weeks to four, while half-term breaks in autumn and winter could each be extended from one week to two.
The summary of the report says it is “time to consider reforms to a school calendar that has been stuck in place since Victorian times”.
Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter and one of the report’s authors, said reforming the academic calendar in England would be an effective and low-cost way of tackling the educational divides that have grown since the pandemic.
“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,” Major said.
“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 says that calls to reduce the length of holidays often centre around potential learning loss over the summer. Some pupils, especially those from financially disadvantaged backgrounds and those with additional learning needs, find it difficult to get back to learning after long summer holidays. This results in the autumn term being devoted to revision rather than advancing learning. Teachers also report more behavioural and wellbeing issues after the summer break.
