If you think that you pay too much during the School Holidays to take your family away, and have been tempted to ‘extend’ the children’s summer break by either finishing the school term a bit early or not sending the children back when the autumn term begins, taking advantage of the cheaper prices available from travel companies, outside of peak times, then think again.
Under new proposals announced by the Education Secretary, Michael Grove, the school calendar could be in for a major shake up, with summer school holidays becoming more ‘flexible’ for academies and free schools.
The majority of state schools in the UK take a 6 week summer break from the end of July to the beginning of September for school holidays. The new calendar would mean that schools could have this summer holiday period reduced to 4 weeks, that could be taken at any time between the beginning of July to the end of September.
Some reports, and thinking behind this, have suggested that it could mean the end to over inflated pricing within the new school holidays period by holiday companies. However, there are stronger indications that it could mean prices would remain high throughout the whole of the 3 month flexible school holidays break; also allowing the areas either side of the holidays mid June to mid October, the ‘shoulders’, to be increased slightly as they are are with the the traditional school holidays calendar as it presently is. It could also mean that October pricing remains higher, due to Half Term breaks, again, another high priced school holiday period, taking place during the last week of October.
There are to be 1,100 new academies by next year with the government hoping 100 free schools will be established by 2012. Under powers granted last year, these schools are allowed to set their own term dates and alter the school timetable.
As well as switching from three to six terms a year, schools are allowed lengthen their hours to last from 8am to 8pm and those schools with a large number of pupils may open 51 weeks of the year.
