Christmas school holidays are being slashed with a council playing the role of Scrooge.
Children could get their shortest holiday in years after Essex County Council decided to get rid of the traditional two week break during the festive period.
Booo! Hisss!
Term dates for the academic year 2017/18 have been announced by the local education authority.
They reveal rather than breaking up on Friday, December 15, schools will not finish for another five days until Wednesday, December 20.
Term time will resume on January 2.
It means there will only be 12 days between the end of the autumn term and the start of the Spring term.
Oh noes! The poor darlings! Whatever will they do?
… But the cut will be a blow to teachers, who ignoring bank holidays and weekends will only get a five day break, and could cause childcare issues for parents, especially if different schools opt for different periods off.
Schools aren’t a holiday camp or a childminding service. Suck it up.
Have you noticed that as we have become wealthier we have become more demanding also on top of which we do like to lavish ours and other peoples riches mostly other peoples on the poorer in society. Blighting the lives of everyone. The poor prosper more slowly than if they had been left alone and the wealthier become poorer as they get nothing back of much worth that is for being robbed of their money. The benefit only is that more of us can interfere in and control the lives of others and then praise ourselves for the harm we do. Then of course we have the propensity to guard our rights and privileges with aggressive outrage when we are called on to make sensible sacrifices that are for the common good.
ReplyDeleteNo doubt few who read this will agree with a word I have written. However unblinkered observation of human behaviour and the true consequences of it will bring many quickly to the same conclusion as me. Added to which a proper study of history and economics not the Keynes/lefty variety will throw up plenty of evidence to support that opinion.
"No doubt few who read this will agree with a word I have written."
ReplyDeleteI pretty much agree with every word. It pisses me off when people claim to be so much better than me because they think that it is a virtue to be generous with other people's money.
Stonyground
"who ignoring bank holidays and weekends will only get a five day break"
ReplyDeleteJust like everybody else then.
Where's that world's smallest violin again?
Re the teacher holiday thing: my wife teaches (and I did briefly before retirement) and she doesn't actually get many holidays as such. There is -- as I found out too -- a ton of pointless paperwork to be completed, reports to write and a host of box ticking to keep those above her (and above me, for a time) who have never taught in some degree of satisfaction. Much of this, including endless 'training' where the same old same old is pumped out time and again, has to be done in one's own time.
ReplyDeleteOne has to prepare a lesson plan to demonstrate what the aim of the lesson is and what the outcomes are meant to be, and not forgetting the 'diversity' of ability and background, all of which must be noticed and adjusted accordingly. But when you teach the one thing you yourself learn is that is unacceptable to enter on the lesson plan is something honest like "Aim to stop the little darlings from strangling each other (or at least fighting over chairs, of all things)"
Putting down that one aim is wake up gently the ones who have fallen asleep in lessons because they were up until 5 in the morning playing "Whack-a-Mole Call of Warcraft" or something just isn't acceptable. Nor can you put down the 'outcome' as: "All of the students are able to leave the lesson under their own steam."
But reality never has a box to be ticked when it comes to education.
"ignoring bank holidays and weekends"??
ReplyDeleteEh?
What?
I suspect the changes will come as some relief to many parents - at least those of them who have jobs anyway.
ReplyDeleteSpilt the wine - pray for Essex girls?
ReplyDeleteStengle,
ReplyDeleteExactly how much of the three months a year school holidays (plus inset days at the beginning of each term or half term period) is spent on form filling, attending pointless training, or preparing lesson plans? My daughters are unable to obtain child minding facilities where they live and have to take unpaid leave every time there is an inset day, which costs them hundreds of Pounds a year in lost earnings plus affecting their promotion prospects within their respective companies. The alternative is to take the inset days off their holiday entitlement or their husbands doing the same. I accept that teaching is not an easy profession (I have been an instructor in both the British Army and the Police) but their current conditions of employment are better than those of my father, who was a history teacher for 32 years.
Penseivat
Anonymous/Penseivat
ReplyDeleteThe education system gives my wife five weeks off a year: the rest of time she has to be in work filling in paperwork and attending meetings and, as mentioned, training. The 'schools are empty' line means that it is the students who get the time off, not the teachers.
I admit it was slightly different for me when I taught: I was employed on an hourly basis in term time only so any time between lessons (in some cases an hour) was on my unpaid time. Of course I could have driven the 12 miles home and then back within the hour, but it was easier to stay and do some more of the endless paperwork. The funny thing about teaching on an hourly-paid basis in term times, not those generous holidays, is that the students (in some cases aggressively) accused me of making 35,000 a year. On the other hand these same students thought the moment they left the education system they would all get paid 30,000 a year and wouldn't even have to turn up on time each day.
Even funnier was that I was able to tell some of them that there wasn't the faintest chance I would ever employ them if I went back to being a manager, as once was. Hilarity, as you would expect, then ensued.
"Have you noticed that as we have become wealthier we have become more demanding also on top of which we do like to lavish ours and other peoples riches mostly other peoples on the poorer in society."
ReplyDeleteThis must, indeed, be what the decline and fall of ancient Rome felt like...
"Where's that world's smallest violin again?"
It's got so small it's invisible! :)
"Eh?
What?"
Quite!
"Spilt the wine - pray for Essex girls?"
:D
"Even funnier was that I was able to tell some of them that there wasn't the faintest chance I would ever employ them if I went back to being a manager, as once was. Hilarity, as you would expect, then ensued."
I would have loved to have seen that!