Yes, indeed. The big thing we are talking about is varying holidays, which is intrinsically attractive, but we will never be able to move them that far, because August is August—the warmest time of year in Europe—and Christmas is Christmas. There might be a little flexibility on whether the Easter holiday takes places at Easter, but a teacher will not want the first half of term to represent 40% and the second half to be 60%, because that has a number of implications for education. Varying could be done to some extent, but my recommendation is not to do it over big areas. Some of the other advantages of staggered holidays, such as changes to road capacity usage and train capacity usage, would be lost if everyone in a massive area had the same holiday. Varying could be done at a sub-regional level.
I am not sure that holidays need a big national plan, because schools increasingly have the freedom and ability to vary them under the Government’s reforms. There is nothing to stop schools getting together—there is, for example, the education improvement partnership in my area—and saying, “We are going to do it slightly differently to give parents in our area a bit more room.” That will not, however, solve the whole problem or make holidays in August cost the same as holidays in April. There is a limited amount of movement and, at the end of the day, we just cannot change when the sun shines.
5.22 pm