As mentioned in The Sun, Rishi Sunak and the Welsh government have proposed to shorten the summer holidays to 5 weeks. However, they have stated that ‘there would be no change in the total number of weeks of holiday’, as they plan to add that extra week to the October holidays. The first ‘shortened summer break’ will be in July 2026 as the changes are to begin in October 2025. In addition to this, another week may also be taken off the summer holidays in the future, but this is not confirmed yet.
As well as this, Welsh education minister Jeremy miles quoted ‘Families struggle to find childcare over the six weeks, and others struggle with the additional costs long summers bring’. This suggest that this decision has also been made to support struggling parents as 72% of lower-income families are in favour of the idea.
However, as explained by GBN news, the number one reason for doing this is to raise attendance as the number of secondary school children persistently absent in England has doubled in the last decade from 567,000 in 2010 to 894,444 in 2021.
According to the website netmums, 40% of parents don’t like the decision to shorten the summer holidays but 60% of parents do support the plan as they said, ‘kids are bored by the end of the summer holidays so it’s better to have the extra week elsewhere’.
Would you like this decision to move forward? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Anabia Yr8
Boston High School Newsroom
It is a tricky one to create the right balance, although as a teacher and a mum I can see both sides to this!
I think this is a good idea, 6 weeks is a long time, but 2 weeks in October would be welcome, as long as the holidays are consistent so parents can plan.