A new report, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, has recommended that the six-week school summer holiday should be reduced to four weeks, and the two weeks redistributed so that schools have a two-week half-term in October and February. Lee Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter, said that spreading out the holidays more equally throughout the year would ‘improve the wellbeing of pupils and the working lives of teachers, balance out childcare costs for parents, and potentially boost academic results for many children’.

I’m not convinced shortening the summer holidays would actually do any of those things. Firstly, I highly doubt that having extra time off in October and February – two of the darkest, coldest, wettest months of the year – would do much to improve staff or pupil wellbeing. Teachers would inevitably end up working through most of it, and pupils would spend the extra time festering inside, probably glued to multiple screens, because sports camps and social clubs don’t run over winter when the pitches are waterlogged and the energy bills are too high. Instead, we would have them locked up for the whole of July, sweating away in non-air-conditioned classrooms, when the days are longer, lighter, and warmer. Anyone who has ever taught in a school, or read Romeo and Juliet, knows that heat is a catalyst for bad behaviour.

I’m also not sure how it would balance out childcare costs, given that employed parents still get the same number of annual leave days a year, and so would still have the same administrative issue to resolve. Here’s one thing it would definitely do though: push up the already eye-wateringly expensive premium on holidays out of term time. Parents will probably be less willing to go abroad in October and February, where you have to fly long-haul for guaranteed sunshine, meaning that the vast majority of families will be competing to go away in the same four weeks: cue larger costs, larger crowds, and a large impact on seasonal economies like Cornwall’s. Some will choose, understandably, to take their children on holiday in term time instead, as a £60 fine is insignificant compared to the hundreds or even thousands you might save on an off-peak all-inclusive holiday or some earlier Easyjet flights.

Anyone who has ever taught in a school knows that heat is a catalyst for bad behaviour

There is an argument that cutting the summer holidays may help to mitigate the learning loss that happens over a longer break, sometimes called the ‘summer slide’. Yet other countries with excellent education systems have much longer summer holidays than us: Ireland, Italy, Spain and Portugal have 12 weeks; Estonia and Finland have 11 weeks; Canada has ten weeks; America and Sweden have nine weeks; whilst China and South Korea have eight weeks. The UK is already an outlier in many respects: we have the fewest public holidays of any country in the world bar Mexico, the shortest summer holidays of any country in Europe, and we also start school two or three years earlier than most OECD countries. I am not sure quantity of education is the issue here.

Maybe I am just being nostalgic and sentimental, but I genuinely believe that the summer holidays are a sacred time: a precious break from the pressure of homework and tests; a chance for children to spend time outdoors; an opportunity to learn important life skills or pursue extracurricular activities or, God forbid, to cope with being bored. When I think of summer holidays, I think of disappearing on bikes with friends until the sun went down, or setting up makeshift camps in the garden with a hastily-assembled picnic, or endless made-up games with my siblings in the driveway: precious, formative experiences that probably would never have been achieved over this February half-term, where it rained everyday except one.

Perhaps a better alternative would be to keep the summer holidays the length they are (something the majority of teachers and parents want), and instead seriously consider how we can better support working parents, single parents, or disadvantaged families. For example, in Sweden, parents can apply for income-linked summer camps, where children can try fishing, drama and sports, as well as helping out with chores including cooking and cleaning, all for as little as £0 to £28 per day. There are some similar, more affordable options in the UK, like Forest Schools, National Citizen Service, or YMCA and YHA Camps, but the reality is that discounts are limited, and often only for pupils on free school meals. If you are not eligible, then one charity estimates it will cost you on average £943 per child for provision over the holiday, and so the subsidies or opportunities on offer do not go anywhere near far enough.

Shortening the school summer holidays therefore does nothing to ease financial pressures or logistical stresses, but it does take away from the welcome reprieve and mental and physical freedom those six weeks bring. If anything, we should be giving families more flexibility to choose when to take holiday rather than less, because education happens as much outside of school as it does inside.