Every July, Alice Johnson and her husband sit down with laptops, calendars and notepads to plan how they will cover the six-week summer break for their two daughters, aged seven and 10. For Johnson, a self-employed freelance journalist, the exercise is a source of constant stress. “There’s always a stressful couple of weeks before the kids are off, when my only thought is: ‘What are we going to do about the six-week break?’” she says.
Johnson normally works 38 hours a week across school days, using a breakfast club with drop-off at 8am and an after-school club until 4.30pm. She also trades childcare with a friend, looking after her two children on Mondays while the friend returns the favour on Fridays. “It’s complicated, but it works without breaking the bank,” she explains.
A six-week financial puzzle
During the holidays, this routine disappears. Johnson has had to cut her working hours to three days a week, with Mondays and Fridays spent looking after her children. Since she is self-employed, she gets no holiday pay; when she doesn’t work, she doesn’t earn.
For three Tuesdays during the summer, her children attend a holiday camp costing £25 per child per day. That amounts to £150 – but the camp only runs for three of the six weeks. Booking more would make her work financially pointless. “I have to choose between working less and earning less, or working more but spending all of that on childcare,” Johnson says.
The rest of the week is a patchwork of arrangements. On Wednesdays, her husband works from home in the morning and takes annual leave in the afternoon; her father-in-law looks after the girls on Thursdays. The family has booked one week off together, leaving two weeks with no camp availability. Local sports sessions cost £20 for a two-hour slot – £40 for both children – and Johnson says she cannot earn enough in that time to justify the expense.
The cost of a six-week break
Johnson calculates that reducing her hours to three days a week costs her £800 over five weeks (one week is holiday). Because the holiday camps only run for five hours a day, she loses an additional £120 in working time, bringing the subtotal to £920. Adding the £150 camp fees gives a total of £1,060 – before household bills and the cost of activities to keep the children occupied.
This is not just a problem for the self-employed. Johnson notes that friends in full-time work are also spending thousands on childcare during the holidays. “Some of my friend’s child care options are racking up in the thousands,” she writes.
Why four weeks would help
Johnson argues that the six-week break is too long for children, too. They miss their friends, become bored and lose structure. Teachers then spend weeks in the autumn term re-teaching material that pupils have forgotten over the summer.
Her proposal is to cut the summer holidays to four weeks. That would still give children a proper break, but it would ease the childcare cost burden, protect children from under-resourced backgrounds, and reduce learning loss. “A four-week holiday would minimise the extortionate costs of full-time childcare, work to protect those who need protection, and really help teachers maximise new learning in the autumn term,” she says. She describes the current system as “unfair on both parents, and our kids.”
A Victorian-era holdover
The long summer holiday dates back to the Victorian era, when children were needed to help bring in the harvest. Johnson calls this irrelevant today. “Frankly, it’s archaic,” she says.
She believes the policy has survived only because working parents have quietly accepted the financial and organisational strain. “No-one has made a strong enough argument to the government that it needs to be changed, or at least assessed,” she writes.
Call for action
Johnson urges parents and teachers to push for a change. With a new government in power, she sees a prime opportunity to raise the issue and says she will be contacting the new Education Secretary. “As the long weeks stretch ahead, I’m sure more and more parents will agree,” she adds. So sorry kids, it’s time to cut short the summer holidays.
