Every year, Alice Johnson and her husband sit down with laptops, calendars, notepads and two phones to plan how to manage the six-week summer holidays with their two daughters, aged seven and ten. It is, she says, a stressful and complicated process that leaves her with a headache.
Working parent juggling act
In a normal school week, Johnson, a self-employed freelance journalist, works 38 hours across weekdays. She uses her children's breakfast club, dropping them off at 8am, and an after-school club that finishes at 4.30pm, giving her two extra hours of work a day. She also swaps after-school care with a friend: she looks after her friend's two children on Mondays, and the friend does the same for her on Fridays.
When the holidays arrive, that routine collapses. This summer, Johnson has had to cut her working week to three days. On Mondays and Fridays she cares for her own children, which she describes as "like having long weekends for six weeks". But because she is self-employed, she gets no holiday pay: when she does not work, she does not earn.
The cost of childcare
For three Tuesdays, her daughters are booked into a school holiday camp that costs £25 per child per day – a total of £150 for only half the holidays, because the camp runs for just three of the six weeks. Booking more than that on her reduced hours could mean making a financial loss. Johnson says she must choose between working less and earning less, or working more and spending all of that on childcare.
Her husband works from home on Wednesday mornings and has booked annual leave for the afternoons. Her father-in-law helps out on Thursdays. The family has also managed to book one week off together, which leaves two weeks with no summer camps available. She has no idea what they will do.
Local sports sessions are available, but they cost £20 for a two-hour session – £40 for two children – and Johnson cannot get enough work done in those two hours to cover the cost. She also worries about keeping children occupied for six weeks: towards the end of term they are tired, irritable and need a break, but too long a break means they miss their friends, the lack of routine unsettles them and they get bored.
Why four weeks is better
Johnson argues the summer holidays should be cut to four weeks, citing the cost of childcare, the welfare of children from under-resourced backgrounds, and the negative impact long breaks have on learning. Teachers, she notes, often spend days or weeks of the new autumn term revisiting old lessons because children forget so much over the summer.
The long summer holiday, she points out, dates back to the Victorian era, when children helped their parents bring in the harvest. "Frankly, it's archaic," she says.
The financial toll
Working out the sums, Johnson says reducing her hours to three days a week costs her £800 over five weeks (with one week's holiday discounted). The holiday camps run only five hours a day, meaning another £120 in lost working hours – that adds up to £920. Add the £150 cost of the camps for three weeks, and the total lost is £1,060. This does not include higher household bills or the cost of activities to keep the children busy.
She makes a list of free things to do every year, but it cannot fill six weeks, and much depends on the unreliable British summer weather. The holidays, she says, are a difficult balance of organisation, unaffordable childcare and paid leave that should be better aligned with the demands of working parents and the learning needs of children.
A call for action
Johnson believes a four-week holiday would reduce the extortionate cost of full-time childcare, protect children who need protection, and help teachers maximise new learning in the autumn term. She thinks working parents have accepted the six-week break as a "financial, organisational nightmare" and that no one has made a strong enough argument to the government for change.
"What needs to happen now is action," she says. She hopes parents and teachers will push for a solution and says she will be contacting the new Education Secretary to make her views known. As the long weeks stretch ahead, she expects more parents to agree. "So sorry kids, it's time to cut short the summer holidays."
