The school year has stayed the same for all of our lifetimes. 6 weeks holiday between every school year, 3 terms, week long half terms and 2 weeks off for christmas and Easter, simple. The Welsh government though have plans to change the current system, shifting holidays around and even changing the current 6 weeks holiday to as few as 4 weeks.
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NewsTranscript
00:00 The six-week summer isn't seen by everyone as a holiday.
00:06 Many parents view a six-week summer break as too long, where boredom, less physical
00:11 activity and risk of isolation can significantly impact the wellbeing of learners.
00:18 Working parents can struggle to take the full six weeks off, and then finding and financing
00:22 childcare can be a challenge.
00:26 Our dedicated school staff also deserve a structure that allows them to teach and support
00:33 learners alongside the opportunity to properly rest and recuperate.
00:39 The six-week summer holidays are long for many people, and the Welsh Government say
00:42 it doesn't just have an impact on parents and carers, but school children too.
00:47 Learning loss has been proven to increase during the lengthy holidays, and Jeremy Miles
00:51 wants to put an end to it, shifting a few weeks from the summer holidays to elsewhere
00:55 in the school year.
00:57 Learning loss over the summer break affects many learners, and this could be alleviated
01:02 somewhat by redistributing part of the summer break to other times.
01:07 Therefore, our first proposal is to extend the October half-term break to offer increased
01:15 opportunity for learners and teachers to decompress during the longest term.
01:20 Doing this would also reduce the length of time spent in school during the autumn term,
01:25 to bring it more in line with the length of spring and summer terms, while also reducing
01:30 the summer break by one week, to help alleviate learning loss.
01:36 As the length of half-terms in the spring term may vary depending on where Easter falls,
01:42 our second proposal is a spring break that has the potential to be decoupled from Easter,
01:49 should we need to.
01:51 Obviously there are far more people impacted by these changes than just families and school
01:55 children, and opposition to the proposal say the tourism industry would all but collapse
01:59 without the six weeks holidays.
02:01 With tourism in Wales being so seasonal, Laura-Ann Jones says the industry needs protecting.
02:06 With fears from the sector that reducing the summer break will have serious consequences
02:10 for their industry in Wales, and a negative knock-on effect to the wider Welsh economy.
02:15 In a report compiled by the Beaufort Research that the Minister commissioned, one tourism
02:19 boss said that a four-week summer holiday "absolutely terrifies me and would be a monumental
02:25 nightmare".
02:26 Another predicted Wales would lose approximately 75% of tourism attractions if the current
02:31 six-week holiday is cut by two weeks.
02:33 The tourism sector is not happy, unions are not happy, teachers are not happy, and parents
02:39 and learners from the sector's own research are not happy.
02:41 We've seen no actual evidence that changing the school year will have a positive impact
02:47 whatsoever.
02:48 So what, Minister, do you know that the rest of us don't?
02:51 Possible changes to the school year would be drastic, and really the only proper change
02:54 we've seen in many of our lifetimes.
02:56 While these proposals might make sense to a lot of families, opponents wonder if it's
03:00 really what people are asking for right now.
03:02 James B. Watkins, Local TV.
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