School Holidays Are Becoming Holiday Schools

Continued pressure from Ofsted, focusing on student progress in lessons, 3 levels of progress by the end of Key Stage 4 and a backdrop of two consecutive years of falling GCSE results has compounded the need for schools and colleges to provide students with holiday catch-up or 'cramming' programmes.

Putting the engagement of students and parents aside, the biggest problem facing a senior leadership team is how best to staff such holiday schools.

According to some press releases, teacher morale is at "dangerously low levels" within the profession with many teachers following the work to rule policies of their union. This is self-evident with the recent strikes across the country that teachers have felt forced to undertake to get their message surrounding working conditions, curriculum changes and pay and pensions heard by the government. Many teachers feel they need their holidays, now more than ever to recharge and reduce the risk of classroom burn out. Increased scrutiny of their role, a 'box ticking' culture that dumbs down the professional sovereignty of teachers and an ever increasing administrative workload are all eroding teachers' ability to perform optimally. Senior leadership teams are asking their staff for gestures of good will during the holidays at a time when any good will has already been allocated to the usual daily grind of a teacher's day.

What about the kids?

Teachers want to help their students more than anyone but they need their rest and quite rightly so. As a consequence of this, many academies, schools and colleges are turning to outsourced modes of holiday schools. The advantages of using a 'good' company to provide a tailored holiday workshop programme is that students sometimes can benefit greatly from a fresh teaching persona and approach to topics. The pitfalls occur when academies and schools hire companies that deliver a course package with a teacher with poor engagement skills and weak classroom presence. Students must feel that their time during holidays is being put to good use. Some companies do not even assess their students, so how on earth do you gauge the effectiveness of such holiday sessions without assessments? For the princely sum of £7000 in some cases, every school's finance director would surely want to know if student progress was being made?