0:00 – Intro
2:12 – What Were School Holidays Originally For?
8:45 – Independent Schools Vs. State School Holidays
15:47 – School Holidays Around the World
25:15 – Should School Holidays be Longer?
31:21 – Should School Holidays be shorter?
41:13 – Advice for the New Academic Year
44:44 – Outro

Intro

[Music] the education Lounge podcast so there’s been a lot of talks nationally about sort of make shortening school holidays or redistributingholidays I don’t know if you’ve followed it much or I haven’t followed the actual no I haven’t found the news about it butI’ve I’ve had thoughts on it yeah what were your thoughts initially initially Iwould say there’s it’s very balanced there’s like a lot of positives on either side of the argumenta lot of negatives on either side as well so I don’t really have a final conclusion just yet but maybe we can uhcome to one today do you remember I don’t know if you’d like think back muchto school holidays that you had when you were a child and sort of your overallfeelings on them I don’t know if you found them too long ohI think it depends on my age so like in Primary Schoolthey did feel quite long and I did end up getting bored to other like latterpart of it but then Secondary School they were about right I’d sayit’s different for me I got all quite bored just like no whenever we had Ithink like because we’ll go more into this later by Independent Schools have longer schoolholidays yeah and um I found I found them a little too long becausewe had like eight weeks very insanely long and yeah I found ittoo too much I think by like the fourth week or the fifth week I’m kind of a little a little bored yeah but then youalso only child right so you didn’t have yeah yeah so we must protect the only onlychildren because remember as well because birth weight rates are going down there’s going to be more and more only child yeah children so they’re notgoing to be able to have siblings around and that kind of thing well let’s go into like what the

What Were School Holidays Originally For?

school holidays are for yeah and like the background behind yeah so one of thereasons why they’re so long in the first place is because of working patternsum in the old old times yeah more more agrarianeconomies and the children would need to help out their parents in the with theHarvest it’s kind of borne out of that but I think now it’s kind ofThe Narrative is a bit repurposed because now it’s about like offeringpeople enough rest those are really about that in the old like it wasn’t about downtime it wasabout about actually getting people to to work yeah um on something else so so you should beworking on something else in that time really well the change is as good as a as goodas a rest as I say I I do find that like like sometimes Ido like just resting sitting back and in a I don’t know ondeck chair or whatever sunbathing or something like that I kind of think what’s what’s the point ofwhat’s the point of this I should be doing something else I’ve never been able to just sit on a beachit’s so it’s so hard for me to do because I’m always like I kind of wanted I like holidays where I like go out anddo see things and do things yeah or like um visit museums or or something likethat so I’m actually like learning or stimulating myself in some way yeah butyou know like recently I think I’ve started to appreciate it a bit more just resting but I find that after a few daysit just becomes too much yeah for me after one and a half days ofdoing nothing I need to do something I’d say at least two probably yeah I’d saytwo days I can rest solidly for two days and not do do much but after that itbecomes a bit like why am I doing this that was the what’s the purpose I would justre-energize and you know yeah heal but I think youhealed by doing you can also heal by doing something different there’s like new experiences canyou know uh sort of bring you a A New Perspective on thingsand sort of open up your creative juices as well so would you say that the thesome holidays that was like the main or only reason was uh how about on farmsand things but that that was like well obviously like I think everyone needs some downtime at some point but originally but originally they’re so long for that reasonand now we don’t have a growing economy so I think it’s important that weas a country and and based on sort of our modern economyhow should we redistribute holidays and that kind of thing I mean the one one strongestargument for like just keeping it the same is just because disruption isis not necessarily a good thing like sometimes if you change something you know it ends up disrupting people’spatterns which is sometimes not a good thing yeah but it’s also difficult nowbecause well in terms of child care before you’d havethe mother would be like at home looking after the child well yeah so like nowhaving a long time holiday like that but again it was like based on the farm thing but in today’s termswe have like basically both parents are working yeah so what happens there’s like threedifferent stakeholders isn’t it like you’ve got the parents you’ve got the teachers and you’ve got the the studentsyeah and they all they all should be considered and before you come up with aso the final conclusion you’ve got to weigh up the benefits and negatives for each of the stakeholdersum yeah as you say the economy is very different now um we’re both parents are usuallyusually working yeah so that limits how much time they canspend with their kids rightly or wrongly um unfortunately it’s like quitedifficult to find a job that can support a whole a whole family it was very rare yeah there is also thissort of like cultural understanding that school holidays are at this time so everyone so we’ll take in a break at thesame time it’s all yeah so so it’s not quite as disruptive as it could be iflike half half the people work in half and half not there is this sort of understanding thatroughly now everybody is off yeah yeah all working less at least yepum but then I I kind of think to myself well you know doctors and nurses and thingslike that their their work doesn’t stop during that time like they they sort of continue although they do tend to buildup holiday for that time but that’s only because that’s the sort of set time that you sayokay well everyone’s going off on holiday I mean there’s this whole argument about how teachers they work really hardthroughout the year and then they need that time to reset and so do students but I just think everyone’s working hardlike no matter what you’re doing like should teachers automatically getlike six weeks or students get six weeks when you know other people don’tI definitely feel that as a Tuesday because we don’t really holiday March so no but then I alsodon’t think our hours are as long as most people’s hellothey are quite long they’re quite long but I mean I mean I don’t get back till eightbut most people will start a 7A in the morning and then I’ll go back to latewe start later we finish later sure yeah we could always be doing more everyone can but I mean we can talkabout the reasons to like for a longer and shorter a bit later on I was going to discuss

Independent Schools Vs. State School Holidays

the um length of holidays and how they differ between different schools in this country Independence course haveessentially they’ve got longer days 8 30 to 4 oh like nine to four whatever it isand then obviously this is not including extracurricular yeah after school thingstoday’s scores have shorter days yeah but but they’ve got shorter days but they’vegot short holidays to compensate basically yeah so they move to the same roughly the same number of hours yeah Ithink it’s like 32 and a half away per time or whatever yeah I don’t know whether it’s exactly the same but well Imean like roughly but but yeah um yeah if you’ve got longer longer daysand stuff like that then then you can kind of support longer holidays I suppose and what would you prefer I meanI I liked having long holidays longer days until long holidays I didn’treally notice much of a difference I mean leaving at four is not that different leaving a 3 15.well I think educationally like there’s a massive difference between a lot of state school students andindependent school students or selective Independent School students if you think about it like one of thebiggest reasons why we should potentially reform this uhreform these holidays is because like students that are of low lower capabilityum struggle more after a holiday after a break yeah whereas like in a school likeforest or like a selective School you don’t have that issue as much sureyou forget things or you might forget stuff after a holiday but it’s not nearly as pronounced yeah because youhave if you’ve got a stronger educational background then a holiday is going to beless harmful to your development so yeah I I think there is a bit of a differencein that sense um I do think that the longer days probably support the idea that you needa bit more downtime to recover but I’d still say it was a bit long likelike especially in summer I think I’d rather have like longer say Christmas or longerso are you saying like redistribution redistribute yeah so I have the same amount of holiday throughout the yearbut we distribute it slightly maybe even sometimes half terms just taking a fewmore days in half term or we’ve got a couple of weeks after um yeahthat was okay yeah um I think also layout there’s probablymaybe there’s a the reason why they might do that for Independent Schools is because it’s a bit more profitable forthem to work it in that way yeah I never really thought thatactually [Music] um I don’t like it probably is yeah it probably does work out a bit moreprofitable like if you were to make a day longer it doesn’t add as much to your overheadsis making a term longer yeah adding an extra half an hour a day is cheaper thanadding three or four full extra days so there’sprobably some profit motive behind it as well but Ithink also just because of the sort of students that you’ve got um if they’re slightly stronger onaverage then you you don’t need to worry quite as much and and they’ll probablybe doing some stuff at home as well yeah other types of parents are going toIndependent Schools not me and like but you would have done something I didn’t I did I did Holiday homework but I didn’tlike but that’s kind of normal for at like any school like that obviously Ithink in in Independent Schools you get a lot more but umyou know that that wasn’t so much of a a thing I’d usually leave it to like thelast two weeks and then do it all I I used to just do thatand it’s probably probably just because I got bored like because it was it was like eight week holiday especially insummer yeah I would have been doing like some readingum maybe some maths like cream on or something oh I didn’t didn’t do anythinglike that I just took it off basically um but then usually we went on a longholiday so we went for like four weeks there’s no time today yes yeah I never did that like if you go to Asiayou’re gonna be gone for like three four weeks at least maybe longer um so thingslike going and I mean I mean that’s an argument for for a long holidays likesomething that we always talk about is how little some kids know because theynever get out there and a summer holiday gives them the chance to actually spend time with family and do and do stuff andsort of build other foundations outside of what you learn in schoolso for me it was it was good I learned a lot about like say other cultures andthat kind of thing or spending time with family yeah um they’re just as important aslearning things I think in yeah I think in in summary like Independent Schools probably can’tafford to take a bit more holiday than the state schools butit’s simply because of the makeup of the students rather than anything else andalso I think like some of these welfare parents they can afford to to go away for a period of time andmight be able to afford child care for longer so there’s a bit of a yeah it’s ademographic thing yeah it’s um yeah whereas like the single the singlemother or whatever who’s you know struggling to get Jimmy toto school and sort of keep on top of work and manage uh the things that she’sgot to do at home and stuff like that and get child care in I think isprobably quite a heavy burden on them to do it for longer so it’s different fordifferent people and it kind of works as it is based on what the school isand yeah I’d say that generally it it’s all at least there’s this commonunderstanding of when summer holidays are so that that’s good but I mean Icould you could arguably shorten it a little bit because I think you probably just need a month and if youredistribute those other holidays you’d have more down time during the year which might be a good thing well thisalso differs between different countries yeah so I did put a list together

School Holidays Around the World

um I think you did it on there umyeah I’m not sure if they’ve I’m not sure if they’re fully in order butum and I can’t see it from here but the top where the UK in terms of like the length of holiday we’re on like whatfour or five six to seven seven in terms of this list here but isthat just or is this this is just summer then there’s a list of random countriesbut if you just um maybe just read some of them so at the top the longest one was Russia rightyou’ve got Russia yeah so 10 to 12 weeks yeah this is on average and it’s like I wonder why it might it might differ butum yeah that’s that’s so long um you know it’s I mean you can UnitedStates 10 to 12 weeks they’ve got like pretty awful education system UnitedStates um Russia I mean they’re not really they used tohave quite a strong education system under the Soviet Union but nowI wouldn’t say it’s sort of competing with the best and then you’ve gotum Brazil you’ve got France eight and eight to nine weeksuh Brazil eight weeks Australia six or seven weeks so that’squite similar to us and that’s what that’s not in um that’s in their summer yeah so that’s like December Januaryyeah yeah which might sort of makes sense I suppose yeah so all of these arelike all these weeks are localized that they’re not always during July and August India about six to eight weeksum Japan well Sweden you’ve got nine to ten weeksbut I’m just wondering if Sweden maybe they’ve got the child care to yeah they will have but so yeah so Provisions inplace um to actually deal with that um Japan six weeks which is the same ashere pretty much right China obviously there’s there’s big Regionalvariety but it says six to ten weeks uh manager of South Africa so sixth dayso I mean it’s more or less the same but I guess it they all come from thesame historical route and once you set in a it’s like a cultural understandingisn’t it yeah yeah then it’s hard to sort of adapt it but I think now a lot of people aresaying things have changed enough for us to start considering shortening thingsso even in Europe and I think was it Ireland or Scotland orsomething Wells whales yeah but I mean again their system is notvery not very good like they probably need tothey need to more because I think my kids like they’ve got they they suffer suffer a lot of Summer learning loss soit kind of like it like I said like with Independent Schools we could have like eight weeks we could have ten weeks orwhatever I don’t think it will make a huge amount of difference to the end resultbecause you know um if you’ve got the ability to retainstuff well then yeah that that sort of more set in stone butthen in places where you have some deprivation like Walesum especially in the education system obviously it makes sense to sort ofshorten things it’s interesting what teachers think about this though because it’s beenmixed I think is quite mixed because you’ve got some teachers who say wedefinitely need it we and maybe maybe they do in somecircumstances they probably do um I kind of think maybethere’s a way around this where teachers could sort of do shifts or something like that so there’s some other way ofgiving teachers enough holiday time um yeah but then you it’s not likenurses like with with teachers you need the the kid the kids need the consistency of themselves that sameperson people teach in different ways people don’t really like nurse in different ways like there’s only one wayto playing an IV for example but to teach maths there’s like loads of differentways yeah and the kids need they need that consistency in that you know well yeah no I think it’s more about thisit’s not so much about the what they’re taught it’s the um how they’re stableuh figure yeah and that leads the class um yeah because it’s not just knowledge it is that’s true to some extent andmaybe I like primary school I could still make that argument and also send schoolsthey don’t have as much break as otherschools because the kids need it they need a constant repetition but I’d arguethat probably that’s true in more cases than than not so actually there’s probably quite a lot of primaryschool kids that actually need a bit more consistency during that during that period but even that’s the same acrossall countries yeah no wellI think in this is probably true in like say the USthe UK lesso in Asia because I think there’s a bit morethey end up with sort of more a quality of results like as in in termsof where children end up so the better the education system in terms of like where the kids areprobably somewhere like Japan they can afford to have a bit more down time because they’ve got quieterand then they also have like a bigger support network family wise yeah so like I think certain economiesbut I haven’t haven’t said that though like Japan I think work work wiseum just because I think there’s quite a lot of pressure inyou know um going to work a lot all the time and that kind of thing so whilstthe children um you know might have need to have a bit more of a longerbreak and probably the teachers too um maybe the society is not able toprovide that simply because there’s not like I said with Sweden there’ll be things in place that allowlonger holidays and support networks in Place Long holidays so without that youcan’t really lengthen it you can’t give them more time um if anything you’re thinking aboutshortening the time because that will be more in line with what Society requiresthe the only issue is is that now obviously teaches on unhappy you’ve gotlike teacher strikes and things like that do you you don’t really want to like putmore pressure on them to you know work moreor that kind of thing all work during the summer holidays which is probably like one of the reasons why maybe theydidn’t sign up to become a teacher because of that but it’s one of the bigsort of advantages of the job is the fact that you get those long summer holidays yeah and then you take thataway I think a lot of them do teaching for that reason I mean it’s the wrong reason to to go into it like you youshould but but I know they understand it as a perk like at least at the very leastit’s a perk it’s not like the yeah it’s not the sole reason yeah because because that being that’s not a good reason togo into anything but I think for teachers um would you really wannapower a bit more pressure on them buy it by sort of shortening the holidays evenat the cost of re so even if you were to redistribute the holidays maybe they do need that amount of time down timethe trouble is it’s very hard to test like how do you how do you test thislike there’s not you can’t really there’s um you’ve just got to do it and then you have like a troll yeah and andto be honest even if you had a troll yeah that’s not enough time to actually and that’s also more disruptive thanjust changing it fully ain’t gonna change back afterwards or maybe not no it that that’s the thingis is is the I there’s limited data on the effects of holidays and shorteningthem and that kind of thing there are there are individual differences per country but you can seethat they’re more or less agreeing to some extent yeahwell let’s look at the different reasons so we’ve got reasons to to shorten there’ll be positive andnegative for that and there’s reasons to keep the same slash longer reasons to

Should School Holidays be Longer?

make them longer we have I mean we have mentioned these before but there’s more downtime for teachersand students yeah important especially I think more in the case of teachersthan than students I mean there’s a lot about like students havinga lot on them but I don’t I don’t really think it’s not that much no I think it’smanageable yeah I think it’s manageable in the case of of of students but I think as teachers how like I think thejobs probably become more and more stressful over time so I I yeah I understand thatspending time with family and siblings and likecreating that sibling Bond and that sort of thing um so for me my school holidays were filled with like my sister and mycousins we all went to the same school yeah um I obviously didn’t I don’t have any cousins here and I don’t havesiblings so I usually have to take a trip abroad to spend time so I probablyneed enough time to actually do that well most of mine was been with like grandparents and cousins and that sortof thing and but we do the occasional like a small one week holiday or you know it goes tothe park play football or whatever we did um so yeah I think that’s still quiteimportant because this is not just about the educational knowledge side of it you’re going to become a well-rounded person to be anysort of success right so I think it is quite important to have that yeah but then arguably there is enoughtime to do that already yeah I I think they’re I think there’sdefinitely enough time yeah um it helps students build Independenceyeah because it’s out of out of a system so yeah there’s less of a routine there’s moremore like opportunity for them to be creative with their time and like lean into hobbiesand if they’re older maybe get some a job yeah I think especially for our olderstudents it’s I think having quite a lot of time to explore things is is more important I think for younger kidsobviously it’s very parent director yeah but usually when yourparents are working or whatever and you just get you’re at home with uh siblings or all by yourself you have to find yeahyou end you naturally end up being creative because you get bored you stopped I don’t know building stuff outof other stuff I just make up your make up your own games with I played quite a lot of gamesduring holidays like when I was just but even after school sometimes I just playcomputer games or something like um yeah but that’s not I’m talking about doing new things like becoming beingcreative with your time yeah but then we didn’t when I was when I was in summer holidays in PrimarySchool with cards and stuff we didn’t really have computer games no like umthey would end up like making up our own games I mean there’s reading books but I thinkif I think about like the average student did they spend that much time readingwell we’ve been talking about being creative and making up your own games and like hanging out with siblings and that sort of thingbut I didn’t do that no I didn’t do any of that but do you think it’s important if you have siblings and cousins here doyou would you would you say it’s uh I mean I didn’t need that but yeah umum I do think you need you need some new experiences but I don’t necessarily think likewhy you don’t necessarily need to be creative during that time or you you can foster creativity during thetime that you’re working and that kind of thing it’s just Jordan isn’t it it’s like good to have abit of a change of environment last year that’s what that’s what I’m saying it’s this you because there is less of a routine you’re not being told you needto be in this class now you need to be in that class now you should do this now that now you have free open time I don’tknow I kind of like Cavern routine like it’s nice to actually havea sense of like when things are happening and that kind of thing I felt like off and after every especially likesix weeks and because we’ve got got like eight weeks or whatever I’d be thinking to myself like I’m I feel like I’vewasted this time yeah I didn’t I didn’t feel that ahyeah I don’t know I just had regrets no I didn’t have that whereas I I feltlike at school I was like progressing and learning stuff and doing stuff youknow and obviously that’s probably the most social time in my life of my life at least is that school yeah yeah Ithink it’s everybody’s most social time you you know you see them every day I mean they’ve donethey have studied this a little bit and some evidence suggests that like you’remore likely to get depressed during long holidays and I I was like that that wasdefinitely a thing for me right yeah but again you didn’t have the contact with yeah but I mean they have done studiesyeah yeah I mean they they know what happened it’snot exactly the same because like kovid was a bit of a weird situation but like when the when you’ve got loads ofdowntime from from schools you’re more likely to get depressed and if you’re more if you’re depressedwhen you’re at school you’ll be even more depressed at home so yeah so I do think thatum you know for certain people it doesn’t really work like having longhundred days okay yeah two very different views yeah that’sgood so we’ve looked at the reasons to extend or keep the same

Should School Holidays be shorter?

reasons to short on the holidays we have I’m going to go for a listwell the main thing is we’ve spoken about is it prevents the summer learning Gap which is we’ve spoken about quite a bittoday already I’ve definitely experienced that with students oh I’m experiencing right nowlike this this week but even like just basic things like they could do likemultiplying yeah and then yeah yeah they can’t do it and as I it’s quite shockinghow how profound it is in some cases yeah well you need the repetition youneed the synapses to link together and like the more you do it the stronger the pathway has become having said that likeI’ve experienced I also think like rest is important because let’s face it it’s all the informationyeah in in life your life is this process of learning stuff and forgettingyep learning again learning for again and your brain forgets most of the things it’s like it’s like somethinglike 80 90 like it’s a lot yeah um and I found that for instance likeplaying the piano or something like that and then I take a break from playing the piano I go back to playing it at firstit’s hard but then once I like play it a bit more I play better so it’s like the pathways start to lightup again but and they they light up better yeah as a result like they’re strengthened soand and you see that with the like say when you’re you’re helping students through exams as well like they the factthat they’ve learned it before it means that it’s easy to easy enough for them to get it back it’s just the matter ofthem reviewing it yeah but I mean you can prevent that I suppose by actually doing some work during during longholidays you can do some work yeah doing just doing doing just a little bit right ohon a semi-regular basis will sort of prevent some of those issuesso short holidays are better for working parents like we said nowadays pretty much pretty much every familywill have two working parents I think this is like the strongest strongest argument really yeah becausethe child care issues I I think without the necessary ChildCare Provisions in place I I know like there has beensome attempt to put in a bit more Child Care provision but it’s not nearly enough to coverthose that amount of time yeah umand and without that it’s going to be it’s gonna be I meanwe might have to just shorten them because at this rate it’s not going to beuh well yeah it’s based like we said it’s based on based on like 1800s farming and needingneeding that help and it’s it’s the whole timetable is based onold times but this is a very modern problem yeah so if the holidays were shorter teacherswouldn’t have to rush through the curriculum as they do currentlyand you would also give children more time to sort of explorelike new new ideas um and the topics they do go through theycan go through in a greater depth because obviously you get your if youshorten the holidays you get longer or longer slash more school days the longmultiple hours and that will give you more of a chance to like things they can explore their owninterests like different children have different interests I don’t know how much I’ve been in favor of likeshortening the amount of holiday throughout the year that’s the that’s the only thing is likelike shortening the summer holiday would I think prevent somesay some of the summer learning loss but I think redistributing like two weeks orsomething like that or just putting in just another holiday like at some other point in the year just randomly oradding to Christmas that’s also um a lot of a lot of people a lot of teachersum not all of them by any means but some of them are in favor of like say addinga whole and a lot of parents actually would support that too well yeah it comes back to what we were saying beforebecause you get you know they don’t get to spend time with family that much because everyone’s at work and they’re busy and Christmas is one of the onlytimes if not yeah any time in the year where they can create those family bonds and that sort of thing yeah so I thinkactually Christmas would be a good and I think it fits in that whole a bit more with the idea of like they’re beingCycles throughout the year so we’re sort of hibernating more in Winteryeah and it’s family time and it’s get fat sort of on Christmas meals andthings like that um I I think it actually plays well intoour culture so I add a bit more holiday at Christmas and then umbut you wouldn’t be but not in favor of shortening in order to have moreteaching time boys children can explore their own interests and you know go through their curriculum in more detailrather than able to rush through everything yes but I think like one of the reasons why they they might have to rush more isbecause like if you think about like say a such teacher right they comethey so if they’re doing like year six hats or something like that the teachers under pressure from the start of theyear because the kids have also like forgotten a lot of things yeah soif you were to like I don’t know about start earlier it kind of depends what you what you think maybeend earlier and later or whatever you’ve kind of reduced a little bit of that loss so you’re saying you can get thesame effect by re uh Distributing the summer like moreeven across the year through Christmas maybe potentially that would then reduce the summer learning gap which wouldactually mean that they could go through potentially but I think I take like one week from Summer and put in Winter andthen maybe I’ll take the other one and put in like Easter eggs or something like that yeah rather than put two weeksin Christmas because I would just like they we know that they forget stuffyes like it it’s just one of those things like yeah I’ve seenit so many times like they forget stuff over Christmas but like just having thatone week at some other point in the year might help them a bit more and then Easter youcould lengthen it slightly because I feel like again East is one of those times where it’s likeum I think it fit since uh like uh let’s say about Islamand and how they they work they need and those sorts so yeah coincides with likeyeah so I think it would actually be more Equitable like for everyone if itwere distributed in that way yeah that’s probably why I’d I’d favorokay yeah that’s a good point um the last one we have isit’s more like demographic based so students who don’t get to travel or go on holidays with a familythey will be more added Advantage because that’s one of the one of the highlights of having like aholiday but if you have a long holiday students who don’t do that alreadywill be further disadvantaged from to other students who have like traveled in other countries and like got these newexperiences and things or have the money for child care or for tuition or forwhatever else yeah shortening this um yeah it would mean students who don’tget to do all that stuff would be less disadvantaged yeah so that that goes back to what wewere saying earlier like um obviously like we could take any amount of holiday and it probablywouldn’t well any amount maybe like we could probably at most take liketwo months and would probably be more or less okay or yeah well we did so we did take twomonths yeah that’s yeah maybe even three like I push because like if you’ve got thoseif you’ve just got the ability to retain something it’s not so much of an issue but a lot of kids don’t it’s not justthe ability to retain stuff is the support network yeah and they’re they’re having the parents available to do thissort of stuff like take them to museums and abroad and wherever else yeah if you’ve got a support networks in place Idon’t think it’s so bad they even like I’ve heard things on the radio liketalking to parents who are actually able to do that um because they’ve got the supportnetwork in place and they still find it hard so I just imagine what like I Iimagine like what it’s like for I know a single mother or like someone who’s justliving on the breadline as it were um what they must be going through during that during that period whereit’s so difficult so um yeah it’s very different like there is support there will also there issupport in place but there’s not nearly enough in modern society considering the work patterns that people people havein fact that’s probably something that would drive a lot of growth in the economy but alsoum so it would improve everything is just like a bit more support for like childcare we are in the beginning of September

Advice for the New Academic Year

we’ve been the beginning of the new Academic Year and we have just had summer so whatadvice would you give to everyone starting out definitely review things that you’velearned over the the previous year yeah so would you saythat’s more important than like uh like a GCSE year year 11 or like uh SATs hereor I think it’s I mean you can emphasize those years in particular so testias butit’s equally important for anyone right because it will always be the case butthere will be stuff that you’ve forgotten or things that you need to strengthen so I’d say no matterwhat state in fact it’s probably even more important that they’re youngerum because by that stage a lot of what they’re learning is so fundamentalso just drilling some multiplications that practice thatmental something that I’ve noticed quite a lot is like mental immunity and justlike that ability to sort of think something through obviously during theholidays doing stimulating things but actuallya good balance between the two yeah as long as you can but now that you’re back in school and now that you’re back inschool just um get some get some workbooks and and towork through things that you should know just so you’re both aware of the gapsand you know and you can practice those things and strengthen those things that you havemore or less retained yeah I would also say probably organizeyourself you’ve got a new timetable you might be going into year seven to a new school there’s a lot here your bags books pensand everything in order and like get your timetable in your mind that sort of thing I never did that I just followedpeople around that was yeah but you used to follow people around to the wrong lessons and then like run off to theright place it was fine though yeahum but yeah like I’d say just just uh keep can keep consistently working on onsomething that’s related to what you did last year find gaps where there’s there’s issues and to work on those onthose gaps times table of rock stars is something that they do in school quite alot that a lot of schools have a license so yeah basically everybody here usesyeah yeah and and it’s just a it’s probably a bit of a fun way to just keep practicingthings especially multiplications um yeah but if ASG says he obviouslyyou’ve got a whole load of things from like year 10 um that you should focus on I’d say likefor a level students just get prepared for a hard year yeahum and same for like University students as well um like you’re gonna have a it’sgonna be a new environment it’s going to be difficult um but just be prepared for thatobviously there’s pre-reading on on most a-level courses and university courses that you should tryand do um but just be ready to sort of hit the books essentially yeahthank you for watching this month’s podcast hopefully it was useful for you and you enjoyed the conversation if you did a like and a comment would be good

Outro

let us know your thoughts on whether you think they should be longer shorter or stay the same we’ll see you next timethank you [Music]