Maintained Schools: Term Dates

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Under regulations, schools are expected to be open for 190 days, or 380 sessions, each year. As I suggested in my initial Answer, it is also important that there is local co-ordination around holiday dates in order to support parents and to ensure consistency, in the way the noble Lord described.

I think the noble Lord started by saying that this makes it more difficult to recruit teachers. Of course, while it is important that children have a fixed week and a specified number of days, it is of course possible, as has been the case, to develop more flexible ways in which teachers can work. The department is keen to promote that by, for example, funding a programme focused on embedding flexible working in schools. I hope that will be one of the things that will enable us to improve teacher recruitment.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thoroughly agree with everything the Minister has said. She is right that schools must be open for 190 days—195 days for teachers, so they can do the five days of in-service training. There has to be flexibility for such things as religious holidays in faith schools and wake walks in Lancashire; you have to be able to deal with those changes. The real problem occurs when academies with headquarters in, say, the London area but schools in the north-west try to standardise the holidays and do not take those regional variations into account. Of course, travel companies shoot up the prices during the main school holidays, and it becomes very difficult for families to afford those prices.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I simply reiterate what I said: it is important that there is co-operation at a local level to cover the types of schools where parents might have a child in each, to ensure consistency in school holidays. But I take the noble Lord’s point about that possibly differing from place to place. In the end, we need to focus on what is the best arrangement and the appropriate amount of time for children to be in school, so that they can get the best possible opportunity to learn.