The summer school holidays should run from mid January until the start of march.?

On average, everyone disagrees with significant nonconsensus between 73 voters.

Reasons To Disagree

Yet another suggested change for changes sake. If this was adopted kids would be totally unteachable over the Xmas period and as it is they are getting a lousy education. DO NOT MAKE IT WORSE THAN IT ALREADY IS!

I think we should take stock and value our 'Kiwi Christmas'. Any learning time that we would go back to school for and then break again so soon would be lost. This silly idea is reinforced by the idea that actually the temperatures have not got hotter than it used to be.

From a high-school point of view, what would happen with end of year exams? Keep'em in November/December? But then what happens to the rest of December/January? The summer holidays would become three, four months long, and we'd lose education time (sparse as it is nowadays) from the following year. If we move them to directly before the new holidays, then Christmas would get in the way. Hmm... maybe we should move that too...

summer school holidays should NOT exceed 2 weeks as it is the holidays that promote poor behavier too long the holiday child looses interest in schooling

there is nothing wrong with the current summer school holidays

That would just ruin the point in it all. Christmas holidays are for when families go away. December-january holidays are perfect for summer family holidays away. Spending christmas with family on holiday, even better. Not having to work or be at school over new years, awesome but spending it at the beach or even another country with family and friends even better! The excitement for school children to not have school for a few weeks at the end of the year is topped off knowing its christmas aswell. Having to go to school a day or so after Christmas is stupid. Everyone goes away for Christmas holidays. And everyone goes away for new years. Why take that away from young children. It's like taking away Christmas pretty much. Cos who is gunna enjoy Christmas knowing you can't spend the next few weeks playing with new toys, if they have to go to school. May as well get kids books and pencils from Santa instead of toys and clothes.

No way, that's just making adults work more. What we can do is to stop the week we have Christmas or before depending on the day and New Years Eve/Day. Children would get a two week break like in Europe, and then go back to school. Feb/March would be their mid-semester break/half-term holiday then go back as soon as the little Summer is over until July. So you get a bit of Jan and March, then July and December for their holidays.

Reasons To Agree

Definitely! Chistmas is too early for summer holidays and February is too hot for children to be in school. We could move the 2nd of the new years stat holidays to the end of February to allow families to spend more sunny days together. Workers could spread their summer holidays over different weeks, rather than the existing mad rush we have over Christmas holidays. This would utilise holiday towns resources more efficiently. It's crazy to see how quiet a normally popular beach can be during a February school week.

Absolutely the weather is far too hot to be in a classroom or office during February. The seasons have moved. Lets make the Christmas break like the Easter break have a few weeks back and then gear up for summer. This also means you probably wont have to take Granma camping as well...

I HATE working in humid, hot classrooms at two o'clock during February. Maybe more mid Jan to mid Feb. Christmas/New Year week will still be taken off as it is for people who get buggar all time off.

My father is and has been a teacher for the past 15 years, primary, intermmediate and high school. He knows what its like to be sitting in a hot February day trying to get 7 years olds to write poems about Ancient Egypt or high school kids getting side-tracked by thoughts or complaints. Although it may put more of a burden on full-time working parents, it would enable the government to earn much more money from the extra month of vacation to be able to fund holiday programmes to make them more affordable for full-time workers or for parents with younger kids to become full-time mothers, and still be making millions from economy and travel. Also, being brought up with four other siblings, you'll be very surprised as to how much kids learn in the summer holidays compared to what they learn at school. There is no better method of teaching than kids being able to find out things for themselves and actually take interest in it or showing them incredible things than sitting in a sweaty, humid classroom staring at a dull piece of paper in silence.