Should term times be made longer? Ofsted Chief Inspector says it’s time to rethink school holidays

Ofsted Chief Inspector Sir Martyn Oliver said “it probably is time to think about school holidays again” during a LBC phone-in.

Oliver questioned whether the 190 days of teaching time a year is enough, and highlighted how some schools are trying a shorter summer holiday, with longer half term holidays.

Politics expert Dr Steve McCabe said: “There is no doubt this might be popular among some parents who clearly believe that school holidays are too long. There is an argument that the more school time you can get early on, the better, because that pays dividends. There's also a very good shout for making the school days longer and indeed incorporate a whole set of other things that go on, such as breakfast clubs.

“The real difficulty is that schools are in a system that's been around for a very, very long time. Any sort of alteration is going to have a massive disruption for schoolteachers, of course they've got other things on, and indeed schoolteachers work immensely hard.

“But quite clearly, when we've got a situation with young people leaving school who are neither literate or numerate, and of course, we're coming to an age where you have to do these things to get the decent jobs of the future, then there are big, big problems.

“If you’re parents of children, and you want to go away in holiday time, there is a sort of penalty of that. Condensing, would make the problems even more profound in terms of the cost of going away.”