The news that the Nuffield Foundation will soon publish a report proposing a four-week school holiday in Britain – with longer breaks instead – got me thinking about how differently the French approach family holidays than the British.
When I moved to France with my husband and two children aged four and six in 2009, despite being a meticulous planner, I hadn’t really thought about how we would adapt to the very different school holiday pattern after we left school . Britain. A six-week summer had always seemed like a long time with two kids at home and childcare and children’s activities that cost a fortune in London – how would we cope with a two-month summer holiday in a country where we had no family and knew no-one?
It turned out that France had everything in hand. If the schools are closed, the local ones centers de loisirs – supervised holiday and after-school clubs – are open to entertain children during working hours, are heavily subsidized and available with further discounts for those on low incomes.
The offering undoubtedly varies from country to country, but the system is generally easy to access and cheap. Our local center has extensive grounds, a fenced and supervised swimming pool, large, bright rooms for every age group and a canteen serving organic food.
The children are cared for by trained people animateurs and there are regularly temporary fortresses trips to the beach, theme parks, bowling and the cinema, plus activities such as whitewater rafting and go-karting for the older ones. All for around £15 a day.
The center of the loisirs covered the time we had to work, but the long vacation also gave us the chance to reunite as a family, spend proper time together and travel at a leisurely pace.
Normally, as many French families do, we load up the car and head to a self-catering apartment on the beach or in the mountains for a few weeks. Holidays don’t have to cost a fortune if you drive and take everything with you like the French do, as you can see from the lines of cars on the motorways with bikes strapped to the back, perhaps a paddleboard on the roof and a bumper pack of toilet rolls in the rear window.
Granted, some will go stay with grandma for a few weeks or hole up in the little family beach apartment they’ve owned for generations – instead we’d Airbnb the house to help cover costs.
Not only did I get the time to bond as a family, but I think the children benefited enormously from having time to explore and travel, to get out of their normal routine and be somewhere different .
In France, all other holidays apart from summer usually last two weeks – which is ideal for a number of reasons. The children have plenty of time to decompress properly and if families want to take advantage of the cheaper holidays available than in the summer, they have the time to do so and don’t necessarily all have to leave on the same day, overwhelming airports as you often see in Great Britain. For the February/March holidays and spring holidays, the country is divided into three zones and the holidays are staggered, which means that the holiday destinations (especially the ski resorts) are less busy than if everyone went on holiday at the same time, which certainly also helps to keep prices down keep it low. Friends who work in tourism say this is a blessing for them too, as their customers arrive over several weeks and not all at once.
And as for Britain’s proposed four-week summer holiday, can it really be long enough? A recent poll from Teacher Tapp found that teachers were fairly evenly split on whether they would like to keep the six-week term, reduce it to five or shorten it to four weeks. A teacher friend told me that she felt like four weeks wasn’t enough free time for kids, but it certainly wasn’t enough for teachers either, as many spend the first few weeks mostly sleeping.
Holiday accommodation and transport in the UK school summer holidays is already excessive – wouldn’t shortening the holidays only make this worse? And will likely lead to more children being taken out of school during the school holidays for holidays. Another friend in France said the long summer holidays worked well for her as a divorcee because the children had plenty of time to spend with both parents – with only four weeks they barely had time to catch their breath.
It’s a worn-out cliché that people in France work to live rather than live to work, but when it comes to holidays and time off it’s certainly true, and a decent holiday is considered almost as good. Low-income French families receive vouchers that can be used at campsites and holiday villages across France to help them take their families on holiday. Many companies also subsidize or provide vacations for low-income employees holiday vouchers, where the money invested by the employee is supplemented by the employer. A factory near where I live even has its own campsite on the beach that employees can use.
It is true that French schools have longer days in part to compensate for the extended holidays, and although some feel they are too long for younger children, they also fit into working hours much more easily, and have Wednesday afternoons off (sometimes all day Wednesday). primaries), and usually a lunch break of up to two hours – during which they can both eat a decent meal and have plenty of time to play.
I believe that people in Britain could benefit enormously from a French-style holiday pattern, but of course there would have to be the infrastructure to support this – accessible childcare for working parents, as well as affordable holidays for all. In France, real holidays are part of the culture, regardless of your income. Britain could learn a lot from this.
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