School Calendar Consultation Launched

Published: 13 June 2016
Following a successful pre-consultation engagement with schools, Sheffield City Council are consulting on two possible approaches to the 2017-18 School Calendar for Sheffield.

Sheffield City Council are consulting on two possible calendars for 2017-18. One of them is a version of the calendar which is in line with previous years, whilst the second fixes the holiday at the end of the spring term (the one we currently call Easter) so that the half terms are more even in length.

This option was developed following a pre-consultation event with Sheffield schools. Learn Sheffield hosted a workshop for school leaders which discussed the principles behind drawing up the calendar and considered the written feedback from schools who couldn't be present. In total, the views of approximately seventy schools fed into the process and around twenty-five leaders discussed the issues in person.

The workshop illuminated the issues well and provided school leaders from different sectors with a good opportunity to consider the needs of children in other phases. The 'spring bank' holiday was a good example of this. Many primary leaders advocated for a two week break here, but changed their view when their secondary colleagues talked through the implications of a longer holiday at this time in the year for young people taking public examinations.     

There was widespread consensus about the idea of fixing the holiday that we currently call Easter, in order to ensure two even half terms of similar length. This was discussed with colleagues from faith schools, whose feeling was that this wouldn't create significant issues for their schools, as they adapt a variation to the calendar when they need to anyway at this time of year. The merit of this idea was accepted by the school leaders in the workshop and they will, no doubt, be pleased to see this reflected in the final consulttaion options.

There was also some appetite for having a shorter summer (five weeks rather than six) and a two week autumn half term holiday. This would create a longer half term break in the middle of the longest term. When this option was modelled it tended to have the unintended consequence of creating a long summer second half term, because the summer (spring bank) half term holiday cannot easily be moved. On balance the workshop majority view was that this created as many issues as it solved.

The workshop also saw considerable merit in having a common approach to the school calendar to our neighbouring local authorities. This has become increasingly difficult, given the significant number that need to be considered and the increasing varaitions in their approaches. On balance the view of the workshop was that whilst this is important, and different calendars can be challenging for staff and families who have family members with different school holidays, it shouldn't be the only consideration.

From my perspective I felt that the workshop was very successful, both in considering the difficult issues and reaching a collaborative conclusion. The combination of experienced colleagues from Sheffield City Council with school leaders from all sectors has produced some good principles to inform our decisions in relation to the school calendar in the future.   

The school calendar needs to ensure that children and young people have the best opportunity to learn. This means taking into account timings of exams, what neighbouring local authorities are doing and, most importantly, the length of each half term. This consultation now gives parents and schools the opportunity to have their say on the future academic calendar.

The consultation documents can be downloaded from our document archive ... www.learnsheffield.co.uk/DocumentStore/DocumentArchive

If you want to register your view the deadline for responses is Thursday 7 July. This can be done by completing the on-line questionnaire at  www.sheffield.gov.uk/schoolcalendar, completing the pro-forma at the end of the consultation document or emailing ed-admissions@sheffield.gov.uk.

Stephen Betts (CEO Learn Sheffield)

 

 

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