School Holidays

[robert551069]

My son, who lives and works in France earns a good salary as an IT professional.
He can afford to send his daughter to a private school where she has 11 weeks holiday in the summer. She makes good use of this by spending time with her friends and going on holiday with her family.
One year she was able to go on an (exchange) school trip to Australia for four weeks.
When I was at school, I had only six weeks summer holiday and I always looked forward to that. I was never bored.

[factor-fiction]

In UK the school year is something like 195 days. This is the norm for state schools. I doubt it's much different for private schools although their holiday pattern may differ. In France you may find they have a similar length school year but have shorter holidays at other times, similar to in the US. I've just been there and the students have been off for a while already but many either work or go to school summer camps.

I think many parents would hate the idea of an 11 week summer holdiay here

[FredPuli43]

The French do this more dramatically than us. It is still common for French families to up sticks and take to some French resort for the whole Summer holiday, leaving mother in charge of the children there, while father is left to a bachelor life at home, visiting only occasionally.

Americans are good at this. The distinction between the American middle class and ours is that Americans see their children every school day, but send them away to camps in the holidays. Ours has the ambition of sending the children away to school but seeing them in the holidays.

[Twenty20]

I'm struggling to find the question here. Maybe I had too many holidays as a child?!