Our kids are no longer out at harvest - it's time to bring in the same school holidays for all

The sun is shining, it is nice and warm and summer is here in all it’s glory. That can mean only one thing, the end of the Scottish school holidays.

Children in Edinburgh returned to the classrooms on Wednesday on one of the best days of the summer so far in a pattern that will be familiar to many parents.  

Schools in Glasgow also returned this week but in Aberdeenshire and the Highlands it’s going to be Tuesday and in Dumfries and Galloway it will be Wednesday. Drill down further and it gets even stranger. Schools on Arran return on Monday but in the rest of North Ayrshire Council area it is Tuesday. That makes no sense whatsoever.

We have an organisation called COSLA to unite Scotland’s 32 local authorities but they seem incapable of delivering any common sense when it comes to school term dates. On this island we use the same currency and share the same time zone but when it comes to the dates of school holidays, anything goes and the more random and confusing it is, the better.

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It all seems to date back to harvest dates or when we used to send children up chimneys to mark 30 days until Michaelmas but whatever the ancient reasons are, times have changed.

Not many kids are picking potatoes these days. They are much more likely to be sitting in a darkened room playing a video game where mutant potatoes evolve and take over the world. Whatever tied us to these long lost dates has now disappeared into the swirling mists of time so why are we so resolutely wedded to these remnants from our past?

Throughout Scotland the term dates look odd and disconnected but the biggest issue is in our capital city. 

Every August it welcomes the world’s biggest arts festival, a fantastic opportunity for young minds to learn and benefit from this unique cultural event. This year the programme includes 127 kids shows ranging from  ‘The Alphabet of Awesome Science’ to “the Story of China” and  ‘Macbeth for Bairns’. However, children who actually live in the city have limited access to these productions because just over a week after the Fringe started, schools in Edinburgh returned. 

That day also saw a big jump in traffic volumes across the city. Around one in four children in Edinburgh attend private schools, the highest proportion anywhere in the UK. Instead of going to classes at a school in their local catchment area, an unusual number are being ferried across the city adding to streets already heavily congested with Fringe and Festival traffic. 

Even after the summer holidays, term dates remain random. In October some schools take a week off, others take two weeks depending upon where you live. 

In 1962 then French President Charles de Gaulle said “"How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?". He was joking but for parents, Scotland’s many and varied approach to term dates is no laughing matter when it comes to juggling childcare and work responsibilities. 

Politicians love a consultation so why don’t we launch a national review of school holiday dates and try and find something that works for Scotland and is fit for purpose in 2024 and not driven by agricultural practices from the long lost past?