Two-Week October Half Terms?! Parents Have Had Enough Already

It’s come to my attention that schools in England are increasingly opting for two-week half-terms – and there’s even talk of whether more should follow suit.

I would just like to say, as a parent to a school-age child: no thank you. 

A Teacher Tapp poll of 8,112 state school teachers in England found 15% said their schools had an October half-term spanning a fortnight this year – up from 12% in 2025, and 7% in 2023.

I get the logic. It’s been suggested you could cut the summer holidays by a week (so it’s five weeks long) and then tag an extra week onto October’s half-term. The key benefit being that it gives teachers and kids more time to rest up and decompress after an intense start to the term. 

Per Tes magazine, some school leaders have also suggested that the extended break results in less pupil absence and staff illness.

I do understand that and rest is important. I can see how exhausted kids are at this point in the term.

But what about parents, and the quality of care they could actually offer their kids at this time?

Don’t get me wrong, if money wasn’t an issue, I would delight in spending two weeks with my child. I’d take unpaid leave, we could go on holiday, we could swan about together on fun days out. It would be dreamy.

But let’s face it, most parents (myself included) don’t have the luxury of that scenario. We are exhausted. We’re still paying off those extortionate nursery fees on credit cards. We are trying to hold down jobs, look after children, bear the enormous weight of the mental load, and navigate a rapidly-changing world where job security is plummeting.

We are then strapped with two weeks of childcare to sort – because let’s face it, by the time five or six weeks of summer holiday has passed, we’re pretty much out of annual leave. 

So, you’re either relying on family members helping out (absolutely wonderful if you have it) or you’re paying for two weeks of hurriedly-securedchildcare (that might not even cover your entire working day), which ends up easily costing hundreds of pounds – potentially triple that if your child is disabled.

If neither of those are an option, you’re into the territory of working from home (if you can) and having your children with you. But they can’t play outdoors every day while you work because it’s October and it’s cold, wet and windy outside (at least over the summer you’ve got the weather on your side!). So what? Are we meant to stick them in front of the TV or the iPad for two weeks? 

And what of the kids who have just started Reception, some of whom have barely turned four, who have just about settled into the routine of school and are then whipped right out of it for two weeks? What about the neurodivergent children who are heavily impacted by disruptions to routines and then need specialist childcare which their parents have to source and afford?

Is two weeks going to help them? 

The other issue some parents face is that when half-term does roll around, if their children are attending different schools or even nurseries, these weeks may well occur at different times. What then? 

Plenty of parents are drowning right now – the cost of living is horrendous (and looks like it’s set to get worse), poverty is rising (4.5 million children are growing up in poverty in the UK, which is almost one-third of children) and now impacting plenty of families where both parents are working.

A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Action for Children estimates 430,000 UK children are at risk of poverty in households where every adult is in full-time employment. Single-parent families are impacted even more.

How are these parents meant to be affording two weeks of childcare in October? Because they sure can’t afford to take unpaid leave. And yes, children in receipt of benefits-related Free School Meals do have access to the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) programme, but that covers Easter, Summer, and Christmas holidays, not October. 

I appreciate there’s no easy answer here, and that teachers and children need time to rest, too. But parents are already stretched to breaking point, many of us are in a permanent state of burnout, and any decision to extend half-term needs to properly take that reality into account.

A week off might be a welcome breather for some families, but for others, it means another week of financial stress, childcare chaos and trying to juggle the impossible.

And surely we have enough on our plates already.