“Six weeks of summer vacation is enough.” Photo: Getty Images/iStockphoto
Calls to shorten summer vacations in Austria
In Austria, there have been calls to shorten the summer holidays. The parents’ association in Vienna advocated for the vacation to be shortened from the current nine to six weeks. Namely, they believe that “excessively long vacations” lead to a loss of knowledge in children, especially in mathematics and spelling, and cause problems for parents in childcare.
“Just because something has always been done this way does not mean that it is good and must remain so,” warned Georg Brockmeyer, the president of the regional association of parents of school-aged children in Vienna today, and called for a serious, fact-based discussion.
According to the Austrian press agency APA, six weeks of summer vacation is enough, according to the material prepared by the association for the media. It lists, among others, the relevant regulations in other countries such as Germany, Denmark and Great Britain.
Austria’s nine-week summer vacation can only be historically explained by the needs of a labor-intensive agricultural system from years past, but “nobody needs to cut hay today,” Brockmeyer illustrated.
The association believes that the additional three weeks of schooling, which would be gained through the reorganization, should be used for educational programs, for which there is otherwise little time. They are proposing a “new, alternative summer school” that would include project days, swimming and cycling lessons and mixed-age learning groups to close learning gaps or boost skills.
The Vienna Parents’ Association emphasized that these are only initial proposals and that they are open to further ideas. Currently, they are not part of the national umbrella organization of associations of parents of school-age children, APA reports.
