Time to cut the summer school holidays and get kids back in class

Tuesday, 13 January 2026

Here’s where Mike Yardley thinks the nation’s school children should be after this week.

Mike Yardley is a Christchurch-based writer and commentator on current affairs, and a regular opinion contributor.

OPINION: The dog-end of the long summer school holidays is before us, when children become increasingly bored and rudderless with January’s yawning longevity.

Take a look around any shopping mall this week. You will start to see more and more school kids aimlessly hanging out in the malls, seemingly bored out of their trees and fast running out of holiday pocket money. They’re counting down the clock until a semblance of routine and daily productivity is duly restored with the resumption of the school year.

The prospect is still weeks away, even though primary school classrooms emptied out on December 19, while secondary students decamped nearly five weeks ago. Most schools won’t re-start for another three weeks, on Monday February 2. Yes, schools do have flexibility on this, and some will reopen several days earlier. Be that as it may, it is two if not three weeks of excess school holiday indulgence.

Summer time is beach time for many kids - but Mike Yardley argues more of it should also be classroom time.

You may recall before Christmas that a spirited national debate took hold on whether New Zealand’s long summer holiday shutdown was harmful to businesses and an economic liability to the national interest. But the missing piece from that conversation was the needless nonsense of delaying the start of the school year until February.

I believe schools should be reopening for the new year this week or next, at the latest. We’ve had ample time to celebrate Christmas and ring in the New Year with friends and family. We’ve had plenty of time to enjoy a getaway, at home or abroad. We have recuperated and recharged. So why do we drag out the school-free summer slumber for no good reason?

There’s no shortage of disruptive downsides to keeping school out for so long. Many if not most working parents have maxed out their annual leave entitlements and are back at work. That leaves grandparents sacrificing their own summer plans to fulfil the role as babysitters, day in, day out.

Alternatively, working parents are forking out serious coin on dispatching their kids to glorified daycare facilities, formally known as holiday programmes. They typically cost $50–70 per day, per child. The Ministry of Social Development’s Oscar subsidy is available, subject to income-testing, to help lower those costs.

But doesn’t it strike you as utterly counter-productive that we have a state-subsidised babysitting service, when those kids would be better off actually learning back at school, rather than being parked up in a school holiday programme?

Various holiday activities are on offer for kids - such as these science and art workshops at Waikato museum - but many of them carry significant costs for families, argues Mike Yardley.

As an uncle to two young primary school kids, I’m happy to lend a supervisory hand over the next few weeks. But why should these late summer holiday care arrangements even be necessary? The kids should be back in class, easing their way into the year ahead.

In 2026, New Zealand primary schools have to be open for 378 half-days and secondary schools for 376. It can vary from year to year, depending on when Easter falls, in addition to the pesky intrusion of teacher-only days. The current school holiday structure was set in 2016 by the Ministry of Education in conjunction with education sector groups.

But 378 half-days for primary students equates to just 189 days at school, annually. That is generally comparable with Australian states and on par with the OECD average. But why should we be happy with the average? Why settle for mediocrity?

Compare our 189 school days with the leading lights of Asia, where academic-focused Japan and South Korea clock up a staggering 210–250 annual school days. Singapore is not far behind. In Europe, Denmark and Italy typically total over 200 school days.

How many times have the teacher unions indulged in a long whinge in the media about there not being enough time in the year to plough through the packed school curriculum? Surely one easy solution would be to downsize the onerously long summer holiday shutdown, with a few more weeks of term time for quality learning.

The current model is like a relic from yesteryear, when single-income households and stay-at-home mums were the norm. Today, even if both working parents split their annual leave, it still wouldn’t cover the enormity of school holiday provision.

Let’s get the school year underway, earlier.