Beating the school-holiday price hikes Introduced instead is a system of £120 fines per day, per child, for absence. These seem to work on the same basis as parking tickets. If you pay up promptly, you get a discount. But this is just one aspect of what some claim will become the biggest overhaul of the traditional school calendar since the Victorians laid down a six-week summer holiday so that the children of farming families would be available to pick fruit and help with the harvest. The need for such timetabling has long passed, yet it has carried on ever after as if written in stone. Until now, that is. First, new academies and free schools, no longer under the control of local authorities, were given the freedom to set their own term dates, and even opening hours. Why, many have asked, does school have to be 9am to 3.30pm without exception, especially now that many more parents work flexible hours and are both out of the home from early until late? The Government's Deregulation Bill, published in July, is poised to extend that freedom to all state schools, part of Michael Gove's push to modernise an education system that he calls "handicapped" by outdated and rigid practices. The Secretary of State for Education has praised, in this context, the high-performing schools in the Far East where pupils have a longer working day and shorter holidays. His words may strike dread in the hearts of pupils, but for over-stretched parents, struggling to fit in a job between school runs, and regularly floored by half-term breaks that seem to be no sooner over than starting again, they may just sound like a godsend. Indeed, the flexibility of free school and academy timetables could be one factor explaining their attraction for parents. Already some of this new wave - such as the David Young Community Academy in Leeds - have shifted to a four-week summer break, arguing that such an arrangement prevents children suffering an academic dip when they are away from the classroom for too long. In other words, the new way of scheduling benefits busy parents and children's educational prospects. The Boulevard Academy in Hull is another to cut the summer holidays to four weeks, and has also borrowed from independent schools to hold Saturday morning classes at least once a month, in a drive to push up standards. Meanwhile, in Nottingham, the city council suggested last year moving all state schools to a more evenly spaced five-term year in an effort to improve attainment, but had to back down in the face of union opposition. The NUT claimed that there was no evidence that such an arrangement would benefit pupils. They need the "rest and reflection" of a traditional six-week break, the union argued, while staff also required "a period of genuine recuperation." The idea of a shorter summer break, however, was the one aspect of the original plan kept when all else was jettisoned. Now, pupils have just August off - with the "lost" two weeks made up in May and October. It is far from a free-for-all. "There is a bit of a myth that has arisen that free schools can do as they please over holidays," says John Gibson, head and chief operating officer of Harpenden Free School in Hertfordshire. We still have to deliver the same number of days per year as any other school - 190 - and be inspected on that basis by Ofsted. Unauthorised absences count against us. Where we do have flexibility, though, is in how we spread those days throughout the year. Before he came to Harpenden, Gibson worked in the independent sector, as head of a preparatory school in Sheffield. What tends to happen in reality is that, whether you are state-funded or independent, you decide your holiday dates so that they are roughly in line with other schools in your locality. It comes down to practical reasons. Your parents may have children at other schools and will want all of them to be off at the same time. And some of your staff members will also be parents. It is no good if their holidays don't coincide with their children's. I don't believe that these practical restraints are going to go away any time soon. Christine Gregory, a spokeswoman for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, likewise argues that such family-friendly local arrangements between schools to keep their holidays roughly in tandem have not been overly affected by the moves of late to give heads of free schools and academies more freedom. Does she have any sympathy with the parents who signed the petition? Many headteachers have condemned them. The question is whether the inflated cost of holidays when schools break up is an educational issue, or one for the Government to take up with travel companies. We would argue that it is the latter. The Department for Education, for its part, has pointed out that system of fines introduced to stop parents taking their children out of school during term time is targeted more at persistent truants. "Children who attend school regularly are nearly four times more likely to achieve five or more good GCSEs than those who are regularly absent," it says. However, its determination to free up both the curriculum and the timetable remains undiminished. And, though that may herald more flexibility in other areas, it seems hell-bent on ensuring that children spend more rather than less time in the classroom.