I was wondering IF the changes to school working/holidays ever come to fruition nationally what sort of effect would it have on us as organisation? This is given that our traditional summer camp period cover what is the 6 weeks holiday. If this was cut to 4 weeks would it be the end of summer camps and more autumn ones.
Locally we have one academy going through the process of changing and another (in my squadron’s catchment) in the consultation stage. I know a couple of people who are staff in the said academy and they’ve bitterly complained as they have children in other schools. From this if academies do go their own way as they can do, it could well be even more problematic.
Our catchment area covers 8 schools and 3 PRUs. Of the schools, 4 are academies, 1 of which has its own CCF. At present, thankfully, school holidays are unified - with the exception of occasional inset days being offset. HOWEVER, the biggest school (itself an academy) is already consulting about holiday changes and moving to 8 x 5 week terms per year, with another academy going into consultation about reducing to the 4 week summer break and 4 week winter break.
HOWEVER, given recent years summer camp allocations, nobody seems to be too bothered about giving us term time camps anyway!!!
This where the problems created by academies can start to become evident, regardless of what else happens.
We take part in 3 long weekends for DofE during the holidays, so having schools doing this sort of thing can affect opportunities, apart from camps. We don’t have problems filling camp places in term time, but I know that many parents don’t even bother telling the schools.
We told schools if we took holidays in term time. The school didn’t like it, but it saved us a small fortune that became spending money.
[quote=“Batfink” post=6697]
HOWEVER, given recent years summer camp allocations, nobody seems to be too bothered about giving us term time camps anyway!!![/quote]
seconded!
we seem to get slots that clash with either term time (end of year), RIAT or Nijmegen or a mixture of all three!
We have had term time camps now for years.
At least the first two weeks of our summer camp season have always been before the end of the summer term. We have been fortunate enough that the local schools are understanding and allowed the cadet absence to be marked as work experience so giving the cadet a technical present mark in school so the cadet gets the activity and the school does not suffer for attendance.
Our annual Wing Llanbedr booking usually falls in term time also, we have started going for Autumn weeks as well.
My concern is that Summer Camp is not what it used to be. It was always the pinnacle of the years programme but not anymore.
These problems are going to become exacerbated if changes on a national level to school terms/holidays get pushed through.
What concerns me is that HQAC will inevitably carry on as per normal if things happened nationally and then bleat on that camp places and other activities weren’t getting utilised fully. This is where we need the CAC going to the various teaching union groups to put our case and promote the Corps and take Chris Hoy with her.
Interesting that some schools seem to be sympathetic on the face of it, but they are only doing themselves a favour on their attendance stats. If say 5 cadets from a school went to camp and all were unauthorised that would be 50 unauthorised marks for that week, which would dent attendance performance. My wife was a governor for several years and saw all the tricks.
While not entirely unavoidable the fact that there are so many camps in term time, (3 of my last 5 annual ones have been, plus Cyprus camps have edged into term time as well) already displays a lack of understanding within the heirarchy of the system around permission (if parents are bothered) wrt term time ‘holidays’. Don’t these people have children at school and it’s not a brand new thing or restricted to one or two areas. So the ATC is in effect expecting parents to go against government rules.