Hands up who’s surprised that a few politicians without teaching experience are calling for teachers to give up their holidays. No one? Thought not.

We’ve seen it coming a mile off.

When we started opening over Easter to help the national effort to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, already there were colleagues who could see the way this was headed, and this week came the fruition of that oh-so-predictable script.

An idea without insight

To be fair, it probably seems perfectly understandable if you know nothing about teaching.

Teachers certainly do get longer holidays than almost any other profession, and lots of children haven’t been able to access school for weeks, or months, and so why not shave a bit off the holidays and get things running again.

Of course, if you do know anything about running a school or a classroom, you’ll quickly spot why it’s not that simple.

For a start, there will be families who are currently waiting to hear whether their long-booked summer holidays will be going ahead or cancelled.

If the choice comes between taking a fortnight’s break in sunny Spain or cancelling your holidays - at your own cost - so your children can return to school two weeks early, I can’t imagine there’ll be many who choose the latter option.

Who would attend?

It hardly seems that it would be helpful to bring back a random collection of children, gradually awaiting the full return as September rolls around: we’ll have enough gaps and challenges to resolve without adding new ones to the mix. And in any case, would attendance be compulsory?

Because if not, you can guarantee that the ones who most need to be back to “catch up” (whatever that means) would be among the least likely to attend.

Then there are the teachers themselves. Some will be a similar situation; others will have worked long hours already this year on the premise that at least they’ll get a break in the summer.

For heads and school business managers, they may already have been working near enough non-stop since Christmas.

Paying your dues

There’s teachers’ holiday entitlement, too.

It’s important that we’re accurate about this: teachers do get paid 52 weeks a year, including a rather generous holiday entitlement, but the pay is commensurate with the duties.

If teachers are to teach additional days, then their pay will need to be adjusted to reflect that. Just as at the height of the crisis, the government paid volunteer doctors and nurses to support the efforts in hospitals, so it would have to be in schools.

Teachers already use some of their holiday hours to complete the additional parts of the job that are not covered by directed time, and they do so on the understanding that they’re still left with a reasonable amount of time to take annual leave.

It’s worth noting that the government guidance for furloughed staff is that they must still be able to take their leave, and that it must be useful for “resting, relaxing and enjoying leisure time”.

If every teacher and headteacher were to have even their minimal legal entitlement of 28 days’ uninterrupted leave, then we’d struggle to achieve much in the summer holidays.

Two weeks next year?

There is another option, of course: the coronavirus legislation allows employees and their employers to carry forward leave if it’s not possible to take it this year.

Perhaps teachers could volunteer for two weeks this summer in return for two weeks’ leave whenever they like in the next academic year?

It’d just need the government to fund it.

If all those in favour of restarting school early want to propose that, then I’ll take my fortnight in late June next year, please.

Michael Tidd is headteacher at East Preston Junior School in West Sussex. He tweets @MichaelT1979