People love to give teachers grief about the long holidays, especially the epic summer six-weeker. But we know how it really is.

For the first couple of weeks you wake up at 6am, reflexively hurling yourself into the shower before remembering that school has broken up. Then you spend the rest of the day wandering aimlessly around the house, occasionally swigging from bottles of wine you received as end-of-year presents, knee deep in Ferrero Rocher wrappers. When your job is as high pressure as teaching, remembering how to relax can take a bit of effort.

But by week three, you’ve just about got the hang of it and are starting to wind down and enjoy yourself. By week four, work is a distant memory.

Then comes week five, when you wake up and wonder if it’s time to go into school and sort everything out. Maybe you should leave it until week six. Everybody hates week six anyway. By then the summer fun vibe is fast evaporating, which seems highly unfair. It took you so long to wind down in the first place; wouldn’t it be lovely to keep the holiday feeling for longer?

The problem is, the longer you put it off, the greater the chances are of you screeching into the school car park at 11am on the last day of the holidays with a killer hangover and a heart full of remorse. You’ll attempt to get everything done in four hours before the caretaker kicks you out. It can’t be done. Ask me how I know.

The magic formula

Of course, if you feel like being really smug, you could do all this in week five and give yourself the whole of last week off so you can walk in on the first day of term as cool as a cucumber. But if you fail to do that, feel free to use my foolproof formula. Take the last day of the holidays as your starting date and subtract days as follows to find the day you should be heading back to work to get everything done comfortably. 

• You did everything in the first week of the holidays (basically you’re some sort of wizard):  -0 days
• You’re staying in the same classroom this year: -1 day
• You’ve got a brilliant teaching assistant who loves backing boards and organising stuff: -1 day
• You’re changing classrooms: -2 days
• You’re changing year groups: -3 days
• You’re changing schools: -3.5 days
• You teach early years: -4 days
• You have a management role as well as teaching responsibility -4 days
• You find joy in distracting everyone and catching up with your colleagues: -5 days
• You’re a complete liability with the organisational skills of a teaspoon and your classroom resembles an exploded Early Learning Centre after it’s been ransacked by looters: -6

And there you have it. Good luck my friends. Bring snacks and a job lot of bin bags.

Lisa Jarmin is a freelance writer