The UK are moving towards standardisation of school holidays just like Ireland.
This seems to be intended to help plan a balanced curriculum and assist parents planning holidays and making childcare arrangements. It will however result in significant spikes in demand and ultimately higher prices being paid by families for the same holiday in the same resort than a week either side and potential difficulty in securing family accommodation in family friendly resorts in these peak times.
This will not only affect the midterm and Easter holidays more acutely than the summer holidays but will have a bigger impact on winter sun and ski holidays accordingly. It looks like the UK are taking a more secular approach to the Easter break as this will be generally in the first two weeks of April regardless of how Easter falls with two in three schools in England adopting the standard school year. In Ireland the Easter holidays will still be linked to how Easter falls.
School holidays 2008: England
Autumn Midterm - Mon, October 27 - Fri, October 31
Christmas holidays - Sat, December 20 2008 - January /02/05/06 2009
School holidays 2009: England
Spring Half Term - Mon, February 16 - Fri, February 20
Easter holidays - Mon, April 06 - Fri, April 17
Summer Half Term - Mon, May 25 - Fri, May 29
Summer holidays - Wed, July 22 - Sun, August 30
Autumn Half Term - Mon, October 26 - Fri, October 30
Christmas holidays - Mon, December 21 2009 - Fri, January 01 2010
You will find lots of family friendly travel tips and advice in our research and advice section to help you book the right family holiday. Check out also the experiences of other parents and travellers in our parents forum and add your own experiences as we are a great believer in real parent's experiences as the best measure of whether somewhere will suit you for your family holiday.
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