Holidays are really important. Many of us will have childhood memories of summer holidays where we were taken away from home to experience new environments and learn in different ways.

But holidays are expensive and, for those on low wages or living on benefits, they are often unobtainable. Even the cheapest holidays require travel and other additional costs that are difficult for many families to meet.

For working parents，the long summer break can be a very difficult problem for childcare. When an annual leave allowance amounts to only five weeks，there is a need to spread this across the year. Couples can find themselves taking leave in turn in order to care for children who are on holiday. For some，this makes even an affordable family holiday difficult.

The schools that I visit in Nottingham are full of experienced staff committed to giving our children a caring and inspiring learning environment. The number of children receiving free school meals is quite large in Nottingham and many schools have breakfast clubs to make sure that children get a healthy start to the day. Most schools undertake programs of group or individual educational support. Schools also have an important role in safeguarding children’s welfare through the ongoing touch and support with their pupils. During the long summer holidays，much of this is missed.

While teachers are holidaying in the UK, many of their pupils spend the whole six weeks on the street where they live. The lack of free school meals for six weeks can result in pressure on a family budget and an inability to afford the inspiring experiences that help children to continue their learning.

In setting out its plans for a five-term year, Nottingham City Council (委员会）is seeking to reduce the summer holiday down to four and a half weeks, with a more balanced five terms of roughly eight weeks, each followed by a two-week break. We believe this will give real “down time" for school staff and pupils alike but will be short enough not to cause a real break in learning.

We acknowledge that this change may be difficult for some school staff, particularly whose own children are educated in other authorities. However, this must be weighed against the benefits for city children for whom we all have the greatest duty of care.

At Granger High School, freshmen (新生) came from different junior high schools. Some freshmen were worried and nervous when going into senior high school. “When we were registering (注册) for our classes, I was a little nervous. I didn’t know anyone at Granger. I’m kind of social. If a teacher puts me with someone, I can get along well with them. However, it’s different starting in a new school with lots of strangers,” Mark Calderon said.

I once taught in a small private school. Each morning at nine o'clock all the students, ranging in age from three to seven years old, gathered in the Great Room for a warm-up in preparation for the day.

One morning the headmistress made an announcement to all the children gathered,“Today we begin a great experiment of the mind.” She held up two ivy(常春藤) plants, each potted in an identical container. She continued, “Do they look the same?”

All the children nodded. So did I, for, in this way, I was also a child.

“We will give the plants the same amount of light, the same amount of water, but not the same amount of attention,” She said. “Together we are going to see what will happen when we put one plant in the kitchen away from our attention and the other plant right here in this room. Each day for the next month, we shall sing to our plant in the Great Room and tell it how much we love it, and how beautiful it is. We will use our good minds to think good thoughts about it.”

Four weeks later my eyes were as wide and disbelieving as the children’s. The kitchen plant was leggy and sick-looking, and it hadn’t grown at all. But the Great Room plant, which had been sung to and surrounded by positive thoughts and words, had increased threefold in size with dark leaves that were filled with energy.

In order to prove the experiment, the kitchen ivy was brought to the Great Room to join the other ivy. Within three weeks, the second plant had caught up with the first ivy. Within four weeks, they could not be distinguished, one from the other.

I took this lesson to heart and made it my own.