Anglo-American University in Prague AAU President Jiří Schwarz Comments on the Debate Over Shorter Summer Holidays
Should summer holidays in the Czech Republic be shorter? AAU President doc. Ing. Jiří Schwarz, CSc. recently weighed in on the debate in a commentary published by Hospodářské noviny, considering the proposal from both an educational and economic perspective.
Schwarz notes that considering shortening the current 62-day summer break to six weeks would not increase the number of teaching days, but would instead distribute days off more evenly throughout the year. He also points to PISA results, including the strong performance of Estonia and Ireland despite their longer summer holidays, to challenge the argument that lengthy summer breaks negatively affect students’ school habits.
From an economic perspective, on the other hand, Schwarz argues that a more even distribution of school holidays could help employers and working parents, pointing to the labor-market disruption experienced during school closures in the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Shortening the summer holidays and distributing days off more evenly throughout the year would create conditions for increasing the efficiency of available productive resources.”
“Improving the business environment will benefit our economy and certainly will not harm the education of future generations,” he concludes.
Read the full commentary in Czech, originally published in Hospodářské noviny.