Should Ukraine Shorten Summer Holidays and How Can the School Year Be Changed Without Taking Away Children’s Rest?

The government has approved the duration of the 2026/2027 school year. It will begin on September 1 and formally continue until June 30, while the summer holidays will fall in July and August. At the same time, the final dates for the end of classes will be determined by educational institutions themselves, taking into account the security situation, the needs of students and teachers, and the need to make up for educational losses. In practical terms, this means that Ukrainian schoolchildren are not yet being transferred to mandatory schooling throughout June. The date of the final school bell, as before, will be determined by schools’ pedagogical councils. However, the very wording of the academic calendar once again brings back a broader discussion: does Ukraine need long summer holidays, or should they be shortened following the example of some European countries? Time for Action analyzed where the tradition of long summer holidays came from, why different countries organize the school year differently, and whether shortening the summer break necessarily means that children will have less rest.

Long Holidays Were Not Created for Rest

The modern perception of summer as a time for travel, camps, walks, and a break from studying conceals the far more pragmatic origins of school holidays. Historically, they did not appear because educators decided to give children several months of free time. The reason was work. In countries with developed agriculture, children and teenagers helped their families care for livestock, work in vegetable gardens, and harvest crops during the summer. In the United States and Canada, farmers’ children were part of the family workforce, so their absence from school in summer became common. Wealthy families and members of the middle class had other reasons not to keep their children in cities. During the hottest months, they travelled to resorts or the ocean. Schools, which could initially operate throughout the year, eventually adapted to the actual absence of a significant proportion of students and introduced a summer break. Thus, long holidays became a response to the economic, climatic, and everyday conditions of past centuries. They were not created as a special educational model aimed at ensuring children’s high-quality recovery. This is important for the current discussion: if circumstances have changed, it is entirely logical to reconsider a calendar designed for the needs of another era.

The Length of Holidays Depends on More Than Education Policy

Different countries have different summer holidays not because one system values education more while another values children’s rest. The calendar was often shaped by climate, the population’s traditional occupations, and the rhythm of everyday life. In Norway, the school break was associated with fishing. In June, schools of halibut and saithe arrived, and children helped their parents clean and process the fish. When the busiest season ended, students returned to school at the beginning of August. Today, August for Norwegian schoolchildren may include hiking trips with teachers and outdoor lessons.

In Spain, the main factor was the heat. In Madrid and Andalusia, the average August temperature can reach +40 degrees Celsius. During this period, the work schedule of adults changes, siestas are introduced, and some people go on holiday. Schools also do not operate. Therefore, summer holidays there begin at the end of June and end only in mid-September. However, even with affordable children’s camps and government programmes available, Spanish parents and teachers periodically call for the summer break to be shortened. They are concerned that a prolonged interruption in education may deepen learning losses and make children less competitive compared with their peers from other countries. These examples show that there is no universally correct length for school holidays. The academic calendar must reflect the country’s actual conditions, but at the same time it should not remain unchanged simply because a certain model has existed for decades.

Ukraine’s Tradition of Summer Breaks Changed Depending on the Type of School

Summer holidays in Ukraine have a centuries-old history. The 1586 statute of the Lviv Brotherhood School, “School Order,” stated that the break in education fell in July and August. At the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium in the 17th century, the long holidays were called “vacations.” They lasted for about two and a half months from the Feast of the Trinity until the end of August. During the periods when Ukrainian territories were part of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian empires, there was no single calendar either. In gymnasiums and institutions for children from wealthy families in the territory of modern western Ukraine, the summer break lasted two months. In other Ukrainian territories, it could last only 30 days.

Students in rural public and parish schools had the longest holidays. They could be out of school for up to five months from the beginning until the end of agricultural work. But this period was not a holiday. Children worked alongside adults. The Soviet system preserved the long summer break, but also filled it with labour. After the school year was officially established in 1935, urban schoolchildren could be sent as entire classes to so-called “summer colonies,” where they worked in fields and studied nature. In the 1950s and 1960s, students helped collective farms, worked at field camps, weeded plants, harvested crops, and collected medicinal herbs. In the 1970s, summer work practice was officially introduced and called the “fifth term.” Younger schoolchildren worked on school grounds, while older students worked in labour camps and production brigades. Therefore, the Ukrainian history of long summer holidays is also largely connected not with children’s freedom, but with unpaid labour that was practically impossible to refuse. The modern calendar inherited the length of the break, but not its original purpose.

European Countries Are Shortening Summer, but Not Always Taking Away Rest

Supporters of shorter summer holidays often refer to European experience. However, it is not limited to simply increasing the number of school days. Seven years ago, Lithuania reduced its summer break to 70 days. The decision faced resistance, but people eventually became accustomed to the new calendar. Latvia is planning similar changes, with part of the learning process to be organized through outdoor lessons, educational film screenings, and excursions. In France, summer holidays traditionally last two months, but the authorities are proposing to cut them in half. In return, the school day is expected to end by noon. Such a proposal changes the very principle of distributing the workload: children attend school more often throughout the year but spend less time there each day. This is especially noticeable compared with the previous French schedule, when lessons took place in the morning, followed by a two-hour lunch break, after which classes continued until 4:00–6:00 p.m. With a shorter school day, even one month of summer holidays may be perceived by students not as losing rest, but as an acceptable exchange. The United Kingdom offers another model. There, the summer break lasts about one and a half to two months, but during the year schoolchildren also have additional one-week holidays in October and February, as well as two-week breaks at Christmas and Easter. This experience reveals the weakness of the argument that shortening summer automatically means less rest. Some of the days can be moved to other periods of the year. In this case, children do not accumulate fatigue during long stretches of study and regularly receive time to recover.

The Main Question Is Not the Length of Summer, but the Distribution of the Workload

The debate about holidays is often artificially reduced to two options: either keep three months in summer or force children to study longer. In reality, there are more possibilities. Redistributing holiday days could give children more frequent breaks throughout the year. This would make it possible to treat the academic calendar as an integrated system rather than nine or ten months of study followed by one long break. For Ukraine, this is particularly important because of the security situation and educational losses. Schools already have the right to determine the end date of the school year independently, taking local conditions into account. Therefore, a completely identical calendar for all institutions does not work in practice. At the same time, a decision to shorten summer holidays cannot be based solely on the desire to increase the number of school days. The needs of children, teachers’ workload, the possibility of organizing high-quality education during periods of extreme heat, security conditions, and the actual benefit of additional time at school must all be considered. If the school day remains overloaded and the summer break is simply shortened, such a reform could increase exhaustion without improving outcomes. But if a shorter summer is combined with more evenly distributed holidays, outdoor lessons, excursions, and a less exhausting schedule, the model could work differently.

“Wild Summer” Gives Children Back the Right to Be Bored

At the same time as attempts to rethink the school calendar, the “wild summer” trend has spread across Europe and the United States. Its supporters reject excessive numbers of camps, clubs, and fully scheduled children’s leisure. The idea is that entertainment organized by adults does not always provide real rest. Sometimes it merely replaces the school timetable with another schedule in which the child constantly expects new experiences and does not learn how to find something to do independently. “Wild summer” provides more freedom, but not unlimited access to gadgets. Screen time is restricted or prohibited, and children are encouraged to decide for themselves how to spend their time. This can even include simply doing nothing. Supporters believe that boredom gives the brain an opportunity to reset. At the same time, most children do not want to do nothing for more than two to four weeks. After that, they begin looking for activities themselves. Some learn to skateboard, while others learn to play the drums without seeing it as a continuation of school. Some teenagers are willing to work when this does not involve forced unpaid labour, but their own small projects that give them an opportunity to earn money. This trend shows that holidays do not necessarily have to consist either of fully organized entertainment or uncontrolled time spent online. A child can be given room for independence, choice, boredom, creativity, and their first personal initiatives.

Ukraine Needs Its Own Model, Not a Copy of Europe

Shortening summer holidays should not become an objective in itself. European countries have different climates, school schedules, social infrastructure, and family support systems. Simply transferring an individual decision to Ukraine without taking these differences into account does not guarantee a better result. The question should be formulated differently: what distribution of learning and rest best meets the needs of Ukrainian children? The answer may lie not in radically shortening summer, but in gradually redistributing holidays, creating shorter periods of uninterrupted study, adding autumn and winter breaks, giving schools greater flexibility, and introducing a different format of lessons in June. It is equally important to ask students themselves. Adults often discuss the calendar from the perspective of parents’ convenience, the needs of the economy, or the indicators of the education system. But children themselves live according to this schedule every day, accumulate fatigue, and need to recover after studying. Therefore, before implementing a reform, it would be appropriate to examine what is more comfortable for schoolchildren themselves: one long summer break or shorter but more frequent holidays throughout the year. Long summer holidays are not an unchangeable rule and never were. They emerged because of labour, climate, and everyday conditions that have changed over time. But a shorter summer does not make education better by itself.

The main task is not to take away part of children’s rest, but to organize the school year so that education does not exhaust them, holidays truly restore them, and learning losses do not accumulate after a prolonged break. What do you think: should Ukraine shorten summer holidays and redistribute part of the rest to other months, or is it better to keep the current model? Would a shorter school day or the “wild summer” format with fewer organized activities suit Ukrainian schoolchildren? Share your opinion in the comments.

Tags: 2026/2027 school year, education in Ukraine, learning losses, school holidays, schoolchildren, summer holidays

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