Does anyone know why they don't have half term holidays at schools in Canada? It is the first time we've lived somewhere that doesn't - or is it just a Nova Scotia thing. Mind you, with most parents only getting 10-15 days holiday a year, perhaps that has something to do with it too.

I dont really know many kids, but i remember my college freind telling me he was on reading week during the times we normally have half term?

I would guess it is to do with having such a long summer holiday. Although here my daughter attends 145 days a year and from what I can see in UK the school year is over 180 days
It was hard to get used to at first but now seems normal (sort of)! She does get very tired by the time a holiday comes around.

145 instructional days seems to be an extremely short school year.

In Alberta the school year is 191 instructional days and the schools are operational 197 days.

That's a 46 day or 9 week difference in instructional days between Alberta and Quebec

Edit: I just found this interesting PDF document listing School Calendars for right across Canada. It also includes the maximum and minimum number of teaching days for each province and territory.

Canadian Education Association 2006-2007 School Calendar

That really surprised me. I had assumed that all kids got their spring break combined with Easter, as they do in Saskatchewan, but it appears that hardly any (maybe none) do that.

One thing though, my granddaughter has loads of days off, usually a Friday. They are teacher education days or something - Teacher Professional Development Day! Not counting things like Labour Day and Thanksgiving - they had Sept 22, Oct 6, Oct 26 and 27 - and then the rest of the year is about the same. Perhaps they have half term spread over the year!

My daughter (something to do with the hours that has to be spent on teaching) gets every 2nd Friday pm off and a late start every monday am - bit of a nightmare to routines and for working parents. Then there are the teacher days off - they seem to be random days and the 'after' school clubs are at 7:30 am

Here in AB, my sons school has an early finish (2pm), the first Wednesday of every month.
As for breaks, they go pretty much straight through Sept to Xmas, with just a few holiday weekends in there.
They have a break around March (if I remember correctly from last yr, that is Spring Break) and apart from the teachers convention, where thay have a couple more days off, that is it until the summer holidays.
They break up for that at the end of June.

Those are not teacher days off, they are professional development days. Teachers are required to be either at their school or some other location to attend professional development programs of some sort.

They are off days for students but certainly not for teaching staff.

I'm sure you should already have a copy of the school calendar but in case you don't here is one for Red Deer Public Schools.

Also some of the schools have their own websites with their individual calendars on the website.

Cheers
Steve

[[i]Edit: I just found this interesting PDF document listing School Calendars for right across Canada. It also includes the maximum and minimum number of teaching days for each province and territory.

This was really useful (and interesting). Thanks
Alan

Not sure whether this half term thing is a British thing but my wife is from Ukraine and she thinks it's crazy to have half terms and I tend to agree with her. Over there they have a long summer holiday when the weather is good, they don't see thepoint of school hols when its either too cold or raining except for 2 weeks at Christmas and 2 weeks at Easter, the rest are added to the summer from June until September.
As regards summer hols in Uk I think they start too late because invariably the better weather is from end of May to end of July, so shouldn't they start mid June and go through to middle to end of August.

My daughter's school finishes early EVERY Friday at 1:40pm They seem to have more time off than they do in school to me!! (Back in the day - up hill both ways barefoot in the snow, and all that....lol )

Yet they manage to learn way more than we were taught.

Your just jealous that's all.

They do??