Tauranga mother-of-two Karina Tendler says when it comes to school holidays, something needs to change.

She recently approached the Ministry of Education asking it to consider altering the term schedule because of the financial burden she says it imposes on families.

Her son recently started school, and she has a 3-year-old daughter who will go to school in a couple of years’ time.

“The two-week breaks each term, combined with the five to six weeks over summer, create a significant strain on our ability to balance work and family life.

“While there are private school holiday programmes available, they are often unaffordable, costing $50 to $70 per day. We’re aware of subsidy programmes, but unfortunately, we don’t meet the eligibility criteria. This leaves us – and many others – in a difficult position.

“I understand that the current system may have worked better in the past when single-income households were more common. But in today’s economy, dual-income families are often a necessity, and the school calendar hasn’t adapted to reflect this reality.”

The Ministry of Social Development’s OSCAR subsidy is available for school holiday programmes up to 50 hours a week. The amount parents can get depends on the number of children they have and how much they earn.

Someone with two children can get $326 per child, per week in the holidays if they earn less than $1264 a week before tax. That drops to $101.50 a week if their income is between $2485 and $2669. Above that, there is no subsidy available.

Tendler said she was relatively new to the country and was surprised when she discovered the situation. Even working from home was not a good solution, she said.

“To work from home when you have a 5-year-old son with you, it’s not a productive day.”

“It’s very oriented in terms of one parent working, one parent is staying at home. Maybe it was like that in the past in New Zealand, but I feel the economy now and the cost of living now is not really representing that anymore, and there are a lot of families that both of the parents are working now and you need to find a solution around it.”

She said it seemed that teachers did not want to lose the days off.

“You could still have a balance and have holidays, but not two weeks. Reduce it to one week and keep summer as it – it will help some parents.”

She said even with two parents splitting leave, they did not have enough days to cover the holiday.

Other options could be to give parents more paid leave, or provide cheaper, government-run holiday programmes, she said.

Days in school agreed in 2016

Sean Teddy, hautū (leader) of operations and integration at the Ministry of Education, said the school holidays were set – in agreement with sector groups – in 2016.

Schools can choose a start date between Auckland Anniversary Day and the day after Waitangi Day, and can end no later than December 20 in any year.

Secondary and composite schools need to be open for 380 half-days a year. Primary, intermediate and special schools need to open between 380 and 390 half-days, depending on the timing of Easter.

“In most years, the first school holidays for primary schools are timed to include the Easter break. To create terms of a reasonably uniform length in years when Easter falls particularly early, all or some of the Easter break will fall during the first term. In these years, fewer half-days can be completed before the latest end date.”

The ministry told Tendler it was important to strike a balance between ensuring students were in school long enough to receive the education they needed, and having holidays long enough to give them a chance to rest and recuperate.

Financial mentor David Verry at North Harbour Budgeting Services said Tendler was not alone in her concerns. He said it was something families struggled with every year.

“One of the big issues is they come up in one big lump sum that you have to pay.

“If it’s $50 a day, that’s $250 a week and that’s after-tax dollars people have to come up with. Over a couple of weeks, if you have two children, that’s $1000. That’s a huge chunk of cash to have to front with.”

The summer holidays could be even tougher on family budgets, he said, because people would also have to cover the cost of Christmas and back-to-school. It was even harder on single parents, he said.

Verry said he would advise people to set money aside for holiday programmes through the year, if they could, so they had the funds available when they needed them.

“So you can dip into that without having to go, ‘Oh gosh, we’re going to have to cut our food budget because we just haven’t got enough.’”

While people who could work from home might have flexibility to reduce the hours their children went to holiday programmes, or not use them at all, manual workers did not have that luxury.

“It’s a bit harder when you have a manual job or you’re working in a supermarket because you’ve got to be there.”

- RNZ