In a move that must be an absolute gift to Private Eye, Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, a man with a lot on his plate, has caused much debate by his attack on the "tattie holiday" in schools. He wants schools to extend their working day and reduce their holidays to enable them to respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century, especially those thought to be emanating from China: according to our Prime Minister we have got to start working as hard as the Chinese or we will find ourselves working for the Chinese.
Some "free" schools already have an 8.30 to 4.30 working day and summer holidays of just four weeks, which seem to be what Mr Gove recommends.
Mr Gove's suggestion is not thought to be needed to be applied to our private (aka "public", not to be confused with "free") schools because they have longer holidays than state schools and send more of their pupils to Oxbridge and on to the government (present company excepted) - so why bother them with tiresome directive from the state?
But, back to the plot: Mr Gove was brought up in Aberdeen, where his adoptive father (not thought to be Henry Root) ran a wet fish business, although he now represents the constituency of Surrey Heath, which is rather more conservatively inclined in its politics than Aberdeen - though he has no house there. In Aberdeen he went to school at Robert Gordon's College (a cut above the comprehensive) where with all local school children he enjoyed the "tattie holiday", a ten-day half-term holiday in October especially timed to enable children to participate in the potato harvest. (In earlier times I believe Scottish school children would arrive with a lump of solidified porridge in their bags to sustain them through the day but we are not told this was part of young Gove's experience. Yet the tattie holiday is apparently indisputable evidence that the school regime was devised for a nineteenth-century agricultural society and economy that no longer exists.
Mr Gove's clinching argument is that his suggested longer hours and days would be "family friendly": since both parents are likely to be working (or would be if there were jobs for them and they were not "benefit dependent"), it would be more convenient for their working day if their children were at school for the whole time.
Simultaneously, Margaret Hodge, the Labour chairperson of the House of Commons public accounts committee has suggested that the House needs to work longer hours or more days also. The problem is that, although Mr Gove apparently has plenty of bright ideas, the government as a whole cannot think up enough whizz-bang new laws, on which it can all agree, to keep the Commons busy, but, partly because the government likes to restrict full-chamber discussion of the legislation it does introduce and partly because it so often goes wrong once enacted, select committees such as Mrs Hodge's need more and more time to scrutinise it. But the members are not present long enough, having been sent back to their constituencies by the headmaster for the grouse/West Indies/city directorship holidays.
This year the House of Commons is expected to sit for 140 days, and all children who have had the benefit of Mr Gove's new national curriculum will know that there are 365 days in the year. (Since a high proportion of MPs went to public schools and as the national curriculum does not apply to them that may explain why so many MPs are unaware that they have such long holidays and will shortly be working for the Chinese.)
In recent years, especially when New Labour had so many whizz-bang ideas to bring to the statute book, the house did sit for more days in the year, but still less than school children sit at their desks (or whatever they do in school nowadays). However, even Labour - now I finally get to the point - reduced hours and extended parliamentary holidays, introducing half-terms, in large part, it is said, to make the house more "family friendly".
So, there we have it: being friendly to ordinary ("hard working") families means ensuring that their children are kept in school for the full working day and working year: being friendly to MPs' families means ensuring that the MPs can be at home whenever their children are.
