Inequality at school: should the summer holidays be abolished?

The fact that education in modern society cannot be left to families alone is likely to have been made clear to doubters by the pandemic-related school closings. Parents not only lack the time, but also the technical and didactic competence to prepare their children comprehensively for a life outside the family. However, the social expectations of school education go beyond the transfer of knowledge. Schools should not only complement family education, but should also ensure that everyone benefits equally from education. However, families prepare their children differently for the demands of school. This is why the equal treatment customary in schools, according to a criticism of the sociology of education, amounts to preferring those classesthat offer their children the best starting conditions. Against the perpetuation or even intensification of such inequalities, many educators have devoted themselves to the ideal of a “compensatory education” that is supposed to compensate for disadvantages caused by socio-economic origins.

But is the school even able to compensate for social inequalities? This question can only be checked indirectly on the basis of empirical data. This is because it is difficult to isolate the influence of the school: School and non-school influences stand side by side in the résumé and interact with each other. An experimental set-up that could compare children who are brought up in school with those to whom this does not apply is inconceivable due to the general compulsory education. However, it is possible to compare the phases of school attendance with the holidays: The summer holidays, which are particularly long in the USA, can be viewed as a kind of natural experiment, where primarily school and primarily family phases of upbringing can be compared. The evaluation of performance tests came to the result,that children from socio-economically better off families improved their performance levels during the holidays, while the others stagnated. Less vacation, more school would therefore be a strategy to reduce the influence of origin.

Achievements in German tend to be age-dependent

A recent study, however, casts doubt on this message, which is certainly encouraging for educators: On the one hand, the compensatory effect of school education has apparently been overestimated due to incorrect calculations; on the other hand, the summer holidays by no means only mean a lack of lessons, so that they are not meaningful as a contrast film.

In addition, such studies can hardly be carried out in countries with shorter vacations.

The conclusion, which is actually due, that the summer vacation should be shortened or abolished, is unlikely to resonate in practice with those who should benefit from it anyway.

This study therefore chooses a different way of analyzing the relationship between school education and socio-economic status. It uses data from the German National Education Panel (NEPS) on more than 6,000 children enrolled in school in autumn 2012. The researchers take advantage of the fact that the standardized performance tests contained therein took place at different times during the school year and thus reflect a whole range of periods of time spent in the education system. This makes it possible to determine what influence the duration of school education has on performance and how this interacts with socio-economic factors. It should come as no surprise that school attendance has been shown to have a positive impact on performance. However, this is more pronounced in mathematics and natural sciences than in German,where almost half of the improvement in performance can be traced back to age, i.e. to cognitive development and external circumstances. In addition, it can only be shown for numeracy skills that socio-economic differences are reduced by the first year of school, even if only to a minor extent.

Overall, the study comes to the conclusion that everyone benefits from the lessons, largely regardless of family background.

This means that school attendance does not increase socio-economic inequalities, but it cannot compensate for them either.

This result may disappoint those who hope school will make a greater contribution to equal opportunities.

However, the practical conclusions should at least provide relief for those affected: the summer holidays can stay, and the children do not have to start school earlier in order to combat social inequalities.