Parents lament dissimilar holiday structure at schools

This is the way calendars are designed. Christian missionaries are in existence since Independence and hence they have Christmas vacations. For zilla parishad schools and Hindus, Sankrantri is a harvest festival and is important for them to visit their villages. So they are granted holidays in January

Abhay works as a software consultant and his wife Asha, is a government employee. Their children- Parikshit studies in class 6 of Little Flower High School and daughter Pari studies in class 3 of Slate School. Parikshit has holidays from December 24-January 2 for Christmas. Meanwhile Pari does not enjoy holidays now.

She infact has Sankrantri vacations from January 9- January 19. Asha can avail her pending leaves and as Abhay is working with an MNC, he would have a long weekend. They planned for a holiday to Jammu and Kashmir. But since their daughter does not have holidays, they are forced to cancel the plan.

Helpless Abhay was lamenting as to why schools don’t have uniform holidays. Many such parents are unable to plan holidays with their children having different holidays for different schools.

India is one of the most diverse countries in the world when it comes to culture and religions. As a result, the celebration of holidays and festivals, whether traditional or religious, has always been an important part of Indian culture. Because India celebrates so many festivals, all other holidays are considered on an individual and day to day basis. Employers generally let you have the days off for the holidays that are celebrated for your specific religion and culture.

“I am a product support engineer for a telecom company. We have to have a certain level of staff at work at all times, to provide support for our customers. Therefore we have to arrange our holidays for everyone's benefit. As I don't have kids, I am happy to compensate my offs for those parents who want to take their holidays during school holidays,” says Anoop Dalmiya.

“These days it seems to me that schools want everything their way, with no flexibility for anyone else's situation or circumstances. They expect working parents to adjust offs, without a thought on how it impacts them. How do we manage?,” questions Rajender Kaur, an IT employee.

However it is often not possible for parents to take their children away during the school holidays no matter how hard they try.

Subba Reddy, DEO, Hyderabad says, “This is the way calendars are designed. Christian missionaries are in existence since Independence and hence they have Christmas vacations. For zilla parishad schools and Hindus, Sankrantri is a harvest festival and is important for them to visit their villages. So they are granted holidays in January.”

So is there any way out? The DEO answered, “These calendars are designed much in advance and we follow them. Maybe they can be put up for opinion for the 2015 academic year as the calendar for 2014 has already been designed.”