WHAT a relief, I hear people say, celebrating the start of the autumn term. Everyone, bar teachers, is letting out sighs as their offspring head to the bus stop, backpack on shoulder.

Summer holidays are way too long. She would not admit it, but my youngest daughter was ready to return a fortnight before the break ended, lounging around the house, tapping into her phone, telling me she was bored.

I’ve read extensively on this subject and am tired of hearing how the lengthy break can help youngsters totally relax and ‘find themselves’. If they need the best part of seven weeks to do that, they must be well and truly lost.

Private schools have even longer — around nine weeks — but parents would probably argue that that is necessary for flitting between second homes in Provence and the Cotswolds.

The origins of the summer break lie in agriculture, when farmers needed their children in summer to help pick fruit and work the land.

A 3.30pm finish has its roots in similar traditions — children were needed to help with household chores. Those were the days. I don’t know about other parents, but we enter the house after work to be faced with a kitchen piled high with unwashed pots and pans caked with the remnants of lunch. A herd of wildebeest would make less mess than my daughters make in the living room.

For many children, boredom leads to them searching for entertainment — not all of it legal. Of course there are brilliant summer schools, but they can’t take every youngster. And childcare is a huge problem — when our children were younger we would take separate holidays and call on parents to help cover the summer break, along with all the other school vacations.

I think a month at the most, is long enough for a school summer holiday. Why not give an extra week at Easter to compensate? Facing summer term exams, many pupils would hugely benefit from extra time in spring.

One school of thought is that the long break disrupts learning. As an adult, I need only a week away from work to lose the ability to do my job quickly and efficiently. From 2015, the Government is planning to introduce measures to give every state school the power to set its own term times. The change could see a four-week summer holiday introduced in many schools, with a longer gap between other terms. This would also prepare pupils for the world of work, where four or five weeks holiday a year is the norm. The pupils may not like it, but will accept it. It will be the teachers who will take some persuading.