The International Schools Review Forum

Am not sure if this has been asked before but I have a question about vacation times across the world in ISs.
I have spent my IT career in the ME which has pretty generous vacation times - 2 to 3 months in the summer and/or 3 weeks at Xmas/Winter.

What is the situation like in other parts of the world, specifically:

Western Europe
Eastern Europe
Asia/South Pacific
SouthEast Asia

For example, I have been told vacation times in South Korea and China are pretty paltry.

Can anyone comment?

Egypt was ridiculously generous between Ramadan reduced schedule, all of the Islamic holidays and most of the more traditional US school system holidays.

China was also pretty good at the school I was familiar with (i.e. all of the usual holiday breaks/summer vacation plus another week in February.

In Brazil we don't get the fall or spring break, but we get 5-6 weeks off in December/January and a week in February for Carnaval. It's pretty sweet, but right now I'm missing that week break in spring!

Much of this will depend on 1) The region and 2) The nature of the IS.

In general, you get the same local holidays that every other worker in the region gets. An IS that is more international (in terms of student population) will supplement the holiday time with western holidays.
Its important to understand that for various accreditation and equivalency issues, that additional holiday time is often reflected in a reduced amount of PTO leave (state leave, local leave, personal leave, sick leave, etc.). ISs generally have around 190-200 days of instruction, this is in addition to or including PD/duty days (a new IT will have significantly more due to orientation).

What ITs need to know and be concerned with is instructional time and contract time (in terms of hours per week, which may differ from week to week). Instructional time is time youre in the classroom with students. Contract time is time your obligated to be available, in a designated location, but your tasking is unstructured. An IS may have a designated "bank day" (a day in your weekly or monthly schedule where you have a very lite instructional load) that may allow you to leave campus for a specific length of time to go to the bank, attend medical appointments, school appointments, or other personal activities that can only be accomplished/scheduled during normal business/work hours.

I had looked into Ecuador as a possible location, but it turns out there must be a national law that says all schools have to be in session for 200 days. Needless to say, I haven't found any schools in Ecuador with good vacation time. There may be other countries with similar laws.

I'm in South Asia and we get 2 months in summer, and around 6 weeks the rest of the year (Fall, Winter, and Spring breaks). This doesn't include national holidays, of which there are several. In total, I believe we have only 180 days of instructional time and we are only required to be here a few days before/after the school year.

At my international school in Asia the vacation days were significantly different to local schools. The government did have a rule for how many days international schools had to spend at school but this was not the same as local schools (local schools had more school days and completely different vacation periods). We had 13 weeks off in total at the international school (actually slightly more. Those were the full weeks off but there were a few local national holidays we had off too). Students got an extra week or two off as prep before the school year started/training days were in addition to this. We didn't come to school in our vacation time! This is the same number of weeks off as a state school back home, but several weeks shorter than a private school back home.

China is pretty generous. Two week long breaks in September and May. All of February for the Chinese New Year. You can get a lot of travelling done in that time.

I think how you view holidays is important. Is it important for you to have good travel time and see the world (my thinking is around this) or do you see holidays as more of a time to recharge so you'd prefer to have holidays spread out over the year?

Lastname_Z wrote:
> China is pretty generous. Two week long breaks in September and May. All of
> February for the Chinese New Year. You can get a lot of travelling done in
> that time.

But does it have time off for Western Christmas? Thinking about that as a possible future option but Christmas is personally important for me getting home.

That depends on the individual school. My school doesn't, which is why I'll probably leave after my contract is up (just like you Christmas is really important to me because of family). But I know there are schools in China that will offer Christmas.

For China, a lot of international schools have Christmas off, and then another week or so at Chinese New Year. It could be the schools that are serving more Chinese students skip Christmas and just do Chinese New Year.

Its not uncommon that even in those predominately host nation ISs that getting Christmas holiday means literally one day, Christmas Day off.

If it is a British or American international school, you should still get Christmas off in China. We got 3 weeks off for Christmas, as did the other big international schools.

Has anyone been to Yellowstone National Park? I wish to visit this place during my vacations! I bumped into Yellowstone webcam where I say geysers and they charmed me. There are much more to see actually, but geysers are extremely picturesque.

It's awesome, but freezing at Christmas!

That said - most IS's I have been at have had 190 days for standard contract (longer for admin) with 180 instructional days (teaching time).