Just about back on topic.

Click to read You mean you're not on holiday yet?

After my off topic special on Glastonbury I'm just about back on topic today talking about holidays. The Germans sneaked out last Friday afternoon and got their towel down early when it was announced that the often rumoured tie up between the two part of TUI Travel was being suggested again. They seem to be proposing a nil premium merger which has been a sticking point in the past and they did finish up by saying: "Discussions remain ongoing and there can be no certainty that an offer will be made or as to the terms of any offer." So watch this space I guess but in the meantime you can watch a webcast all about it if you have nothing better to do.

Meanwhile back in Blighty I see that a plucky US investment banker is taking the UK government to court over its policy of fining parents for taking children on holiday in term time. He is trying to claim that it is a breach of his human rights so it will be interesting to see how he gets on with that especially as parents who take children out of school during term time without approval can apparently be fined up to £2,500 and potentially jailed.

Finally, its not clear if this policy will be such a great boost to children's education as detailed in a recent article the BBC News Educational Correspondent, which you can read by clicking on the image above. As they say you can prove or perhaps disprove anything with statistics I guess. For example from the article Sean Coughlan asks if their is a connection between length of school holidays and achievement and finds the evidence is mixed as follows:

But is there any connection between the length of the summer holiday and achievement in school?

The evidence once again is inconsistent. Liechtenstein, with only a modest six-week summer break, has the highest maths results in Europe, according to the international Pisa tests run by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

But the best in Europe at reading are youngsters in Finland and Ireland, who have some of the longest summer holidays. Perhaps they spend the time reading. Finnish schools are away from the beginning of June until mid-August and it's even longer in Ireland, where they are on holiday until September.

If pupils are meant to forget everything they've learned over a long summer, then someone has forgotten to tell that to the Estonians, who combine a very long holiday with being among the most successful in both maths and reading tests.

And if long holidays were such a bad thing, why is it that high-achieving private schools often have more weeks off than their state school neighbours?