This isn't a rant .... just putting a point of view to rectify a few points mentioned by others in this thread as it's a subject close to my heart.
I've spent nearly 30 years being pathetically grateful for the summer break. It isn't just a big a break break, as many people think. All the teachers I know spend at least half of it de-stressing and becoming human again. Then you get a fortnight to go away with your family as a normal human, then you spend the last week re-stressing getting ready for the term ahead. What's more there is zero flexibility to have a break when there's a cheap holiday on offer, when the weather's good or have a day off to watch a test match, or go to the world cup etc.
So the factory worker, the policeman etc
The Engineer that has to make components to 0.001" or 0.01mm consistently on shifts with a boss that treats them like a rag out of the bin
the poor sod on a zero hour contract for minimum wage & all those that live their working life with the threat of being made redundant constantly hanging over their heads
do they not have to deal with stress in the workplace ?
The absolute worse case I've ever seen put forward to justify the amount of holidays that the profession gets, what about the parents that have to use up their holiday allowance for the 'training' days etc.
Teachers have always provided an essential service to every child that's ever grown up in this country, but having Educated us please don't then take us for fools.
As far as I'm concerned you can't argue about the none flexibility of your holidays when you get so many.
There are also many workplaces where only a certain percentage of the workers may be on leave & in those cases if you don't get your holidays in quickest then they get turned down, I know of a case involving a mate where they all stuck their holiday forms in and he put in for 2 weeks in the summer, others did as well & he was told that it was too many & theirs got approved because of their length of service, then because in all the other weeks of the summer holidays the numbers allowed off had already been filled up he was told that it wasn't possible for him to book any during that period (it's only 3 sets of fortnights don't forget) he was told that there were odd 'long weekends' where he could be off where the numbers were in work. Many places also have folk that only work 'term time' hours so they're short staffed and its hard for full time staff to get time off in the holidays.
1 other thing that gets me is giving kids homework to do over the holidays, and my lad got a LOT of it when we were going away for a week, when he mentioned that we were going away & he wouldnt be able to do it he was told that he could just do the detention for not completing it then ... I made sure that wasn't happening straight away.