ABSTRACT
The summer break in the United States or New Zealand is a major event in the calendar for both children and their teachers, to say nothing of what it means for families. The six weeks or more of the interregnum mark different phases and different activities for all three groups. What do children do over the summer break? The answer is all manner of things, except in large measure what they do in regular school. But, ironically, what happens over that period of time may be more important to the challenge of creating effective schools than what happens during the school year. And far from being an explanation for why schools can’t be effective or for why they are limited in how effective they might be, this needs to be seen as a challenge that schools should help to solve, thereby increasing their effectiveness.
