Summer vacation or summer break is a school break in summer between school years and the break in the school academic year. Students are typically off between eight and nine weeks, but not staff, depending on the country and district. In the United States, summer break is approximately two and a half months, with students typically finishing the school year between late-May and late-June and starting the new year between early-August and early-September. In Spain, Portugal, Republic of Ireland, Italy, Greece, Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, Lebanon, Romania and Russia, the summer break is normally three months, compared to three to six weeks (sometimes 2 months) in Australia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovakia and Germany.

Criticisms and support Edit
The research around the impact of summer vacation is mixed.[1] “Summer learning loss” (or “summer slide”)[2] is the perceived loss of learning students experience due to interrupted education, but the exact consequences of extended breaks is unclear. Advocates of breaks tend to focus on the need to give children time away from the childhood stresses sometimes associated with school including peer pressure, cliques, bullying, and the pressure of heavy loads of homework.

By country Edit
Argentina Edit
In Argentina, the school year ends in early- or mid-December and starts late February or early March. Also the majority of students get two weeks of holidays during winter, which varies depending on the region of the country from late July or mid-July to early August.

Primary education: From mid-December to late February (2 months)
Secondary education: From early December to early March (3 months)
University education: From last day of December (31 December) to early April
Australia Edit
In Australia, summer officially lasts from 1 December to 28 February, and therefore includes traditional holidays such as Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year. The dates of Australian school holidays are determined by each state's education department. The Christmas summer holidays are the longest in duration. Typically summer holiday in Australia last approximately six weeks, usually from late December (depending on school level) to late January. This is significantly shorter than North American summer holiday, but Australian schools also break for 2 weeks in April and in June and September, giving students and teachers a total of twelve weeks of annual holidays. In many public schools, years 10, 11 and 12 will finish before December 15, allowing time to complete exam marking and results. Year 10 commonly finishes at the end of November, Year 11 at the end of October, and year 12 (Senior Year) also at mid or the end of October after 3 weeks of end-of-year exams. This can bring the normal 12 weeks of vacation to 20 weeks of vacation.

The intervening periods of school operation without holidays are called "school terms", each term lasting approximately ten weeks. All Australian states have relatively similar holiday periods between each term, but there is the ability for this to change, as it did in the Melbourne 2006 Commonwealth Games, when the first term in Victorian schools was shortened to six weeks and the other subsequently extended to 12 weeks due to severe disruptions to the public and private bus networks used by school students. Most private schools in Australia have up to four weeks of additional holidays, due to their longer teaching hours during term.

Austria Edit
In Austria, summer vacation dates vary by region, however the break lasts nine weeks throughout the whole country. School usually ends in early July and starts in early September.

Bangladesh Edit
In Bangladesh, summer vacation begins in mid-May and ends in mid-June (4 weeks). Also, in many schools, the holiday during the month of Ramadan (Around mid-May to around mid-April) is passed off as a summer vacation. The summer there is associated with the availability of fruits such as mangoes (আম / aam) and jackfruits (কাঠাল / kaathaal). So, the summer vacation is sometimes known in Bangladesh as "আম-কাঠালের ছুটি", (pronounced as aam-kaathaaler chhuti), which roughly translates to "mango-jackfruit's holiday". Also, the summer vacation is sometimes not in line with the actual weather patterns during summer, resulting in students having to reach school in the heat. The summer vacations are not given much importance in places except schools.

Barbados Edit
In Barbados, summer holiday dates have varied throughout the years due to the beginning of the hurricane season on June 1. Because of this, major storms affecting the island can cause schools to remain closed for days resulting in a pushback of vacation dates, for example with Hurricane Tomas in 2010. Currently, summer holiday begins in late June or early July and ends in the second week of September.

Belgium Edit
In Belgium,...