Just a thought, on what basis are the school holidays times as they are? I drove our little girl to school this morning and realised that we are right at the beginning of the rice harvest. I wonder why, when helping hands are at a premium, the family is deprived of a good part of its workforce?

Not all Thais work in rice fields.

The major school vacation is in April because that is the hottest month of the yr. The second vacation is in October because it is halfway around the calendar from April.

Good answer. I think it's about 40% of Thais that are in agriculture. In Europe many of the holidays were organised around harvest time and hay making (as well as religious holidays)and they are still there where they were originally. I would have expected to be take the rice harvest into account as some provinces have this as their principal crop.

There is also no obvious religious holiday period that coincides with the holidays; in fact a big religious festival has started here today on the first day of school.

I wonder why, when helping hands are at a premium, the family is deprived of a good part of its workforce?

As in child labor you mean ?

I wonder why, when helping hands are at a premium, the family is deprived of a good part of its workforce?

As in child labor you mean ?

How politically incorrect of me. As in barely enough money to send the kids to school and feed the family, does that sound better?

I always worked helping my father on holidays from age about seven, I think, I enjoyed it. Might do some good for the layabouts you see in the UK, not labouring but collecting ASB orders.

No need to be so apologetic when someone is simply trolling. Harvest season can be a very busy time of the year and when I was young, on more than one occasion the starting date of school was changed because the harvest had been delayed.

Thailand is a little bit more laid back and it has only been in the past several years that many students went to school beyond grade 6. When I first arrived in Thailand most people from poorer families simply couldn't afford to send their children to school beyond that time, so helping with the harvest wasn't a significant problem.

I believe that there is a lot more mechanization of the harvesting process now that there was at that time as well.

Different parts of Thailand will have different harvest seasons, depending on whether they have one, two or three crops per year. Also some areas are rice growing areas, others produce fruit or rubber, so there is no clearly defined nationwide harvest season.