AH, the school summer holidays... six weeks of long lie-ins, sunshine, and doing nothing much at all, apparently. But for how much longer?

That nasty Michael Gove, education secretary in the UK Government, believes kids have too much time off in the summer.

He wants to slash the six-week break by as much as two weeks, and make children work a longer school day, like their counterparts in places such as Singapore and Hong Kong.

Mr Gove, who bears a striking resemblance in character and physique to an eccentric physics teacher who made Weekender's life a misery in the 1970s, is gearing up to take on the teaching unions on the issue.

The current education system is stuck in the 19th Century, he argues, at least where the school timetable is concerned.

Six-week summer breaks were originally built into the system to enable youngsters to help with the harvest, in a pre-mechanised, sepia-tinted world where callus-palmed farmlads led hefty horses pulling ploughs, and everyone who could not sheave wheat by the age of four was labelled the late Victorian or early Edwardian equivalent of a wuss.

As we now have a modernised farming industry and harvest is a soulless, heavily mechanised slog, rather than a community event of great importance, Mr Gove sees no reason why children - and teachers - should be given six weeks off to recharge their batteries.

Keep the little devils in school for more weeks of the year, he says, and make them stay longer every day, to learn more and take part in extra-curricular activities which, because they would be obliged to take part in extra-curricular activities, would not really be extra-curricular at all, but a mandatory part of school life.

One can almost see the outrage seeping out of the windows of teaching unions' offices up and down England. They are always spoiling for a fight, and Mr Gove appears set fair to give them one.

All of this of course, conveniently appears to ignore the fact that the majority of independent schools have longer summer, Christmas and Easter holidays, and yet the educational welfare of their pupils does not appear to be affected.

No mention of them though, in the Gove diatribe, delivered at an education conference in London.

And so we have the prospect of different school holidays in different parts of the UK, unless Wales and Scotland decide to follow suit, and discrepancies in holiday dates and lengths could grow even bigger.

And then there is the aforementioned recharging of batteries. Yes, many children appear to do little with their time in the summer, but an awful lot of them by contrast, are out there doing community work, or exploring the world in which they are growing up.

They work hard during term time and if the Weekender brood is anything to go by, are fully deserving of switching their brains off for a few weeks.

Other school holidays through the year are increasingly filled with homework or studying for exams, so the summer is an important time for doing other stuff, however indolent it may appear.

I realise that my later school years were more than 30 years ago, but I filled my summer doing what Mr Gove believes to be something consigned to history - working on the land, in my case market gardening.

Yes, it was a means of making some extra pocket money, but it also gave me a valuable insight into hard work and how to cope with it.

There are plenty of young people working for some or all of their holiday time these days - though perhaps not planting, picking, sorting and bagging brussels sprouts in all weathers - and they are engaged in tasks that will stand them in good stead in later life.

Education is not all about lessons and homework, and Mr Gove would do well to consider that - perhaps during the incredibly long Parliamentary summer recess.

County's long march continues

MUCH fanfare in Cardiff this week about the Bluebirds' ascent to the Premier League.

But Newport County's securing of a Blue Square Premier League play-off place is, in its more low-key way, just as much of an achievement.

Not necessarily because of where the club has come from since it was reconstituted more than two decades ago - but more because of where it has come from in the past 18 months.

Go back to autumn 2011 and Newport County appeared set fair for an ignominious return to the Blue Square Conference South level. Much of last season, the FA Trophy march to Wembley aside, was an almighty ugly scrap against relegation.

Some will argue that County should have been automatically promoted instead of having to face the play-off lottery, but all clubs can point to dodgy results over the course of a season.

Best celebrate a fantastic effort to finish third and look forward to the next couple of weeks. It's going to be intense.