David Lee agrees, arguing that fine art education should reflect a diversity of approaches.The art colleges retort that the critics are focusing on a tiny part of their work. According to David Buss, director of academic affairs at the Kent Institute of Art and Design, most students are studying design where the skills required are completely different from those in fine art. For example, they spend a good deal of time on computer.”We’re in the world of mass higher education,” he says. “We need to offer students something that will be meaningful to them and not just meaningful to a small elite who are going to become artists.”The controversy about how to teach art and design is connected to another issue that generates a lot of heat ­ the extent to which students get work when they graduate. The latest official figures (from the Higher Education Funding Council) show some art schools to be good at finding jobs for their graduates.

The London Institute, Ravensbourne and the Surrey Institute of Art and Design were above average when compared with their benchmarks. However, Falmouth, Cumbria and the Edinburgh School of Art were below average.The important point, say the colleges, is that most students do eventually find work But, because many are self-employed, it takes time. Not all can experience the success of Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst.l.hodges independent.co.uk. Awkward for parents, a drag for children. Is it time to ditch the outdated six-week break?

A different shape to the school year, as proposed last week, makes perfect sense.

But please can someone explain why we need to hang on to the long summer break?
Call me a Grinch, but I can see no point in a holiday like this now that children are no longer needed to bring home the harvest, and neither can they enjoy the summer idyll of yesteryear, roaming through hay fields and playing in sleepy back streets. (And the answer, given by one teachers’ union, that it is the last perk for teachers, does not seem a good one.)In today’s traffic-clogged times, unsupervised children spend the holiday hanging out at the mall, or at home watching daytime television. Which is why most parents spend years moving heaven and earth to make sure their children are both supervised and occupied during these long weeks. And why for most working parents ­ ie most parents ­ the summer looms as a yawning chasm to be bridged with a rickety apparatus of child-minders, snatched parental leave, draftee grandparents, and all those municipal holiday schemes.I know because I’ve done it all. My children have been dumped at the houses of helpful friends, endured unknown summer au pairs, and suffered inept teenage babysitters. They have been dragged ­ white knuckles folded around red Postman Pat lunchboxes ­ to play schemes of dubious worth (Camp Fun!), and been enrolled for soccer coaching and various drama productions.Then, as they got older, it seemed easier to throw in the working towel and give the summer over to their charge. Which meant (dwindling career prospects apart) that together we did Bygone World, Rare Breeds World, Science World, Tall Ships World…

We shivered on beaches, and flogged around museums, and hosted possibly hundreds of junior friends to stay.Later still, they no longer needed supervising but they still needed ferrying And funding (see dwindling career prospects, earlier). The long summer holiday is a horrendously expensive time for families. Even a round of ice-creams can cost a fortune, and the bills keep on climbing. This summer, one teenage daughter wants to do an advanced windsurfing course, while the other has been invited for two weeks to the South of France.And all for what, I ask? I’d like to think that our summers have been times of enrichment and bonding, but in truth I’d have to say that a lot of it has just been filling in. Also, the weather is so often awful.”Do you think you should have a shorter summer holiday?” I asked the children before writing this.