My son's new secondary is one of hundreds of schools that have ditched the boring old one-week October half-term holiday in favour of a fortnight off, or plan to, as reported in The Times. It seems 18 per cent of schools close for two weeks in autumn, mainly in the southeast but also in Nottinghamshire and Suffolk and, from this year, Norfolk. It's a trend with many fans -- but for some of us, the double half-term has all the appeal of double maths.

Who's in favour? My guess (an educated one, because in my day there was only one week off in October) is that a good proportion of under-18s are fully behind the policy. Especially at the schools that manage it by adding an imperceptible ten minutes to each school day rather than shrinking the summer hols.

Unsurprisingly, plenty of teachers are in the "yes" camp. They'll tell you autumn is a long term so it's about avoiding pupil and staff exhaustion, minimising sick days, improving attendance and other stuff that may sound like what Charlie Brown's teacher used to say. Teachers (and teaching assistants) do an absolutely amazing job, let's be clear, and deserve to be properly rewarded for it. Still, it's hard to ignore the niggling feeling that the idea of extra holiday is pretty compelling here too. (Apparently some teachers like to have time to go to the dentist and get the boiler seen to and the car MOTed and catch up on marking and hang out with their teacher mates or possibly even their own pupil offspring.)

One head in a London borough with measly one-week October breaks tells me staff feel jealous of colleagues at fortnight-off schools; some job ads dangle the two-week October carrot as a perk.

The longer break suits some parents too: many in my Year 7 WhatsApp group are pro. A travel-mad friend of mine sought out a two-weeker primary school for her son so she could fit in more holidays. The latest National Parent Survey found that 49 per cent of parents wanted all half-terms to last two weeks -- 28 per cent were opposed.

It all sounds very jolly, doesn't it? But we all know that the fortnight works best for those with the means to cover the extra childcare, the extra time off work, the extra day trips (attractions at £30 a pop before you've got anyone there, fed or watered them or exited via the gift shop). Holiday prices might be lower in the bonus extra week now but they won't stay that way if more schools sign up and "bonus" becomes "standard". And if you want a sunny family holiday in October you'll pay to go further. In summer you can jump on a ferry with a bucket and spade in the boot and have a lovely time 15 minutes from Calais. Not so much at this time of year -- even the southern Med is dicey. Have you ever tried buying wellies from a Cretan sandal-maker?

If the holiday-budget maths don't work, the childcare sums are even worse. Parents at schools that still have three week-long half-terms, a six-week summer and two weeks each at Easter and Christmas already have 13 weeks to cover -- a quarter of the year. Even in a family with two parents, even if they both get 30 days' annual leave, that still leaves one week unaccounted for -- and assumes no time together for the whole family. Whoever did the maths there deserves a D minus.

So extra childcare is inevitable, and if you can't call on friends or grandparents, it means shelling out. One sports camp we've used charges £227.50 for a week of 8.30am-5pm days. Many charge more but even here, without other help, you can only work an eight-hour day if your commute and breaks don't exceed 30 minutes, and you have the sort of job that permits you to work those precise eight hours.

Let's hope you're being paid more than the minimum wage, which, at £12.21 an hour for over-21s, would give you £488.40 before tax for your 40-hour week -- so let's also hope you don't have more than one child. And that you can even find a place for the "bonus" week when not all camps are open. "I have to pay for camps, which are neither close nor affordable," said one mum in my WhatsApp group. "I end up more tired, and my son exhausted."

We were among the lucky ones who did get a few days away as a family in the first week -- but the trade-off in the second week, when my husband and I had both returned to work, was that our 12-year-old son was largely left to his own devices: a Switch and a PlayStation. (Plus books -- Get Britain Reading and all that.) He is blessed with a hearty appetite for TV too; currently, Friends. There are 236 episodes; but at 22 minutes each (28 for the 11 specials), that's only 5,258 minutes -- still half a week to fill!

We were also lucky -- logistically, at least -- that one of us could work from home each day, and that our son requires (prefers) far less supervision than when he was smaller. Even so. Almost 90 years since Cyril Connolly described the pram in the hall as the "enemy of good art", I can confirm the PlayStation in the living room is the enemy of good Zooms. Parents of younger kids will have their own versions.

And what of that other neglected group, the poor bosses of the poor parents? The ones who get to the end of a long hard week keeping things afloat while all the parents are Out Of Office, only to start another long hard week and find they have to do it all over again, maintaining productivity in much the same way Canute maintained dry feet. Honestly, who'd be a boss -- or a parent? Or, heaven forfend, both.