I planned to take some days of vacation to spend with my children during the Christmas holidays, but they have turned out to be days spent at home helping them do their homework.

My daughter attends a Church school. For the Christmas holidays she was given an endless amount of mathematics exercises to do, an essay in Maltese and English and some other grammar exercises, not to mention other work in other subjects such as geography, French, religion and science.

In the first few days of her holidays, she has spent no fewer than three hours a day doing this work, and she has not finished yet. Good thing that I did not plan to go abroad for the Christmas holidays.

I am sure that the teachers who gave her all this work to do are enjoying their days of rest during the Christmas holidays. After all, I am sure that they planned to have nothing to correct.

But they did dump a lot of work on the poor children who, rather than enjoy the holidays and spend some time with their families, have ended up locked in their room trying to complete all this work in time before they return to school.

Shame on you.

I have asked the editor not to publish the name of the school and my name to protect the identity of my daughter.

Name and address supplied