Children in Bradford - and their teachers - may switch to a new academic timetable, with six terms a year instead of three.

Education chiefs are understood to be keen on the new system which aims to separate the school year into six terms of equal length.

It would give teachers and pupils a two-week break in October to split up the gruelling autumn term and the fifth term in May would be given over to exams and assessments.

The final term in June would be an opportunity for students to take part in more extra-curricular activities and trips, as well as applying for university places and getting ready to transfer to secondary school.

Under the new six-term year:

l The six-week summer holiday would be in July and early August

l The new school year would start in mid-August.

l Easter would be a long weekend

Phil Green, the district's new Director of Education, said the proposals had been floated nationally by the Local Government Association, which is taking soundings from schools and parents.

He said it could find favour in Bradford, where radical action is felt to be needed to effect a turnaround in poor classroom performance.

The Education Policy Partnership, which makes recommendations on schooling across the district, will soon debate a "discussion paper" on the subject. Nationally, supporters of the six-term system hope that every local education authority will switch in 2004.

"At the moment terms are of different lengths," Mr Green said, "The autumn term is too long and children can get exhausted - especially in primary schools. It leads to fractious behaviour.

"An eight-week half-term is a killer for pupils and teachers. There's also too much time left in the summer term after assessments - people treat it like downtime."

Another problem, he said, was that Bradford primary schools can take two weeks off for Spring Bank Holiday while secondary schools only have a week.

Where parents have children in both, they often decamp on a fortnight's holiday, causing one child to miss a week of lessons.

"There's a culture developed now where people feel they have the right to take their child out of school - it's become custom and practice. But parents don't realise the sort of damage they are doing to their learning," Mr Green said.