The Easter holidays are looming large again for many parents and the need to think up with fantastic activities to occupy the children is no doubt pressing. However, parents around the UK are having to contend with another potential headache with the early Easter this year creating confusion over school Easter break dates.

You may not have been aware of the problem but those who are have had to cancel family holidays and some are struggling to find childcare. So what is going on? With Easter falling particularly early this year, schools across the country have gone for a range of different holiday dates in order to even up term lengths.

Many schools are taking only Good Friday and Easter Monday off as Easter Day falls on March 23 and children at those schools will remain in classes for two weeks before taking a spring break at the start of April. This is in order to avoid them having a disproportionately long Summer term.

However, other schools are still taking their holiday around Easter which causes the problem for parents when planning their family holidays.

Here at Tinies, we have had record booking levels for temporary childcarers during March and April. Many parents are finding it hard to find places on holiday activity schemes and in some cases have children who are off school at different times, making it hard for working parents.

For example, despite both being based in Grimsby, Tollbar Business and Enterprise College and New Waltham Primary School have different holiday dates with Tollbar using the established dates of March 14 to 31 while New Waltham breaks up from April 4 to 21.

Liverpool schools break up on the March 15 whereas just 30 miles away in Manchester, they break up on March 21.

We have had temporary nanny bookings for the end of March and beginning of April up by 30 per cent. Many parents have been unable to coordinate their own holidays from work around their children's break. Others have said that they are unable to find a suitable holiday activity schemes because there was confusion over holiday times.

So if your children do have different holiday dates, it may be a case of going to see that terrible film at the cinema twice now instead of getting away with just the one time!