In the case of a student who carries out hourly-paid work during school/ university vacations (that is, Christmas, Easter and Summer) would their holidays accrue during the unpaid absences from work (i.e. term time)?

If the worker remains under a contract during term time, they would continue to accrue holidays during that time even though they are not working. This would pose challenges to the employer because the worker would work for less than 20 weeks in the year but accrue 5.6 weeks' paid holiday as if they were a permanent worker.

One approach to dealing with holiday would be for the employer to engage the worker on a series of discrete, short-term contracts for the duration of each school/ university vacation, and then terminate the contract and pay them in lieu of any accrued untaken holiday when they return to school/ university.

This would mean that they would not accrue holiday during the term time as they would no longer be a worker and would only accrue holiday during the periods they are actually working.