Like many parents over the school holidays – haemorrhaging cash has become somewhat routine these past few weeks.

And in a desperate attempt to illustrate how quickly my tribe want to spend it (or in some fruitless attempt to stop them nagging for it) we embarked on a simple adding up task a few days before the start of term to try and illustrate how easy it is to squander a month's wage on everything from 27,000 ice creams to another trip to the cinema/pool/trampoline park.

Simple addition – or so I thought.

Clearly having addled their impressionable young minds over six weeks with said ice creams, sweets, the internet, Netflix’s entire back catalogue, endless online games and bedtimes later than school days permit, their brains were now broken.

Thankfully today they’re back at school where one hopes those sluggish cells soak up some quick maths pronto – if only for the sake of their piggy banks.

But on the timetable for thousands of children this week - alongside reacquainting themselves with times tables or what a reading book looks like – will be the Kent (or Medway) Test.

And no sooner have thousands of Year 6 pupils found their new seat in the classroom, will they be expected to recall everything from how to convert a fraction into a percentage and what a subordinate clause might look like.

Now we could debate for hours the unfairness of selective testing – but as a parent having already ridden the rodeo through Kent’s secondary choices I’ve come to accept the system is the system and to use that somewhat dismissive phase – ‘it is what it is’.

But what feels most unfair about the Kent Test every year it rolls around is its timing.

When I was 11 (or 10!) you’d sit the 11 Plus further into Year 6 – and while it meant results weren’t known when you chose your secondary options – your feet had definitely been under a desk for longer than 72 hours before you turned over a paper.

Now don’t get me wrong – I’m equally not in favour of prolonging the agony any longer into the year – and they’ll be many a parent glad to get this week over I'm sure.

But as a result of the six week school break there will be those children who – while their parents were working - have spent a summer thinking very little about school. While others will have given hours to brushing up reasoning skills or sitting mock tests.

Many may have done something perhaps in between this past month –breaking up a You Tube stream with 10 minutes of punctuation practice here and there.

I feel like there’s other considerations too. Some children take time to settle back into school, a new class or new teacher. And then there’s the reality every parent knows – that children after a couple of days back in uniform are shattered and irritable as routines are re-established.

How many adults would admit to being able to perform at their best two days after returning to work following six long weeks off?

This is of course, merely my parental gut-instinct, and experienced, knowledgeable teachers may say within a day or two children quickly recall everything they were very much up to speed with at the end of last term.

You can also of course argue no child is obliged to sit the exams, which of course is true. But plenty of parents like to see their children give it a go without feeling like they’re at a disadvantage because they didn't study in the summer. Especially considering that because it’s so early in the year, few families have been able to visit all their prospective secondaries yet to know what their final choices might be.

So if I could pick what feels most fair?

Give them the test paper just six weeks earlier, at the end of Year 5, when adverbs and co-ordinates are still fresh in their minds.

And then let them go off for the summer where they can forget how to add up.