Term time holidays

They can't though? It's the 10th session which triggers the fine.

Yep, that’s what I said. They can miss a whole week of school without a fine. What am I missing?

DD’s science department are considering a trip to Disneyworld (USA) to “study rollercoaster engineering”…….

Ex teacher here with a 3 year old and a 1 year old.

I’ve already got a schedule of when I plan to take term time holidays 😂.

3 for definite over their school life. Maybe 4. It’s not even about costs, just about experiences. I’m not even pretending it’s educational. 2 of these are for Disney World.

We’ve got an international family so if weddings, funerals, big birthdays etc fall in term time I’ll definitely consider letting them miss a couple of days of school to attend.

I won’t be asking for work to be sent home but pretty confident I can plug any gaps sufficiently having taught most subjects at some point!

I wouldn’t be too annoyed about it if the money went directly to my child’s school, but it just goes in the LA’s massive pot which has no real accountability on how the money’s being used.

I’m in Cromer today. There are whole classes of kids here presumably on a school trip. They’re all wondering up and down the pier not learning anything. I don’t see what the bloody difference is

The critical thing there is the school as
to ‘consider’ a fine- it doesn’t say that they have to fine.

There is enough wriggle room with the 4.5 days to stay within the guidelines. And if you’re saving money on the holiday then you have to suck up the fine and budget it as part of the cost.

My child learns a hell of a lot more out of school than in it. School is only part of her education.

She’s about to go into year 9 and it looks like she’ll be doing 3 extra GCSEs from home due to the limitations of her choices at school.

They can fine me. I'll still do it if I need to.
Both kids have 100% attendance, are top 1% academically (thus not realistically catered for in school anyway) and we take them on educational site visits to enrich their learning.

I agree though it shouldn't be discretionary. Whilst it makes sense to be, headteachers have enough admin and crap to deal with without holiday admin for parents. Our LA has just stopped all school dinners because they don't have the budget. Whole system is a bloody mess.

Yes. That’s devolution for you. 👏

It’s England only. Move to Wales. We don’t have this here.

Sorry your daughter has been through that. I don't think for a second anyone would include her, or any child with genuine reason for being off, as a persistent absentee. When I think of that phrase its more where the parents just cba.

It is ridiculous, I took term time holidays in my GCSE and A level years as it was allowed then and it didn't do me any harm.

My DD is on yr2 and has 100% attendance for this school year. She is working beyond expectation in all areas. We have booked a term time holiday for the first week back after Xmas. Holiday is £300 pp instead of over £1,000.00 pp for Feb half term. Holiday was booked before I was aware of the rule change, luckily I haven't informed the school yet so I will probably say she is unwell for the week. I don't believe for one second taking a week out of school will make any difference to her educational attainment.

My kid has consistently relatively poor attendance, somewhere between 90 and 95%. Her worst attendance record was 7% for one term. So presumably she’d be one of the “persistent absentees” who’d be fined and not allowed a school term time holiday.

However, her attendance is not great because she had cancer age 6 and still has a tonne of follow up appointments. So why should she and we be penalised for this? Don’t judge persistent absentees too quickly.

Attendance is BS anyway. My DS's school have sent a letter out asking for doctor, hospital, dentist etc to be after school. Yeah, good luck with that. If not they want the child in for their attendance mark. So if I take DS to the dentist at 9 and get him into school for half 9 this is treated worse than if I send him in for the register and then take him out for the rest of the morning. Absolutely ridiculous.

My 8 year old was allowed 2 days off just before half term, to attend a wedding abroad (where my husband is from) where they had brought it forward due to grooms mum only having a few weeks to live. My 4 year old who was flower girl at this wedding, and in a different school (infants) was not allowed, despite being below statutory school age, and I got a very snooty letter from her head.
We have never taken termtime holiday before, they have excellent attendance.

There should be some distinction between taking a few termtime days off for a one off family event where we have no control on when it is. And taking a holiday off in termtime because it's cheaper

No, but they're also not something that only rich children should get to have.

You say that. As someone who didn't go abroad until a school trip as a teenager it really did affect me. We still had other "nice times " but I felt so left out and less-than for such a long time. And also like we all want our kids to experience things right. It's hard to deny that when you can do it but school is telling you not to, especially when in a lot of cases, school itself is not perfect.

My DS school hasn't even mentioned the change to parents yet. I only know about it through friends that are teachers.
I think schools need to at least inform parents that it is now mandatory for school to fine unauthorised absences esp. with a school that doesn't currently fine.

We aren't a family that usually takes term time holidays so it wouldn't really effect us. Although we are taking a term time holiday this year the week after half term for a family wedding so we will get hit by the fines.

Yeah, but it's not going to damage a child by not going on holiday. You can enjoy family time at home too.

Plus they have longer holidays anyway so can benefit from term time prices as it stands. Weird how their education isn't as 'important' that they can have many extra weeks off.

Lots of things aren't essential. If we only did the bare essentials we'd all have very very sad lives.

The rules don't apply for children in private schools so for that reason alone the policy is entirely unreasonable. One rule for the rich, another for the plebs. Wouldn't want to interfere with little Horatio's sailing expedition now!

It isn’t just abroad though. Going anywhere in the UK in school holidays prices many families out.

We've also been told that inset days count for non attendance which frankly is fucking insane.