To think 10 days off seems a lot in term time?

Thank you. Someone sensible!

Precisely. I’ve never seen anything so ridiculous on this thread.

Come on. No one is entitled to a family holiday for 2 weeks during term time. That’s ridiculous. You do know that our parents generation got a day trip or a weekend if they were lucky to a seaside town. The level of expectation in this country now is ridiculous.

I'm sure your child's teacher thank you for giving them more work.

I think fines and the whole system is messed up. I don’t see how the government have control over our children. Granted they should be in school but it’s not the end of the world if they miss a week here and there never did us any harm. And for them to say it’s abuse to not send your child to school yet they’re willing to potentially send a parent to prison over it is aload of shit. My best memories are being in Spain when I was younger and my mum was a single parent so couldn’t afford half term time. I’ve never actually taken my kids out of school but I did request to take my eldest out for 6 days for my abroad wedding and they actually approved it so it really does depend on the head teacher

I actually wish that holiday companies weren’t allowed to charge more in the school holidays, or at least not quite so much. It’s a no brainer for many families. But since nothing is going to change anytime soon, I can’t agree with fines at all.
In any case, attendance/school refusal is such a huge issue right now that slapping a fine on a family for taking a couple weeks holiday is NOT going to do anything to improve attendance. They need to tackle the root issues. What those are is a whole different thread but it includes lack of understanding of neurodiversity and deteriorating mental health of children .

Amen to this. We are the same. Take reading books etc with us ask the teacher if anything we can do. We have yet to be fined by taking him out of school. I just think this has shit everyone up but where we live I don't know anyone that's been fined even at other local schools..our school thankfully are very pro everything else and it's a lovely school. It has not stopped or prohibited my childs learning in the slightest. He loves the experience, learning snippets of new culture, geography etc. I personally agree, hate the current system and one of the reasons we are looking to move countries. There is much more to life than a blanket education which involves a basic level of education and they all pretty come much come out as sheep at the end of it. Nothing against teachers etc they do their best with what they have, just saying there's more to life. His attendance, attitude and behaviour is great,

Teachers have zero control over government policy. People need to write to their MP about it for changes to take place.
some people say that holidays are educational but then literally stay in the all inclusive resort for a week!

pay the fine. It’s cheaper than the cost in school holidays so just save a bit more to cover it. You are often saving £££££

don’t ask teachers to send work home as the learning is in school. It’s your job to help them catch up if you take them out for holiday.

Can I just make it abundantly clear that this is not a question of ‘teacher discretion’. It has nothing whatsoever to do with a child’s class teacher and everything to do with government, local authority and school policies. Sick of teachers being dragged into this argument when they have absolutely no say in the matter.

This will never be upheld under the new ofsted framework where schools are graded based on results and attendance. Many school leaders and teachers don't agree with the fines in principle, but when their ability to keep a roof over their own family's heads is potentially compromised, how can they support this? Fines haven't worked, the figures speak for themselves. There are too many issues in education and issues in society affecting attitudes towards education and parenting which has almost created a barrier between schools and parents. In order for schools to fully support time off for holidays parents need to be fighting for:

1. Attendance to have no impact on school inspection criteria or league tabling provided the school is doing its due diligence around safeguarding.
2. Progress 8 to be replaced with attainment 8 and for sats scores to not be used as the key indicator of a good education at primary.
3. Staff wellbeing in that if a child goes on holiday, staff are not being sent demanding emails from parents asking for work or opportunities at lunchtime to catch up.

There's no point in comparing it to other countries or the 70s when expectations and pressures on schools and individual teachers are not the same.

I actually don't recall what went on at senior school as we never went on holiday during that period of my life, but a holiday form was definitely a thing in primary school. When I was at primary school, my DF used to take a week off work in May so he had to complete a holiday form for me. We only went away on holiday twice; the other times we just went out for days.

And the last week before Christmas and summer is usually a joke with no learning going on. Which is fine, but let's not pretend that students entire success rests on 100% productive attendance and thst there is no nuance.

School has a holiday form to fill in and there’s a code in the register for holiday.

I hope not 😆 DH got straight As and a degree, I pulled 5 Cs at GCSE without revision and an exceptionally poor attendance rate and we both ended up in the same job earning 40k a year. Both bright but with different home lives.

I hope DS pulls better grades than I did (and he should given what weve seen so far) but I still think he can take a week off here and there because we put in the work at home. I think we can agree that education is important but I think we disagree that attendance is the deciding factor in achievement. We do loads of extra work at home already, in addition to mandatory homework, which is why DS is excelling and a week off won't harm his chances.

Weddings in our case is ONLY if it is parents wedding. No time off for a family wedding.

They can be. At least one of them is definitely struggling a bit academically as they have missed a far bit and another is so socially. They are really finding it hard to make and maintain friendships as they’re away so much and at this age the kids move on to someone new pretty quickly leaving them to have to start all over again.
I’m not sure that long term, one bad years attendance is a big problem but it can if it happens over and over.
And a child on holiday isn’t doing any work to make them ‘ahead’.
I’m not completely against term time holiday but it’s not always as straight forward as it seems.

No. We’re allowed ten holiday days. Sickness is separate. So schools will automatically authorise ten days for family holiday.
There’s no allowance in y10/11, during gcse years.

Not just that, but they also suck up resources that aren't then available for anything else and they can damage relationships between schools and parents.

Armed forces is an example of a job where your leave is restricted and you can't necessarily choose to have it in school holidays, so it may be that a family's only opportunity for a holiday is during term time. There are others. I agree with you that these are special situations.

I don’t agree with fines at all. Yes kids need to be in school but there are always grey areas. Some families have caring responsibilities and can only have a holiday when they can get respite, some families have jobs where holidays in the school holidays are nearly impossible, others simply can’t afford the price. I just wish we would get back to a bit of common sense where the school can make decision based on the facts

Fines don't currently work.

In many areas of the country term time absence has increased steadily since they were introduced.

10 days is 2 weeks.

I had 1-2 weeks off school most years growing up for a family holiday.
Dad had factory shutdown which was always term time, so it was a holiday then or not at all. We never went abroad, it was just uk based holidays often in a caravan or small cottage by the sea, sometimes camping.

All three of us grew up still valuing education. We all got good exam results, all got good degrees and all have professional jobs. I work in education, so value school education a great deal.

But for the average child a two week family holiday, even in term time, isn't going to be damaging to their education. We rarely missed school for any other reason and were fortunate enough to be well and healthy as children.

The trouble with term time holidays is that it leaves no room for issues such as illness.
My current class has several kids with less than 75% attendance. Much of this is due to unavoidable illness. Unfortunately they’ve also all had at least a week away on holiday. This compounds the issue and makes for appalling attendance figures.

It isn't just taking your children on holiday. It's any unauthorised absence so if there are parents who just can't be bothered to take their kids in they also get fined if they miss 5days. (There are parents like this - if it's raining I will have at least 3 kids absent)

Also schools are marked by their attendance. It is part of an ofsted assessment. So schools need to do something to keep kids in school or they face a poor judgement.