To invoke the ‘otherwise’ option for school absence?

OP is brave behind AI written emails and nonsensical legal arguments.

They don’t have the balls to take the decision, take the fine and argue the case.

Honestly I have more respect for parents who own their decision and just take a term time holiday.

Embarrassing..

This!!

It's pretty hard for me to understand that with so many issues of injustice and inequality in the world, the cudgel you're willing to take up (not to mention the time and headspace you're requiring from overworked school staff) is the cause of the middle class being able to take their children on term time holidays with no possible repercussions.

So many solutions you're choosing not to take:

Take your children to New Zealand in a longer holiday period.

Take your children to New Zealand during term time and pay the fine.

Take your children to New Zealand and refuse to pay the fine, as @Duckishness suggested, and have your day in court.

Put your children in private school or embark on some version of home education.

The difficulty have is that you are conflating EOTAS and EHE. One is for children who, for genuine reasons , cannot attend mainstream or specialist provision , have an EHCP and are funded by the local authority to receive education through a variety of means, we have used equine therapy, school farms etc. The other is withdrawal of children from education by parents to educate at home. Unless you can persuade the local authority to fund your holiday to New Zealand, you are on a sticky wicket!

I feel like I've heard it all now, maybe pay for private education if you don't want the fine. People are so entitled nowadays, it makes me so sad.

No, that post was obviously always going to get scrubbed. I did laugh, though.

I am not allowed to call someone a C - L - O - W - N on here apparently.

Yes and that article was a good summation of the issue and why the policy exists

the fine comes into play for 5 days/10 sessions in a rolling 10 week period. You can have the odd duvet day, you can have a long weekend away etc all of those can be done - any more than that it is an issue.

that bit I don’t have an issue with

If you want to do things in a way that means your children miss parts of their education, that's your decision. I Just hope that you don't expect already over worked teaching staff to fill in the gaps they will miss, that's in you.

The education system is set up as the most efficient way to teach large groups. It isn't perfect but it is what it is.

Of all the things I worry about in modern society, children missing out on a term time holiday to New Zealand has never made the list.

Anyone who can afford a flight to New Zealand can afford to budget for the fines. Of course there will be the odd occasion where children miss school - family weddings, funerals, illness, etc etc. But any sort of mass education system cannot work if children are just randomly off for weeks at a time. It’s barely functioning without this disruption.

You are entirely at liberty to deregister your children.

The school have no obligation to keep their places open for you and indeed they legally cannot hold the places open if there are other childen in that year group who are seeking a shool place. If they receive an application after your children are deregistered they must give the places to those applicants. When you want to re-register you will need to apply and you may or may not be successful. You will remain responsible for your children's education until they are aboe to restart school - you may be offered places at the worst most unpopular school in your area if that's all that has places.

Whatever your stance on term time holidays and all the rest of your keyboard warrior-ing, the impact of your approach is to have education specialists (who DON’T set these policies) tied up in admin rather than actually educating children and young people.

For that reason you are a massive time waster negatively impacting children’s outcomes and think you are oh so clever to find a legal loophole.

A better alternative would be to get fined, refuse to pay and have your ‘day in court’ where you can argue your (nonsense) legal case.

And your point is? That some parents don't have their child's best interests at heart? We know that.

That's why there are rules about attendance, designed to protect the child's right to be formally educated and not pulled out of school whenever the parents fancy.

Why on earth are you arguing with every single poster? Can you not see that you're just being deliberatey argumentive?

@KuanKaKu the attendance and education systems are not designed and cannot be to benefit the middle classes. Your middle class privilege is kind of missing the point about who the attendance regulations are suppose to help and who they are failing because in neither case is it those who want to take term time holidays.

and that is why those petitions fail

If you can afford to take your kids to wherever it is without pulling them out of school, why wouldn't you? If you can afford the fine, why not pay it?

What is it about this opportunity that means it can't be done during the holidays? What's the benefit to the children?

Why do you want to take them out of school and for how long? What will this opportunity bring them?

OP its unclear if you're trying to change the whole system if you just want to take a term time trip of some description.

If the former you'd probably be better engaging with your local MP and joining or starting some kind of campaigning group, getting some news/ radio pieces or research about how poorer kids are getting fewer cultural opportunities through travel because of this unequal system which you're quite right does exist.

If you want to go on a trip of your own starting by some kind of legal attack on the school/ head seems very unlikely to succeed as it will push everyone immediately into a defensive position. Wouldn't it be better to open with a conversation? like; I've noticed that kids from well off families are going on holidays every year often to interesting places, for example Billy Smith went to the acropolis in Athens last year with his parents. On the other hand I have never been able to take my Jim anywhere as the price of travel during holidays is unaffordable for my household. What have you seen work well for families like mine in the past to help us expose our kids to learning outside of the classroom like this?
See what solutions you can come up with together and them on board with helping you. I'm sure they're as aware of the problem as you already.