Taking DS on holiday 2weeks before SATS 2020

[Beanybye]

We’ve booked a much needed family holiday to Florida for next April. It’s a once in a life time trip and the only way we could afford it is to go during term time.

DS is a bright lad,no concerns raised about his academic ability. I can’t remember the terms they use now but he’s ‘above’ where he ‘should be’ in maths and reading and at the ‘right’ level in writing. Not that any of that’s relevant.

Anyway, this holiday is 2 weeks after Easter so he’ll be off for a month then in school for a week and then it’s SATS.

At first I wasn’t bothered, DS gets stressed about these assessments so missing the build up to it (i think) will be a good thing. School don’t use it for secondary school streaming it’s used for league tables.

Being a goody goody myself I’m now a bit worried they’ll give me a hard time over it. Any experience? I don’t want to give you all a sob story but this holiday means a lot to us.

Go and enjoy the holiday. If he doesn’t know the work by then, the school are failing. Definitely don’t take any school work with you and spoil his holiday.

You will be fined and school will be very angry -we were told no holidays at all after feb half term even before fines were brought in

MrsT, that’s a really crappy secondary school then! SATs are a big stick used to beat teachers and pupils. I, and many of my secondary teaching colleagues, are considering boycotting them for our own children. A ten or eleven year old in Florida is in no way going t I spend the trip worrying about it though - he will be too busy having fun. The Y6 teacher will have evidence of why that child underperformed if they do. In my GCSE class, a student is going away for a month and getting back just in time for her first exam. In my performance management meeting, her result won’t affect me because I have the evidence there of something way beyond my control. Now, her GCSE result matters a lot more to her future than a SATs result would so I am surprised at her parents’ decision but I’m not judging or angry about it.

Go for it!!! I don't like how stressed kids get over exams it's not good at all.

I went to Florida at Easter before my GCSEs I was fine! I did well and went on to uni etc.

At his age I wouldn't hesitate and I wouldn't care about being judged!

Dear god never in a million years would I be taking homework to Florida with us. We’ll do a bit in the Easter holidays and a bit in the week before the SATS when we get home. This kind of pressure just isn’t healthy.

MsTSwift - I'd be concerned about the quality of that school then. That's not good practise and should be challenged. No decent school should work in that way.

I would rather my children underperform in their SATs to escape the grind of ‘aspirational’ targets hanging like a millstone round their necks forevermore.

My eldest worked really hard for KS2 SATs and did better than expected. This caused him to have unrealistic targets all the way from Y7-11. However hard he tried, he would always be under target (the reports were colour coded so this came out orange and red, compared to the greens received by his friends who didn't do as well in their SATs). He started to disengage from education and it also adversely affected his mental health.

My youngest did minimum prep for KS2 SATs and scored slightly above average. His targets at secondary school have been much more realistic. He usually meets them and often exceeds them, which increases his confidence and motivates him to work harder.

We are talking about 10 year olds, yes. But rightly or wrongly these tests are the one thing that is used to judge the success of their primary education. And there is a certain amount of exam technique involved, because for some reason the people designing the tests seemed to forget about the fact they were still dealing with really young children. So by all means have an amazing holiday, but do think carefully about how best to make sure he's still able to do himself justice when he returns. Because he will get to know his results and I imagine he will want to do well.

Please remember that your yr6 teacher can’t take a holiday of a lifetime in term time when it’s cheaper, it doesn’t make teachers feel well-disposed towards yours!

The fact that a teacher can't take time off in term time is irrelevant.
I made that choice myself. I knew when I became a teacher I would be restricted to the times I took holidays. My choice.

I don't mind my pupils having school time holidays. I don't set them work though encourage them to read lots, and practise every day maths and English. I don't do special catch up after either. No schools are daft enough to only cover important concepts and skills only once over the course of the year. And by that point of year 6 it will be recovering stuff not teaching her stuff too.

But mostly I wish my pupils a happy holiday and look forward to hearing about their adventures in their return. I certainly don't make my pupils feel guilty over their parents taking a holiday. And I don't really see the parents much to give them a grilling over it. I also realise that most parents do what works best for them and their families, so it's not my place to guilt trip them.

TheFirstOHN that’s a really interesting post. I don’t know if our secondary school uses the same system. I have first hand experience of this though. I was expected to do well all through school,I got straight A and A*s at gcse, same was expected of me at A level. At 17 I became very seriously ill, scraped through my a levels (doing most of it from a hospital bed). The feeling of failure has never left me when actually, 20 years on I can see now what an amazing achievement it was.

Taking him away is the best thing you could do to reduce his stress

How do you know that? You’ve never met the child. It could make his holiday miserable, especially towards the end, when he realises the SATs are looming.

OP, if you were set on having your holiday in term time, why didn’t you book it for after SATs?

We took our two out in Primary, although not SATS years (and before these rules came in on holidays). A month seems rather a long time - we did the traditional two weeks.

It was great and didnt affect them long term but, short term, my daughter wasnt happy going back to school dressed as a tudor (her first day back) and asked for us to never take her out of school again.

That was our last term time holiday. We went camping etc after and it was great.

Have a lovely time.

Go for it and stop worrying

Tbh I wouldn't post on here if you're worried , you will get lot's of people disagreeing

Aragog you sound like an amazing teacher/human!

My DC are clearly different from yours, as taking a month off and then only back for 1 week would definitely impact results as they would be rusty.

So I feel sorry for the teachers who are doing their best (and judged on it), only to have you 'sabotaging' them. At least you didn't book it for while SATs was going on.

However, you have clearly decided it is what you want to do, and no one here will change your mind anyway. So yes, I think YABU, but you don't really care about that.

bigchris lol very true! I’m ignoring the negative comments 😄 a lot of them aren’t relevant to us anyway as they don’t know DS’s personality.

I wouldn’t. Not because of SATS necessarily but I don’t agree with taking children out of school for holidays. Save up and go during the actual school holidays instead. Teachers must spend so much time helping these kids catch up.

Hopefully by next year they might have scrapped this SATS nonsense.
Go on holiday. Have a good time.

I’m ignoring the negative comments 😄 a lot of them aren’t relevant to us anyway as they don’t know DS’s personality.

No one knows your child, including those who are posting comments telling you to go for it.

To be fair OP pretty much all the primary school teachers I work with or know have a similar attitude to term time holidays.

We tend to find its other parents who have a fair bigger issue with term time holidays than other teachers.

I don’t know if our secondary school uses the same system.

I think most secondary schools use data from KS2 SATs (often adding context of outcomes of previous children from that postcode) to set GCSE targets. The extent to which those targets are shared with the pupil will depend on the school.

If you're ignoring the negative comments then I'm not really sure why you posted in the first place? You've already booked the holiday so it's all irrelevant now.

What many parents don't realise is that children taking term time holidays has an impact on the whole class. Teachers often have to give extra support to those children who have been away to help them catch up and other children suffer as a result.

The timing of your holiday does seem like an odd choice. I can completely see why you would choose a term time holiday, due to the difference in cost. I have taken my DS out of school for holidays a few times. Could you not go after SATs though, when they won't be doing much work anyway, and it won't cause any issues or upset? It does seem you have chosen the worst possible time in the whole of his primary schooling to take him away.

To be fair OP pretty much all the primary school teachers I work with or know have a similar attitude to term time holidays.

With respect, it’s not teachers who are answerable to the local authority, and ultimately the DfE, for unauthorised absences. They can adopt whatever “attitude” they want - it’s not their job on the line if the school is placed in special measures because of poor attendance.