What are exceptional circumstances for holidays in term time?

[username40582]

I'm not trying to make one up I have already put a request into DD school and it has been rejected.

Basically DDs uncle (DH brother) who lives in another country is getting married. We are very close to them and DD will be a flower girl. His wedding is the Sunday it's term time the week before but no return flights until Wednesday. So at the earliest DD can return to school Thursday depending on any isolation rules. I naively thought it would be approved as exceptional circumstances.

I already feel quite bad as she has 100% attendance up to now and didn't want to take her out but obviously don't want to miss the wedding.

Exception circumstances are usually things like parents in military on leave between postings, or terminal illness of a parent etc. A family wedding abroad of an uncle is probably too removed.

But it doesn’t matter. You can still go, she’ll just get marked as unauthorised and that’s all that will likely happen. You might, if you’re unlucky, have to pay the fine. But most likely they’ll mark her unauthorised, wish her a lovely wedding experience as a flower girl and that’ll be it.

We took DC (8 & 10) out for a family hol to NY in Nov. We originally booked for the Oct half term, but the borders only opened on Nov 8th, so we went then. School actually authorised it! They wrote on the returned absence form 'special Covid circumstances'. Their teachers were all very kind about it, wishing them a lovely trip and asking them about it on their return.

The school I work for would not see that as an exceptional reason. Exceptional reasons would be the death of a parent possibly grandparent and would want to see a copy of the death certificate to prove this as well.
How many school days would see actually miss? I can understand that you want to go though. I would advocate telling the school the truth and not make something up. Children will often tell us prior to going as they are excited and drop parents in it.

Our school refused authorised absence for Dts grandad's wedding, they were flower girls. We took them out anyway and nothing happened.

Our kids school didn't authorise them to have the day off for our wedding never mind an uncles
They don't authorise for anything though so we weren't surprised. One of my daughter's classmates mum's got a terminal diagnosis and booked Lapland for their last Christmas. It meant her daughter would miss two days of school and was denied.

@username40582 not a lot counts as exceptional circumstances but as long as their attendance is fine and you let school know in advance (so they don’t have no contact and require a welfare check) it should be fine.

Just go and pay the fine.

It depends entirely on the school. One I worked at the head just had a blanket policy of never agreeing anything, another the head would agree things for the benefit of the family's wellrelationship, a learning opportunity presented by travel, because a family member needed to travel when it was quiet etc, unless the child already had poor attendance.

Really depends on the school and age I imagine. I took dc ages 4 abd 6 out fur 2 days fir a family holiday. It was approved.

Go and pay the fine.

I've had it granted twice, once for a funeral abroad and once after my nephew died when we were given a free butlins holiday to cheer the kids up. But each school is different and use their discretion

If her attendance is 100%, just go and accept whatever the repercussions are. Would be different if her attendance was poor but kids miss more days than that from a cold so I wouldn't worry much.

Why do you care? There's not a single employer asks to see a candidate's primary school attendance rate. It's a process to keep check of kids falling through the system and encouraging a target attendance rate to ensure education.
Just go. Don't worry about it. Pay the fine. Certainly don't waste the time of the pressured school staff faffing about it.

Just go and don't worry too much.

But where is this wedding that the airport operates no flights for 3 days? Or could you come back with a stopover?

Things I’ve seen approved - parents graduation ceremony, holiday which had to taken at a certain time due to parents chemo, grandparent’s funeral.

Even if a holiday is authorised it will obviously reduce her attendance %.

Just go. And be ready to pay a fine if they take it that far.

You don’t say how old your DD will be, under 5 and education is not yet legally required so no fine, also unless you miss at least a week they don’t tend to fine

My DDs' primary headmistress used to laugh when I asked to take them both out for a fortnight's holiday every year in May - she said that it would give the other kids a chance to catch up!
That was over 20 years ago, it was never a problem, and both DDs got excellent exam results and graduated from Russell group unis.
I think there is too much of a blanket ban nowadays - heads should have the discretion to differentiate between a reasonable holiday, and repeated truancy.

We were declined 2 days to go to see my terminally ill dad 😞 this was primary school.
I said to them ok well how much is the fine and they said they won’t fine but it would be unauthorised they then called back to say they’d authorise one day only which did help