What do you tell your child’s school if you want to take them out a few hours early?

[Fancycrab]

My child is in reception, he’s never had a day off or missed any school at all. Next month we’re going to visit family for the weekend and due to the route we have to take the traffic is going to be horrendous if we leave after school on the Friday, so I want to pick him up and leave at lunchtime. I really don’t think missing this couple of hours on a Friday is a big deal at his age, but his school are really big on attendance. Just wondering in other people’s experience, do I have to come up with some big elaborate lie about why I need to pick him up early (which I don’t want to do cos don’t want to ask my son to lie) or shall I just tell the truth? Are they likely to be critical about it or not really care considering it’s just a couple of hours? Don’t want to cause tension with his teacher

Please just tell them the truth. As my username suggests this is my job and we hate being lied to.

Ideally take him out after his PM mark, but if you can’t - don't worry, it’ll just be marked as unauthorised but you have to have 10 sessions in a rolling 10 week period for a fine to be issued (in our county anyway).

Most of my kids appointments are ones where you phone in the morning and they say come in at 11:30 or whatever.
There is no letter or text, we only get letters for hospital clinics etc some of which my DC wouldn’t want revealed to school.

Ah, my son's are mostly clinics and I always get text confirmations when a new appointment is made which school are happy for me to screenshot for evidence.