to be annoyed ith the school - how many times can you penalise a child for poor attendance

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There are mixed opinions about taking your kids out of school, and we made a choice to take DS out of school for 5 days in total.....these were treated as unauthorised absence. Now bearing in mind that since reception DS's attendance has always been in the high 90's (around 98%) Im not typically a parent that takes non attendance lightly...and there were genuine non financial reasons for not taking holidays during the appropriate holidays - but I also accept that no one twisted my arm to go on holiday.

DS did not qualify for the xmas treat - day trip to the panto because of his attendance - which he accepted as he knew we had been away on holiday and got to do things whist other kids were in school - however now he has been told in addition to that he cannot attend the end of year christmas disco...

How many things can they disqualify him from - he is being punished for something that was technically my choice. It seems that the message is that anything nice coming up he wont be able to do because of his attendance - it just seems to be labouring the point at the expense of the child...DS is 12YO btw :)

YABU. he's 12 yo. its your fault.

Take it on the chin as consequences of your choices. Tell your son that you are sorry that it is happening to him because of your choices - but wasn't the holiday worth it!!

This lets him know that he is not to blame, it isn't personal, but that he can accept 'unfairness' with grace, and learn the valuable lesson that life does have consequences. Try not to overidentify with your son. After all, life isn't fair, it never was fair and it isn't meant to be fair.

Next year is a clean slate. And he will be a handsome 13 year old!

Maybe you could have some of his mates over for a party in leiu? Hire the local hall and have a holiday disco?

I agree with liluri.
Especially "Besides which, if parents decide to take their children out of school for a few days, then the default response should be to assume that they have considered the options and feel this the best solution for THEIR children."

PS He only has a few days of this year left, don't sweat it. Maybe there are some spare panto tickets going? ie YOU take him, to make up the lack YOU caused.

A graceful card to the head/class teacher thanking them for a good year and being great teachers to your boy etc etc wouldn't go amiss either! Pouring oil reaps rewards in the future. Be a good example to your son, mend your bridges and move on.

"it does rather sound like you took your child out of school for a holiday simply because it was more convenient for you. "

And why should that be a problem if the child's education hasn't suffered because of it?

What counts as an 'authorised' absence then? And are authorised absences penalised?

as we have nothing like this in Australia to my knowledge. It is only when children are very regularly absent that schools have to report, so that the govt. can follow up.

If we pull a child out of school for whatever reason, we do so in consultation with the teachers to ensure the child catches up on work, or takes work with them. The parents' authorisation is all that is required. It really is no big deal, to be honest.

I am appalled that sick days are treated as absenteeism. How on earth is that the child's fault, or even the parent's? Bizarre!

Did I read a different OP?

As I read it they went on holiday, he knew he'd miss the panto and that was fine, but now the school had added on to his 'punishment'

That they all felt that punishment ie: missing panto was fine, all treated the same, but that it was the fact that school kept moving the goal posts was what annoyed OP?

Or have i totally missed the point?

Abitwobblynow - when was this consistent safe world you speak of? My mum was forever up at the school in the 70s/early 80s defending my brothers who seemed to be often unfairly treated by teachers, one was falsely accused of stealing once. I don't think we should sit back and glibly assume teachers/schools are always right. Teachers are experts on teaching - not parenting. There isn't one text book that can be used in a parenting class to make us all perfect parents! You only have to read MN or even this thread to see how differently parents can see things, there's no 'right' or 'wrong' to most aspects of parenting.

Treating students and parents disrespectfully and being inconsistent and in the OPs case extending the punishment to a 12yo way beyond the crime that he didn't even commit. Nothing short of bullying by the school IMO.

Btw I write as someone whose Y9 teacher is currently serving time for several counts of sexual assualt and other horrific acts on a 15 year old. It took the victim 20 years to speak out :(. The world is no more consistent now and no more frightening than it was 20/30 or however many years ago. I'm sure we could all sit and quote psychologists, I've worked with plenty to know that some are fantastic and spot on and some, quite frankly, talk out of their arses. Same with any profession - good and bad.

OP, would be interested on an update on how you get on with the school when you get a moment.

My goodness, some people spouting some anally retentive crap on here, take no notice OP, school was in the wrong with how they handled this!

People are very anal in this country about things like absences from school, what are in lunchboxes and what gets put in bins, and all kinds of small controlling things. The people who play by these petty rules then bang on about how righteous they are for doing things 'properly' (i.e. what the government told them to do). It's only when you go to other (developed) countries and realise they manage to deal with the same issues without having the government spy on them or bring in heavy-handed tactics, that you realise this is really an infantile and interfering way to run a country.

And the answer, to that lack of trust between parents, teachers and government is, according to Aibitwobblynow parenting classes for all in which, presumably, government funded psychologists tell us all how to parent (no coincidence it was the psychologist who recommended it then). You couldn't make it up.

ABitWobbly, by recommending parenting classes, are you conceding that attendance is the parent's responsibility?

Can you remind me one more time how punishing a child for poor parenting is ethical?

Oh, and 'peasant behaviour'? Really?

Abitwobbly, schools are NOT always right, and some parent DO have legitimate grievances with schools.

ALL humans are fallible, and this includes those who work in schools.

As a former school governor, I have seen my share of parents taking issues at school, and while some have indeed failed to realise that their little darling was definitely in the wrong, there have been other parents who have had proper issues that needed to be discussed, and our school has changed policies as a result of some unfairness being pointed out to us.

Are we really supposed to back up teachers EVERY time? Even when they are quite plainly wrong? The only message that would send a child is their parents don't care enough to challenge a REAL injustice.

In this case the OP accepted that the panto was a treat to be missed due to the attendance issue. The disco appears to have been arranged during the child's absence, and then it was decided the child should miss this also. That is unfair, an additional punishment that the OP could not have accounted for when making her decision, and should be challenged.

I support my children's schools, but if I believe something should be questioned, I will do so.

Oh and as an example of poor decision making in schools I offer my own experience.

When I was 13, I got hauled up before the deputy head teacher. She was the person who really ran the school then, the head teacher was a nonentity (this was 30 yrs ago).

It turns out that someone had decided to write some rather nasty things about me all around the girls toilets. It was clearly about me because I have an unusual first name, and the only one with that name in the school (and probably the only one in town then!).

The deputy head decided, despite me protesting that I wouldn't be writing such awful things about myself, to make me skip a lesson to clean it all up. I didn't write these things, though I had some idea who did. This deputy head had a bad reputation and was always after the easiest, not correct, solution.

Do you really think this is right? Making an innocent responsible for cleaning up someone else's crime?

And following Abitwobbly's reasoning, I didn't tell my dad about this, thinking he'd tell me off. But I did discuss this with my dad recently and he told me he would have been at the school like a shot to protest at my treatment. Should he instead have backed the deputy? Despite the fact that I didn't do anything wrong?

I don't think the school handled it well. I think if it was outlined ahead of time that the child would miss the panto due to the absence and the parent understood this and still went, then that's fair as they knew the conditions in advance. The disco was not part of the discussion, so shouldn't have been involved in the punishment.

However, I don't think the parent has handled it well either. This holiday COULD have been at a different time. The OP clarified that already, but that she CHOSE to take it when she did. That speaks volumes IMO. The school request explicitly that children are not taken from school for holidays during term time. The OP had no pressing reason to take it when she did other than she "really needed it" after a long work commitment. This is a "rules don't apply to me" attitude, with a "so just slap a fine on me" attitude on the back of it.

I find it hard to have any sympathy for people who feel that the rules other people have to follow do not apply to them. If the OP hadn't thumbed her nose at the school's request for no holidays during term time, this whole thing wouldn't have been an issue at all.

Those who have talked about absence due to illness - this is a red herring on this thread. If I have understood it correctly, the OP's son is being excluded from the panto and the disco because of unauthorised absences, and absences from school due to illness/unavoidable appointments (like the orthodontist whose appointments are only available in school time) are going to be authorised absences, surely? If schools were marking some absences due to illness/appointments/other special needs as unauthorised, this would be appalling, but that doesn't apply in the OP's case.

On a side note - do schools mark absences due to illness/appointments/sn issues as unauthorised?

SDTG generally they don't. DS2 is a couple hours late for school once a week as he does the RDA riding session, and they mark it as something like "education outside school property" or some such thing (obviously they told me what it was, I nodded, and failed to remember the actual term )

Thats definately not on at his age.

Day trip to the panto eh - how on earth do they think they get the juvenile choruses in pantos if it isn;t through the children having time off school.

Dd is having 3 half days off next week before they break up then a couple when she goes back in January for panto.

"The OP had no pressing reason to take it when she did other than she "really needed it" after a long work commitment"

"really needing" a break can be a pressing reason sometimes. If not getting the break means that the parent is heading for a breakdown due to stress then that isn't going to do the family as a whole any good is it?

STDG, most schools I work with count authorised attendance against the attendance rewards.

So if a child has been off sick for a day or has dental appointment during school hours, they do not receive an award/certificate/treat.

Threads like this depress the life out of me. I dread the day we have to return to the UK, put the kids in school-prison, and have a host of holier-than-thou parents and teachers 'punish' us everytime we deviate from expected standards.

OP, take your DS to a brilliant show on the day of the panto, and a good night out on the day of the disco. And explain to him that all through life he'll need to battle against petty dicatators trying to bring him down.

I hope you've planned a good holiday for next year... during term time.

it could. But then the OP didn't say that, simply she needed a break. We ALL need a break sometimes, but rules are there for a reason. If she is headed for a breakdown, perhaps counselling might be a better spend of money ? Besides, if the OP was in a fragile mental state, headed for a breakdown, she would have mentioned it in the OP... or else now she'll drip feed that...

Sorry, but it still just sounds like the OP blew off the rules and is annoyed there are consequences.

If the school is going to do this then they should do the attendance per term or per the period up to the event in question. Then restart from scratch until the next 'treat'.

I think the whole system is wrong, but then I am taking my 7 year old out of school tomorrow to go on a road trip to a doll store 4 hours away as a very special treat... it is the only day we can do it as an adult friend is going and offered us to keep her company, she's paying for petrol.

I also took both kids out of school a whole month early this summer as we were going back to England for the summer and flights were cheaper then. It did them no harm at their ages and the school admitted no real learning goes on in that last month. Both kids are bright and young, though - if they had trouble, were older or were behind in their work I would definitely not think of doing these unnecessary absences. I think sometimes they learn more from their experiences outside of school than in them - tomorrow my daughter will be map reading, learning about adding tax to a purchase and budgeting (she has a limited spending allowance for the doll shop) and will have a full day's adult two on one attention for asking her endless questions... I doubt the swimming class (she can swim fine) and other lessons will be as enlightening...

"but rules are there for a reason"

Not sure what the reasons for this type of rule are.

" If she is headed for a breakdown,"

I'm not saying she is headed for a breakdown. And she probably won't be due to taking a break when she needs it and not letting it get to breakdown point.

poppercondria very insightful post and good advice to op.