School Abscense Fine - huge amount

[PMDD]

If I am correct, if you take your child/ren out of school without prior agreement, there is an automatic fine of £60/day/child/parent?

So for us, a family with 3 children, a 2 week holiday in (say) June, would cost us £3600 - or double that if we don't pay within a certain amount of time!

Is it me to think that is totally unreasonable?!

That is a huge amount. The people who take their children out normally can't afford the hike in holiday prices, so how on earth would they afford the fine?

Having had a caht with my school, any request to go away on holiday is rejected. So you need to word it appropriately so it is accepted (even if you still do exactely the same thing).
So I am not going away on hols to . I am going on a trip to enable the dcs to see their family and be raised as bilingual and bicultural children.
You get the just of it.

Harder for mummy and the likes who can't go away on hols at all but it then gets a game on who will be able to word things the best way so the HT can't possibly refuse.

NB the school actually routinely allow children to be away during term time. Going to some competition with the school is clearly OK (swimming, football etc..) as is going to do a concert, a special tournament etc... But somehow it doesn't go under the 'exceptionally authorized absence' so it's OK

Taking term-time holidays is, again IME, a 'creeping' thing. First time round, it's exceptional, a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Then ... well, it was great, we'd like another holiday ... so the same family takes the same couple of weeks off every year. Then it's perhaps an extra week in the winter, as well as the one in the summer.

A single week in a sngle school year, taken by a child with 100% attendance and at a sensible time of year and never repeated, has very little long-term impact on a child's education. However, once the 'creeping' has taken place and it's a couple of weeks at different points in the year, every year, and every child is doing that so there is ALWAYS someone who has to have extra attention - e.g. the TA who would otherwise be supporting the less able, or the more able, children within the class, or the teacher who would otherwise be spending their lunchtime running a choir or running a reading intervention or a G&*T group - to catch up with what they missed ... not only the education of the child away that week suiffers, but the education of all the children present in the class each week suffers too.

It is one of those irritating 'common good' rules, and I understand why it is now phrased in such an absolutist way, because once every parent believes that 2 weeks' term-time holiday every year is 'what we're allowed', then the disruption to all pupils is significant.

I agree with everything you wrote, teacherwith2kids. I am also stunned by the lack of respect for teachers that is shown by parents who think that they should be able to take their DC out of school for holidays during the school year.

Worried but you can work! Most of us have to. It’s just how, when, what at. I’ve worked from home, worked self-employed, and worked nights to manage it.

Again I don't know about autonomous, but structured semi structured do yes, apart from one of mine who has systemising recall difficulties and failed to learn them either through school, home, or home ed, but he has learnt to sing the tables, now in his head, vey swiftly. It hasn't stopped him taking further maths.

The difference is usually how it's done. My (young) grandchildren are learning them as part of a family board game, where you have to successfully shout them out before an electronic ball (made by an older one as part of DT) burps, farts or yells at you. Get it wrong and another player hits a button that makes it do all of them. Because they don't have the concept that learning is somehow fraught with issues, it's no different to them than something like twister or buckeroo. We go up to 12s, plus timed by itself one. They play it along with monopoly, junior scrabble etc. They learnt the seven life processes and acronym MRS GREN playing an adapted form of grandmothers footsteps.

It’s interesting to see how very most different children’s behaviour is when they aren’t in the school system and either gearing up or gearing down, or collapsing after.

They don’t never fight or argue, but it’s a well observed phenomena which is why people have a de-schooling period if they come out of school into home ed. Hth.

Oh my goddd, entitlement they are OUR kids. NOT THE GOVERNMENTS. Why are some people so happy to let them just tell you what to do with YOUR kids?! Lul at people who really think the government have done this to "protect the education of your children" yar, that's what our government do, look out for our best interests and stuff. Nothing to do with money. I to am off this thread as I cannot take the huge amount of brown nosing and DM type comments on here.

Respect for teachers? Oh ffs. I am sure the teachers sit there crying their hearts out when a child is gone for two weeks out of a year.

Parents have to obey the law in respect of their DC and, strangely enough, those laws are put in place to help and protect DC (from their negligent parents... among other things).

teacher do you think it's the case if the child is taking a week before chrsitmas too when they mostly prepare for christmas show at the end of the year...Do you think you can also see a drop of attainment in children who have been ill for a week? What about the ones with a poor health who have been ill several time in the year?

Unless the children are repeatedly not going to school, they will just catch up after a few days/weeks.
Sayig that by taking a week off year after year will show up in their result is going too far. It would be like saying that a child who has a week off each year for ill health will never be able to do well...

Downstairs, I understand that you may not liek the government telling you what to do.

I work with children, ever day. I know that children who are taken out for term-time holidays do less well, on average, than those who aren't - and significasntly less well if that term-time absence is regular and is matched with a corrosive 'you can't tell me what to do' attitude (because of course that tends to rub off on all other aspects of school life, such as homework, daily reading, arriving on time, bringing in correct kit, etc etc).

Unless the children are repeatedly not going to school, they will just catch up after a few days/weeks.

I don't think that is true, unless the school is exceedingly slow paced and repetitive.

Teacherwith2kids, I have taught kids in y6 whose parents have done it every year and I really can't notice the difference. Of course, some have poor attainment and attendance anyway and term time hols only make it worse. However, the bright kids with conscientious parents seem to manage just fine. I've had them come back having read a classic and bring totally enthused about things they've seen and done.

I always believed the education they received from me was only part of their overall education anyway. To assume that their learning experience could only happen in my classroom would seem a bit arrogant to me.

I ended up busking on the end of my street to earn cash.

Tsk, buskers have such a sense of entitlement with their singing and sad little hats...

It's all my own fault I worked all over Xmas(yes xmas day), will work all over Easter and have had leave cancelled for summer.

Am negligent and entitled and not sufficiently committed to producing globally competitive learning units (children)

Lady, yes to the effect on attainment of both those forms of absence too - but while I labour very hard to catch up ALL the children who have been absent, I labour with a more cheerful demeanour for those who have been ill!

| am not saying that they will never do well. I am not even saying that the drop in attainment is permanent -because I work very hard to make it as temoporary as possible, athough that disadvantages those who are there all the time - but I can see it as a change in pattern in my attainment tracking.

What I am saying is that it is perhaps the attitude towards school engendered in a family that repeatedly puts school aside in favour of a holiday, as well as the absence itself, that seems to have, IME, a cuimlative effect when such absences are a regular part of a child's life.

The week before Christmas - well, my class worked as normal up to 3 days before the end of term, but I do see what you mean. The social 'bonding' around Christmas in schools, though, is SO strong - and comes at such a vital part of the year for the success of the remainder of the year - that it is certainly not as missable (IME) as the final 5 days of the summer term.

And again it really depend son the circumstances. How on earth are you going to evaluate the influence that a lack of holidays is going to have on a child that can't go and see his family, on a child who can't have some respite from a disabled sibling, on a child that will never be able to have any time time off with their parents because they are working all holidays and all weekends.
Do you really thing that in these circumstances the children will loose so much education time that they won't be able to 'make up for it' bt the benefit of their hols?

Again and again, a rule like this makes total sense for people going away to the tropics or wanting to go skiing (It's amazing the number of english children you can see on the slopes of the Alps in winter and how few of any other nationalities you can see for example).
But not set up in this way.
Not at the discretion of the HT.
You should have some clear rules valid for everyone everywhere.
You should have a clear definition of individual cases and what is considered acceptable or not.
And you should start by dealing with parents who don't send their dcs to school regularly, allow them to play truants, keep them at home for a sniffle.
And maybe reduce that one week instead of two in the year unless very exceptional circumstances.
THEN try and have a go at the parents who are trying their best.

mummymeister Head teachers have been told very very clearly by LEA's not to give time off or holidays. there have been threads on MN and unless they are lying these threads are saying people cant get time off for funerals of family members or to take a day off to remember a parent on the anniversary of their death. try it. go into your kids school tomorrow and ask for a couple of days off. If there was some common sense about it there wouldn't be a thread like this but there isn't."

My point is that the legislation and guidance doesn't say you can't have time off for holidays. It says it is unlikely that it will be given for holidays - not that it cannot or will not.

There is no legislation that says your child has to go to school full time, even. Just that they have to be in full time education.

The point I am making is that the legislation is a mess - it's contradictory, it's full of holes, it's inflexible, it's not consistently applied and it's unfair.

That's not good legislation in anyone's book.

You are very lucky that it has been affecting only a few days before the end of term. In our school it's 3 weeks at least that have been affected with constant rehearsal, preparation of the traditional calendar and what not. Then the play is the week before the last week of term and nothing gets done on the last week. In the middle you have the 'Santa Grotto' organised by the PTA where children can buy presents for the parents and a lot of other 'extra curriculum' activities.
Of course, I know that the teachers DO try and do things. But I can promise you that none of the children have a 'working and learning' hat on.

Worried, I understand your point - but it is SO invidious to say 'Well, you're nice and bright and conscientious, so a term-time holiday is allowed for you. On the other hand, you are disadvantaged anyway so you can't have a holiday' that you cannot make it the basis of policy.

The families who can most truthfully argue that it is a holiday in term time or no holiday at all are often in the 'low attainment, perhaps parents who have less opportunity to be conscientious' bracket anyway, so it seems wrong to allow term-time holidays only for those who can best afford holidays in holiday time anyway!

justgettingonwithit, thank you, thats interesting. We play lots of board games here too inc lots of educational ones. My older two are very close in age and are like chalk and cheese in personality so have fought like cat and dog since they could move. so im not sure that school has any affect on that.
I'm a sahm at the moment anyway but if I needed to work there is obviously no way I could do my job at night etc so I'd worry that I'd need to take a huge pay cut to make it work. I have taught children (3) who have been home educated previously and all were very able children with a thirst for learning.

Lady, then the use of school time leading up to Christmas is something yiou could - and should - reasonably discuss with the school. It is not a problem with the legilation around holidays that a school mnight choose to use pupils' time unoproductively for the final quarter of the Christmas term - that is a problem (and a much rarer one than it used to be, probably rarer still once the new NC comes in as that is even busier!) for the school. I simply could not get away with wasting so much learning time.

Coldlightofday as a student who used to try and ease the tedium of slow-paced lessons at school by reading ahead, two weeks off would have made no difference to me - and this was in the dark ages when teachers couldn't have their notes available to download and do podcasts of their lessons and all sorts. I just read the Letts revise guides and the textbooks.

The legislation is inflexible and does not take into account personal circumstances - be that of the family or the pupil, who very well might not be affected in the slightest by a few weeks off. I had a friend at school who finished school a month early to go on a 10 week once-in-a-lifetime adventure across the length and breadth of Europe one year. And he moved schools between years 10 and 11 and did exams from a different exam board. And he did fine. Not all kids would, of course, but some will.