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?

if parents are repeating offenders then what they need is some help to address these issues for the sake of the children. the time, money, effort and resources spent chasing little Johnnies parents when he has a day off before May half term or Mavis's mum and dad who work like I do should actually be spent here. but hey that would actually require some thought, effort and work. this way, Gove the wonderful gets to stand up in a years time and point to a lovely graph with a downward slope showing how many less days out of school kids have had. the core underlying number wont have been touched. parents like me will have been criminalised but at least his graph will look lovely. at least I know where to put my X at the next election.

mummymeister - if you have DC, is it not usual to adjust your career so that it fits round them just a little? Surely you knew that your DC would need to go to school a long time ahead of choosing to have them?

I would never have sought authorisation for a holiday, but thankfully before I could be criminalised for being unable to pay a fine, I have had three massive issues over authorised absence refused for a child with perfect attendance other than these times (and once in yr 1 when in hospital)

1. When Granny who he was very close to, was literally on her deathbed and sending him in would have been an act of cruelty. Absence was refused. I chose to keep him of for a total of a week and help his beloved Gran slide out peacefully and be buried, allowing him to properly process and cope with his loss. His HT believed in children coming home to ‘suddenly gone to be a star in heaven’ and 'shouldn’t be at funerals', we don’t.

2. When same school said he couldn’t go on the whole year’s PGL leavers treat as he couldn't do half the activities and they couldn’t provide SN support and PGL wouldn't have him without.
   Unbelievably they then insisted he should come in for that week and go to a younger year’s class instead. He was understandably very upset at the humiliation. I took him camping on a mock adventure of his own to keep his mind of being left out, and give him something to write about when they all returned.

3. When school arbitrarily signed him of (without consulting me) one morning, with the attendance officer for the rest of term as no longer mentally fit to be in school, after being really horrifically bullied. Then when they got into trouble with the LEA for illegally excluding him, tried to blackmail me that if I didn’t send a letter saying I’d withdrawn him they would now mark the absence forced on me and already taken and, as unauthorised and I’d be pursued by the EWO even though they had had him sign the attendance register as a witness to his own illegal exclusion. I told them I’d return him to school (he never wanted to be pushed out) and they could mark it anyway they liked and go for it, I wouldn’t cover their lies which they considered my partnership obligation to them.

I believe mine and my child’s basic rights to a genuine partnership with our schools were breached in each case. What are exceptional circumstances if not those?

PS I am a parent who was keen for my children to get a good education, and supported my children's schools and rules, uniforms, HW, respectful behaviour to teachers, etc, joined the PTA, fund raised and became PTA chair for the last school, and fell for the you can improve your not great schools from the inside claim, and did my best to back their authority in front of my children even when I was in disagreement with them over specifics.

It is not a right under EU legislation to take your children out of school during term time because you fancy a couple of weeks on the costa del sol.

if you have DC, is it not usual to adjust your career so that it fits round them just a little?

Bonsoir I am not sure if I should laugh or despair at your comment. You do realize that some people DO have to work and have NO choice re work don't you?
And that not everyone can afford to take your choice of being a SAHM.
That people circumstances change (eg you loose your job and have to take whatever there is or you end up as a single parent through death or divorce etc etc)

mummymeister to me, the message you are sending is that your work is more important than your children being at school. It isn't just the missed class work and the impact this has not only on your children but on other children and their teachers - it's a general attitude.

And Bonsoir is right - when you have children you make adjustments to your working patterns as and when required. There are situations where this is difficult or impossible, but most people manage and I don't believe that you can't. What kind of business continuity plans do you have in place? If you were to get D&V in August, would your company just go bust? If this is the case then your business model needs some serious reconsideration.

Those people who are completely unable to take a standard week off outside of term time will find other ways to make it possible to go away with their children.

JustGetting your story is dreadful and the HT sounds like an arse. Totally inexcusable. My position is that HTs should be able to use their discretion (as indeed they are) in determining "exceptional". This means that there will be inconsistencies (hopefully not as bad as Just's situation), but the alternative is to say that no child can ever have time away unless a parent has died or something - the roolz would be even less flexible than they are now. Be careful what you wish for.

Those people who are completely unable to take a standard week off outside of term time will find other ways to make it possible to go away with their children. is missing a "generally".

JustGettingOnWithIt

Your point 1 is highlighting another big issue. What you might consider important can be seen as unimportant by the HT. How it can be right for the HT to make that sort of evaluation and say to a parent it is NOT right to take her dc to see a dying GP is beyond me tbh.

Your points 2 and 3 are also showing how this system can easily lead to massive abuse when the school is failing a child and is then putting all the responsibility onto the parent.

So really again, this is about the fact that this 'law' is so vague that it can be interpreted so many different ways that it just isn't fair.

Those people who are completely unable to take a standard week off outside of term time will find other ways to make it possible to go away with their children is missing a "generally".

So according to you Johnny what do people who don't fall into the generally category should do then? The ones that have a choice between feeding their dcs and never going away and not feeding their dcs and ... well not going away anyway
Or would you expect them ... to rely on benefits?

So what do you propose, Fresh? A list of people whose deaths oblige an HT to authorise time off? Because that would be a whole lot less flexible than the situation is now.

There are very, very few people who genuinely can never take a weekend off or take leave outside of term. It can be complicated, but it is generally doable, by bunching days off at the end of one working week and the start of another (how many people honestly work 7 days a week, every week?) for example.

Well I would suggest that you read the thread. Quite a few proposals have been made starting by having a clear list of what is acceptable or not, not leaving this decision to the HT who can be influence by some many things such as their own preconceived ideas or OFSTED. And the need of being able to appeal to the decision which doesn't exist at all.

And whether they are very few people in that situation doesn't change the fact that these people exist.
Or are you saying that because there isn't a lot of them then it doesn't matter?

Besides you aren't allowed to take your dcs away for a day or tow around a weekend either.

And there is NO flexibility ion the system now. Our next door school rule is 'NOTHING allowed apart in the case of one parent in the army'.

Is that flexibility then?

You can take your children away for a day or two around a weekend in the school holidays. You can do it when Friday or Monday is an INSET day. And yes, I've read the thread.

This clear list - what about a great aunt or a cousin with whom a child is close? Will that be OK? Or a family friend? Who is going to decide for all what constitutes a relationship sufficiently close that a child should be granted time off? A clear list would end up restricted to parents, possibly grandparents, and siblings. How is that better than allowing an HT to exercise their discretion?

I disagree with the whole concept of having a "list" as that will just encourage a whole new set of opportunities to work the system.

I would hope that HT's are capable of exercising discretion in this matter, but unfortunately there are examples of those who are clearly not up to the job, as well as those who still seem to have common sense and the ability to use it.

This debate is exposing that there are far more weak HTs than I had previously believed.

One thing is very clear. Parents are beginning to feel the brunt of Gove's demands. Welcome to the world of education.

Every single day in primary school, from reception to year 6, is planned to the nth degree. Learning must be going on at all times. Children must be progressing at all times. There must be evidence of this for every single learning activity.

The pressure is immense, jobs are on the line. Children are working harder than ever and it's more important than ever that they are there, in the learning environment.

Important to who? Not parents, not children, not teachers. It's government that set the pace. If parents want change, they should demand it, from their MP.

"And there is NO flexibility ion the system now. Our next door school rule is 'NOTHING allowed apart in the case of one parent in the army'.
Is that flexibility then?"

It is an example of an inflexible HT who is not using the discretion that exists in law. HTs with crap judgement probably have a crap effect on many aspects of a school.

Children should attend school every day unless they are ill or there is some sort of crisis (eg bereavement). Parents are not going to win a battle for the right to take DC out of school to go on holiday. You might as well learn to live with the rules (and the tightening of penalties for offenders) and focus your energy on working out the logistics of family life taking this constraint as a given.

head teacher are not allowed discretion though - except in exceptional circumstances - funerals being the main one

teachers - missed an s out

it's interesting that there is a thread on here promoting the need for paid bereavement leave to be a worker's right yet we're in a situation where a bloody child has to have permission from a HT (with no right of appeal) to have time off to see a dying family member, attend a funeral and have a small window in which to grieve and be with family.

children aren't employees or creating a lacuna of invaluable labour if they go off yet we'd be criminalising parents for a child being out of school due to family bereavement whilst campaigning for adults to have the right to fully paid leave for bereavement

Don't forget that children don't just miss out of education but the social side of school too.

How would you feel BTW if your child's teacher decided to take 2 weeks off to go on holiday in the middle of term?

it's also worth noting that children can't just be 'left'. if an emergency or exceptional circumstance forces me to go somewhere my child has to come with me regardless of whether a HT thinks that is ok or not and regardless of whether i have time to try and seek their permission.

the idea that if my dearest friend was dying alone in scotland and i got the call and raced up there on a sunday night with my son in tow and didn't get back till friday i'd be a criminal and fined is insanity. it means literally infringing on a parents freedom to travel on the basis that if they leave their child alone they're a criminal and if they take them with them they're a criminal.