MP's to debate school holiday rules/fines on 24th February

[mummymeister]

Please can I ask anyone who feels as strongly as I do to write to their MP and ask for the changes in the rules regarding school holidays to be reversed. there is a back bench debate at 4.30pm on the 24th February and it is really important to bring this issue to the fore. There have been so many stories on MN of people wanting a day for funeral, to attend a family event, to visit family abroad that I know if all of us affected or who feel strongly write in at least we will have tried.

Wigan don't have much, but they are fining.
If this makes any difference lots of fsm, children in care.
Many parents here can't afford cheap holidays anyway, so they aren't really bothered tbh.
It will be so good for poor children if term time holiday law stands as it does.
I find it an entitled and selfish act to take a term time holiday, with your dc coming back and telling of a holiday others could never afford. It's disgusting tbh.

Surely all holidays are disgusting then morethan. Children who go skiing in half term are going to be talking about it at school when they get back too.

moldingsunbeams - You are welcome. It doesn't appear to be on their website. I found what I was looking for on a couple of school websites but it was only a short extract from the Code of Practice. If you want the full policy you will need to make an FoI request.

Retropear - Ofsted certainly won't be happy if the school is authorising that.

morethanpotatoprints. how do you feel about single days off for funerals? or for kids that visit often elderly family abroad? there is a big difference between 2 weeks in florida in June and a wet week in Wales in December. PRH I will pm you later. just have half an eye on the tv waiting for the debate.

I don't get it.

Said school is only Satisfactory so hardly in a position to fly by the seat of it's pants.

The treatment of single days off for funerals is unchanged between old and new rules. If a head is saying something different, then they are misrepresenting things.

meditrina as I understand it both from my own lea and from posts on MN, this is an absence which is also at the heads discretion. it depends on the relationship to the child. some are being rigid and saying only certain family relations others more flexible. again all this goes to show is that there is no consistency across the country. still waiting for the debate to start.

My kids school have been pretty great.

They let my kids have a few days off when their dad died, they had the day off for his funeral, they are having the day off this week to bury his ashes and the week after they are having the day off to scatter the rest.

As long as they continue to allow time off for that kind of thing I think the fines are a good idea.

Someone asked about going on holiday with someone with a terminal illness.. mine had a few days off to go on holiday with their dad as they knew he was likely to die in the next few months. He actually died a few weeks later. The school was more than happy to allow that.

I don't disagree, mummymeister, and that is exactly the same situation as Under the old system.

They may threaten it but they absolutely will not do it.

Is such a threat not terrifically stressful enough to be unacceptable? Especially to a family already in grief?

I don't really want to live in a world where people threaten other people when they are already stressed by something going on in their life. I want there to be compassion and understanding. the loss of flexibility has as much to do with the stance by LEA's and the heads fears about Ofsted as it does about the Gove changes.

Of course it wont be good for poor kids.

Those with troubled backgrounds will remain the same, those who were fortunate to have the odd holiday now wont be able too.

This is just another step to increase gap between rich and poor.

I dont suppose any of the MP's will be forgoing holidays with their children?
Think of all the places Cameron et al children will have been to when the poors wont have been anywhere.

tiggytape. some schools wont be bothered and wont even refer for a fine and some will. this is the problem it is a postcode lottery. there will be parents taken to court in one Lea area which had they lived in the next door one they wouldn't be. that's a problem for me. it should be fair countrywide. and if its so disruptive then why are there religious exemptions?

Maybe there needs to be a march against it.

maybe MN needs to set up a campaign to ask for common sense to return to education.

I told my cousin what day we'd turn up to see her; "Great I'll keep the boys off school that day unless they have a test." she said. Her boys are 15 & 16. That was it, she has the common sense to decide. No worries about nanny state telling her when they can or can't have a day off.

The thing which saddens me is by the time dd is old enough to be "allowed" to come on a decent holiday abroad that we can afford she won't want to.

She's not going to come away with her mum when she's 18, 19.

So I've lost that chance to ever go abroad somewhere nice with her. We had plans to go to Costa Rica next Feb and now I've bought a shitty caravan instead.

But you're supposed to be grateful for a week in damp caravan in Bangor in August, Viva. TskTsk.

Welll lets see our mps in caravans in Bangor.