To get so angry about the no compromise attitude of my kids headmistress

[twinsplus1sfb]

Arghhhhh - need to vent.
Situation - I have 3 kids (2 in Yr2, 1 in yr 4). They have never been abroad experienced an aeroplane different culture etc etc.
Their grandad has booked an expensive family holiday abroad, unfortunately he got mixed up with the dates and booked it for the week before half term.
I put a holiday form in and got a phone call from the school - apparently that is SATs week for my twins.
We have looked into changing the dates - no can do.
So - and here's where I get angry - I went to the head and told her the situation and asked her if there was any way we could work together around this, could the kids stay late after school one day or come in at the weekend before the SATS or come in in the half term after SATS.
I just got a flat NO to every option I suggested - she said it would affect their grades, and their whole school career. I asked if there was anything I could do - and she said "Cancel the holiday, oh and there will be a fine"
I understand that taking them out is not acceptable - but come on school - can we not compromise??? Help a little??? I dont even mind paying the fine, I'm just so upset that she cant even work with me on them taking their SATS on a different day or different time - is it really that strict? Would all of the headmistresses out there say that?
My kids have 100% attendance, they have never missed any school for holiday reasons ever before - its so peed off - and its going to ruin my holiday. Any advice? Any body had nice experiences with their heads? Is there anything I can do so that my kids can take their SATS?

They are in year 2 not year 12. It is not as if they stream at that age and they will have mocks to go by.
Go on holiday and just make sure any future holidays are double checked with school dates before any money is paid.
You won't even remember this in a few years. Yes it is not ideal but its not the end of the world.

Agree with pp, you can't ask staff to fit sats around your children. That is ur.

Fairenuff where did I say they were primary? In the US a guidance counselor would collect up work from individual teachers and give it to the truancy officer or special education teacher to deliver to the house. Parents don't need to ask. So these children didn't even have homework? No I think the school just couldn't be bothered.

My educational qualifications exist on paper, I don't need to justify them or list them for a discussion on mumsnet, for which they are irrelvant anyway.

I always wonder on threads such as these if many of the people who argue that holidays during term time don't effect children's education perhaps didn't do that well at schools themselves if they don't have jobs that pay well enough to afford holidays during the school holidays.

It strikes me that even with information that the system is flawed you would much rather to continue berating the OP for suggesting someone come in at weekends (She said pages ago that she agreed she was being unreasonable) and discrediting or insulting people that have a different point of view. Very immature! I'm done.

Fairenuff I asked the question about lobbying to overturn school holiday fines a few pages back and got no responses funnily enough.

I think if you are demanding your right to take your children out of school for a few days each year you are coming from a point of privilege. All of the children mentioned seem to be incredibly bright and advanced so time out of formal education won't affect them. I know that many are pleading poverty as the reason they can only afford term time holidays all the holidays and activities mentioned seem to be very premium. The underlying assumption is that it's different for your children or your family because special circumstances apply. (I'm talking purely about holidays not deaths in the family or parents whose AL is restricted).

But what message are you sending the other children - the ones in class who don't have term time off - that the rules only apply to certain people, that their classmate can go on an holiday and have it framed up as a special once in a lifetime experience that they deserve and when they come back the topics they have missed have to be gone over again. That it doesn't matter if X has time off because he is super-clever and can learn languages at the beach. Try looking at it from their peers' point of view.

There are 13 weeks holiday a year - 25% of the year is available to book for holidays and if you can't find an affordable holiday (if you can afford holidays in the first place) in those 13 weeks then you aren't trying very hard.

When you enter the school system you are entering into a social contract - if you don't like the rules either lobby to change them or HE or go private.

Agh bollocks to them, their poxy fucking wank tests and their toeing of the party line. Go on holiday, piss on the SATS and if they do fine you, pay the bastards off two quid a week

And fwiw I'm keeping my twins off for the first week of year six so we can go on holiday as a family. Fine or not.

What a reasonable and mature response, just what you should be teaching your children.

OP

You surely realise that every parent who still wants to take advantage of the cheaper term time prices is trying to use the "someone else booked it and/or got confused with the dates" excuse to avoid a fine ?

It's the least credible excuse possible.

You need to be apologising (not getting angry with HT) and paying the fines without a murmur of annoyance. In addition, accept that you have created more work for the school staff so offer an extra donation of a few hundred to the school PTA to whom the Y2 teacher can then make a request for something or other to make her classroom life easier as she will be the one doing extra hours to to ensure that the school still has KS1 SATS results for your kids.

Save your anger for you DF/DFil who "booked the wrong dates". Although this would be difficult to express to him as he is paying (and saving a lot of money by avoiding the half-term week ).

trashcan

Could you also take them out the weak of the yr 6 Sats.

*week not weak

Great post Tondelayo - "There are 13 weeks holiday a year - 25% of the year is available to book for holidays and if you can't find an affordable holiday (if you can afford holidays in the first place) in those 13 weeks then you aren't trying very hard."

Our holidays are not more expensive for being booked in school holiday time, or if they are at most its a couple of hundred quid difference between the cost of the accommodation if we'd booked it in May.I get flights as soon as they come out and either book hotel directly through their website, or if it's s/c then through something like owners direct.

Next year we're thinking about a cruise, so I've checked prices now and if we did book it now ( which we probably won't as still thinking through options) the prices are pretty good for AI with flights as well. I know very well that if I left it until a couple of months before it's due to depart, then the price will probably be double the price. Is this greed on behalf of the tour company or market force in demand and the price I have to pay if I'm not prepared to book my holiday in advance?

Good god, wish the arguments would stop about £1800 fine for taking kids out.
"if your request for leave is unauthorised and you still choose to take your child out of school for a holiday or another reason, you may be fined £60 per child per parent, rising to £120 per child per parent if not paid within 21 days. If the fine is unpaid after 28 days, court proceedings can be initiated."

I doubt any school has made a threat that they would fine £1800.

Your school won't authorise because its not an exceptional circumstance. Loads of parents try all sorts of different excuses, its the law that you can't take your kids out. People do anyway, the fine isn't that high, their year 2 sats won't make a major difference to them but the school will have to explain it to the DfE and hence the non approval. Funding could be an issue because of this, as could showing progress, it may effect other children in the long run.

Looking at threads to do with education on here some of you lots are entirely grabby and self centred. You want the schools of your choice and think that exceptions should be made all over the place so that your dahhlings get the best of all possible worlds. Teachers are expected to give up weekends and evening to help ( which actually they do) and if not they are not prepared to do so get flamed for it. Then people come on here and complain about teachers pay and conditions etc etc. Gosh, I am a teacher ( and a bloody well qualified and hard working one at that) I've rarely met a parent in real life who has attitudes like this, hope I never do again.

I've holidayed every August for past 4 years, twice in UK, twice in Europe. The holidays (transport and accommodation) have never broken 4 figures for a family of 4 - usually much less.

I honestly couldn't give two hoots about the bloody SATS. They are my 2nd and 3rd children. I didn't worry about it with my 1st, who is now 18 and I can say hand on heart it has had zero consequences. The stress some of his poor class mates went through for the stupid tests was utterly unnecessary. Ds and his buddies didn't care a hoot, and the lovely school certainly didn't put pressure on them too. They all did just fine and ds was in top sets through high school.

So my attitude suits me and mine just fine. We also have lasting memories of the lovely holidays we've had together. We reminisce often and very much look forward to the next one.

Do share as we've found it impossible.

That said the several hundred you need just for camping in August is out of the league of many.

Makes me laugh as the people with zero empathy for those that can only afford term time holidays are generally those that can afford to book them in the holidays. It is worrying as many kids are simply not going to have experiences away from home now common sense and compromise has gone out the window in many areas.

That said at our school you can still take time off during the term.Many do and frankly I say all power to them.

I save to afford one foreign holiday every couple of years. We could probably go every year if we went for cheap term time holidays but we choose to holiday to allow good experiences without taking out of school.

And of course you don't need to travel miles to experience different things and have family time.

Like I have said though if people want to holiday in term time that's their choice just don't expect the school to authorise it!

Our holiday last year was a cottage in the lakes. We scraped together to afford it, and certainly could not have afforded term time. This year we're staying in a hut in Scotland

Tondelayo where do you go? I've just booked a family holiday for under four figures but it's not in high season, it's at Christmas. I'm always looking for cheap deals. DC are over 12 now though so full price most places.

If a holiday is truly going to be the holiday of a lifetime, doesnt that imply that it is a one-off, or at least, a pretty rare thing - certainly not an annual event. So, if you can't afford the holiday of a lifetime in the school holidays this year, why not sock that money in the bank, save up for the rest of the year, and have the holiday of a lifetime next year?

It is not a human right, vital, or necessary to have a holiday away from home every year. We have not had a family holiday since 2011, because we have had to give the dses money towards their maintenance at university. Ds3 goes to university this autumn, for a 4 year course, and, under our current circumstances, dh and I won't be able to afford a holiday until he graduates.

And we have survived this huge deprivation, as have our children.

I do take your point Lepetitmarseillais and yes I do understand that it must be hard for those families that simply cannot afford school holiday prices. Discretion has been taken away from head teachers because of some families abusing the practice and I suspect it'd not the very poor families who are the culprits.

It's more likely to be people like my colleague who took his 3 DCs out of school for 3 weeks in September, one of them age 8 like my DS another one had just started senior school. Crazy time to take them out for so long and IMHO very damaging for their education. He said that he couldn't afford to take them in school holidays, and when I suggested booking far in advance to get a good price he said that a) he liked to be spontaneous and couldn't think that far in advance and b) the crowds would be too long for him.

That said, as I've said above I don't think a week is going to be the end of a child's educational future and in the scenario where term finishes on a Monday that's absolutely daft and of course children can miss the last day of term without it impacting them academically.

One practically zero cost solution for school holidays is house swapping - we did this through the NCT quite a bit when DS was younger, the only cost was the annual membership which I think was £35.

If everyone was allowed 10 days of holiday for the year, this would make things much harder for the teachers - they could have some children absent most weeks - all of whom could be missing different bits of the curriculum - and that is a lot of different gaps to fill in.

I think some people forget (or don't want to acknowledge) that education is a cumulative process, and each thing the child learns can form part of the foundation for the next part of the topic, and so on. If a child misses some of the building blocks of a topic, it can be much harder for them to build a solid understanding of the whole topic.

I think teachers work bloody hard as it is - both at school and at home, and I was utterly gobsmacked at the entitledness of the suggestion that they should come in at the weekend to fill in the gaps for a child who has been on holiday!