Is taking my DC out of school really so bad??

[MaryPoppinsPenguins]

I'm getting a lot of shit judgement from DH's parents about our holiday plans.

I thought long and hard about it and decided that it would be okay to take them out of school given that my youngest is only in nursery (so not compulsory) and my oldest is only in year one and it will just be the week before Christmas and I don't feel she'll miss anything crucial.

My DH is told when he can have time off and has to take projects when they're offered, which means that often he won't see the kids from Monday to Friday (which I know is common) and pretty horrible.

So we booked a holiday for this time, went for lunch at PIL's after and ended up having a huge row with them over booking it during school time.

I know this can be a sore subject, but a week of essentially watching videos and having carol concerts isn't really as important as getting to spend a whole week with your dad is it?

(Dons hard hat!)

(I do appreciate that both are hearsay - but very consistently-heard hearsay IYSWIM)?

The liars and piss takers just make things more difficult for everyone.

At the end of the day, people need to decide if they are going to stick to the law or not. There are a number if laws we might not like, but most people will stick to them.
Additionally, people should consider the point about the impact of their decision on the whole class - the having to go back over previous material etc which slows everyone down - the impact of absence IS wider than on the individual child's eduction.
Personally I think going on holiday in term time is a non-essential trip and ultimately is a short-sighted action on the part of parents.

Your little Y1 DC will have to sit at the side when the rest are practising their nativity play. You have no idea how that will affect him/her. No matter how professional the teacher is they will remember what you did.
If you lie about why your children are off, it will all come out in the wash.
Your trip isn't educational my idea of hell with small children.
I remember one particular child who was very athletic always missed sport days due to term time holidays. She said, 'Mrs Derxa, I don't know why my parents do this. I want to be with my friends and do Sports Day and go to the summer disco'.

I agree that the policy of no holidays being authorised is a blunt instrument kind of policy.
Blunt instrument policies can be annoying, because there is no room for flexibility. However, I think the benefits outweigh the downsides. These include that the policy should be clear and easy to understand (flexibility creates ambiguities and uncertainties and what often feels like unfairness) and it will be cheaper and easier to carry out.
People who want to take their children out during term time always seem to think theirs is a special case and they should be treated differently - when schools did have more flexibility, there was too much holiday absence - as has been said previously, people saw 10 days as a 'right' and took it regardless of whether their children had other absence. People don't seem to like policies which apply to everyone, but in practical terms, that is how policies need to be.

I hope the new laws are strictly and rigidly enforced......not because I especially want parents to be fined, but because it is important that everyone knows where they stand with this new law - that it WILL be enforced EVERYWHERE. If this happens, I think the policy will be more effective - less people will take their children out, even if some people continue to.
The worst way this policy could now pan out, is if there is inconsistency in its application, so people either don't understand that holidays won't be authorised or that they will be fined, or see the policy as unevenly and unfairly applied.....these things will make it less effective. It will take time for a shift of culture over this one, but I believe with a clear and strongly enforced policy we can move to a situation where taking children out of school for holidays isn't seen as the norm and a choice for parents to make (as it currently is) but as a poor way to parent.

Derxa, I've actually just found out that the nativity is the first week in December, (not that I think I would be harming my daughter by missing it.)

I have not once said I was going to lie, and I've not once said that the holiday is for an educational reason.

But I know my children, and I can assure you that Disney World trumps everything with them!

Of course it does, I would imagine given the choice that most children would pick holiday over school. That doesn't mean it is the right decision though!

Heh! Chucked out of a state school for understanding that until very recently the 'regulation' was that a headteacher had discretion to allow up to 10 days of leave per year for holidays in term-time. Which seemed to work just fine.

I love how we are supposed to slavishly follow the political and ideological decisions of educational policy as if that is something we have absolutely no say in. I mean, it's not like the state funding for the state school comes from us (the taxpayers) and we elect the politicians who form governments, so they are ultimately accountable to us. Oh wait a minute...

Well all is well then.

Worked for whom, oven? Certainly not the teachers, who lobbied for this change. What do they know, they're just the professionals who are experts in child education - and who were faced with rudeness and abuse from parents who disagreed with the decisions they made under the old system that you say worked so well.

But, why shouldn't parents be rude and abusive to the teachers whose salaries they pay? After all, it's not like they do anything important, like educate our DCs. Oh, wait.....

"Which seemed to work just fine."

I used to do data analysis for a school I taught in. The relationship between 'not making expected progress' and 'was taken for 10 days' holiday in term time' was, for that school at least (mostly middle / lower ability children, many SEN, large ethnic group with little history of schooling) an extremely significant one.

Yes, there will be schools, and children, for which it made little difference - and for many MN children (well parented, much exposure to 'learning' outside school, etc) it may genuinely have made little difference. But for pupils a little 'nearer to the edge', the difference was really very noticeable from the data.

(And as we obviously can't have a policy which allows the well educated middle class to take cheaper holidays, but not those in very difficult socioeconomic circumstances, it seems best to have a rule based on the common good which protects the more educationally vulnerable)

We'll have to agree to disagree SouthAmericanCuisine because we have different ideological stances. Which is fair enough in my book.

But I shall retire from thread as you are too fond of 'whataboutery' with your portrayal of parents who are rude and abusive to teachers, who keep their children off school for the equivalent of one school day per week, and who should be punished by being booted out of school system and made to home educate.

It's whataboutery of the highest order and I neither can nor want to compete in such an exercise.

Well said teacher.

Is there an element of "nanny state" at play?

Those parents who don't know what's best for "little Jonny" are dissuaded from making poor choices through penalties?

I'm in two minds about it - part of me things that those families who have low aspirations for their DCs (or are arrogant enough to believe they know better than the professionals) should be left to get on with it, but another part of me acknowledges that those DCs may not thank their parents for putting a cap on their academic achievements.

It will be interesting to see if increased attendance actually makes for better results. My feeling is that the problems of the 'educationally vulnerable' are far greater and deeper than simply insisting on school attendance.

It will be interesting to see if increased attendance actually makes for better results. My feeling is that the problems of the 'educationally vulnerable' are far greater and deeper than simply insisting on school attendance.

The national average attainment at KS1 and KS2 is increasing every year, as is the average "progress" made between these two milestones.

The "national average" attendance figures are also increasing every year.

Could be a coincidence.....?

How is the average attainment measured?

"the problems of the 'educationally vulnerable' are far greater and deeper than simply insisting on school attendance"

Well, yes of course. But when the data was normalised for starting point, ethnicity, gender, and whether the child was pupil premium / free school meals, the data for the school I taught in showed that children from similar family backgrounds and similar baseline ability made less progress if they took 10 days holiday in term time than those who didn't.

Of course, taking holidays in term time could be a 'proxy measure' for other factors that also have an effect on school performance, e.g. parental views towards the importance of school.

It is hard to legislate for e.g. parents to feed their children breakfast, to put them to bed before midnight, to provide toys or books etc - all of which I agree have huge impacts on educational achievement, not to mention children who have young carer responsibilities to younger siblings, who have no space to call their own, who live in cold, damp, unsuitable housing, whose parents are in prison, are alcoholics, are drug addicts, are prostitutes... but we can legislate against term time holidays, which do have some impact too.

Go on holiday. Goodness people act like you're taking them out of education full time! as long as they can catch up and aren't going to miss too much then is it really a bad thing to have some QT with your family? When they sit their GCSEs in 10 years time are you going to look back and say oh we shouldn't have taken that week before Xmas because it's ruined their education?

"as long as they can catch up and aren't going to miss too much then is it really a bad thing to have some QT with your family?"

Multiply by 30, and see above for my post about the cumulative effect on the rest of the class...

Look at it this way, if you reckon that a week out of school makes no difference to your child, does having 29 weeks in which they have less teacher time because it has to be devoted to other children who have just come back from holiday bother you at all?

Thank you for explaining so nicely Teacherwith2.

teacher I absolutely don't disagree with you. But if a family only had one chance to go on holiday then I'd say take it. I know holidays are a luxury but if people are working hard during the year then I can't grudge them it. What about about if they took some work away with them? My mum was a primary teacher and she encouraged them to take their reading away with them to practise.

But if everyone took that view and took a week, the scenario Teacher described would happen. The problem is that everyone is just thinking about themselves and what they want, rather than realising that when you are part of a class, your actions don't just affect you, but everyone too - and if the OP is given permission to go or a blind eye is turned, how can the school chase up a child who does the same thing and who for whatever reason will be really negatively affected by such absence? How can a school say 'yes you can go because it's the last week of term' but 'no you can't go because that week is when we will cover the absolutely most vital skill of the year' - when you are part of a class, the rules need to be applied to everyone. There really can't be any sense of 'I am a special case'

If you want to be a special case and do exactly what you want, the only way is to go the whole hog and home educate.