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 don't think teachers should do anything to 'help' a child catch up who has been out of school for a holiday. If you take your kid out of school for fun, you take you chances.

But I really don't think it damages a child's education to miss a week of school, its not hard to catch up. And if your child will find it hard to catch up, then you shouldn't take them out. Simples.

On another note, my DD has told us today that 4 children in her class have a day off this week as it is Eid.
Genuine question - does this go down as agreed absence or could these children's parents potentially get a fine ?

As far as I know you get Eid off for religious observance. I've never been questioned over it and always get it approved. And tbh, I'd still take my kids out to celebrate Eid even if we didn't get authorisation.

Tiggytape I think that is fair comment. I am not trying to claim that some parents were not very unreasonable and abused the system. Of course some did. Introduce a rule or discretionary allowance about anything at all - MP's expenses being a good case in point - and normally a majority are reasonable and a minority absolutely take the piss and exploit that rule or allowance for everything it's worth.

But to my thinking, it is that minority who need tackling rather than introducing a blanket ban and criminalising parents who before 2013 (when the rules changed) would have been classed as the 'reasonable majority' in school, who on occasion took their child on holiday, with the head's permission and within the school's rules of the time.

These parents generally wanted the best for their child and also wanted to work with the school to support their child's education. To me, to criminalise parents in this category and to waste all those resources (especially all that money) in taking legal action against them, is a nonsense.

And to go back to the MPs' expenses debacle - the decision as to how to tackle that problem wasn't to introduce a blanket ban on anyone claiming expenses and prosecute anyone who still claimed, was it?