AIBU to tell you it is not illegal to take your child out of school to go on holiday

[Pseudonym99]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-34543101

[teacherwith2kids]

Caitline, as a child I had my first 'week of holiday away from home' at the age of 10, and never went abroad as a family holiday (except when my father took a job abroad due to the oil crash in the 1970s).

[SantasLittleMonkeyButler]

No of course not Lweji. I knew they had done something, but will freely admit I underestimated just how much. Or indeed, how that led on to the next topic or next week's work.

[teacherwith2kids]

Feck,

Never had a term-time holiday as a child, and don't remember it being a 'thing' at all - but most of my primary schools - I went to lots - were in quite low-income areas, where holidays 'away' of any kind were quite rare. Camping in the garden, now that was VERY common!

[Sirzy]

I don't think it worked fine before at all. People took the piss and came to expect to be able to go off on holiday whenever they wanted with no questions asked

[Sirzy]

I was never taken out of school for holidays as a child. Sorry I once finished at dinner to go away.

[teacherwith2kids]

"10 days' parental leave per school year at the discretion of headteachers and it worked fine"

No it didn't. The intimidation and implied violence I described occurred when this was the rule - and the chunk missed out of your post says it all. It was not '10 days parental leave'. It was 'headteachers have the authority to authorise up to 10 days of absence, depending on circumstances'. Many parents came to see it as 'their right' to take 10 days in ANY circumstances, and when heads tried to refuse non-reasonable requests, life could get VERY ugly.

[caitlinohara]

teacher but you're assuming that those people all do the same job and can cover for each other. It doesn't work like that in practice. In many job roles you might only be able to have 1 or 2 people off at the same time in a team. I used to work somewhere like this and as others have said, it was a case of if you managed to get school holiday off one year, you might not for the next couple of years. I don't know how it works for shift and factory workers, but I know of cases where you had to take your annual leave when the factory went on shutdown: in January.

[Sirzy]

Surely then people should be campaigning to make workplaces more flexible with holidays - within reason - rather than removing children from their education. We are asking the wrong systems to change IMO.

[caitlinohara]

teacher I am talking about my parents' experience as teachers when I say it worked fine - they both taught in inner city schools their whole careers and it DID work fine. Perhaps your experience is more recent.

[LittleRedSparke]

"If working parents are unable to take their holidays to coincide with school holidays should that family do without a family holiday perhaps for several years?"


well yeah, no one makes you have children, no one forces you to work in an industry where you cannot take time off during school holidays (usual caveats of its not easy to change a job etc)

You dont have children forever... you can go away in the UK and it doesnt have to be expensive, for example go camping - you dont have to go to Florida for 2 weeks etc

[teacherwith2kids]

Caitlin, I diodn't say that my model was perfect, and there will be schools in a few areas next to a big employer of this type where the head will be well aware of the specific difficulties of getting leave. However, IME of different schools, the majority of schools have relatively few children affected by having parents in this type of job. Again, it is the difference between a 'need' and a 'want':

• I 'need' to have a 1 week holiday with my family at some point during the year.
  

• I 'want' to have a fortnight of holiday in the warmer summer months.
  

In the case of a local major employer with very inflexible shifts, a headteacher could well argue that the first case is 'exceptional circumstances' and authorise it. But where an employee COULD have taken a week's holiday in February but WANTS a 2 week holiday in June, then that is not going to be authorised.

[HopefulAnxiety]

I think truanting should be distinguished from holidays, but I also have to disagree with some PP regarding truanting punishments. I truanted a lot in secondary school due to serious undiagnosed MH problems. I would imagine that things like depression are quite commonly missed in teenagers because the symptoms do sound a lot like 'normal' teenage behaviour. Chucking me out of school wouldn't have helped my MH, I needed support not punishment.

[Nataleejah]

The problem with poor attendance is when kids don't make it to school because parents are piss drunk most of the time or something like that. Those are not the families who would go on holidays.
Persecution for taking a long-weekend, be it to Disneland, is just ludicrous.

[echt]

echt - don't you rather think that it's the system that pays teachers based on attainment targets that should be changed?

Of course, but it would be nice if parents who take their children out in term time acknowledge this. But they don't.

And while I'm here, I am teacher, I have taken my child out in term time, and have never asked a teacher for work.

To be fair, I live in Au, where no-one gives a fuck about government targets. In the UK it's different, it does matter, and the teacher can't say, ooh that child was taken out on holiday, can I keep them out of my targets?

[teacherwith2kids]

Nataleejah,

No, actually, all absence - whether for a 2 week holiday abroad, or for families too chaotic to get their children to school - is a problem, though the extent of the problem is often 'masked' by the effort teachers put in to support the children once they return to school.

I agree that absence is particularly difficult to overcome for children who are otherwise 'vulnerable learners' through home circumstances or particular learning needs (and children from any home background can have SEN), but any absence has an impact not only on the child but on the class as a whole, for all the reasons I have posted previously on this thread.

[caitlinohara]

echt I think that's a bit harsh. I get that teachers feel they are being penalised for parents' decisions. I get that parents feel that they are being dictated to by schools. I don't think the solution is to set each one against the other.

[LoveAndHate]

^^What SouthAmericanCuisine said.

I can't believe how entitled some of you think you are.

[teacherwith2kids]

"I get that teachers feel they are being penalised for parents' decisions."

For me, it's not like that. It's a bit more personal, in many ways, and it's about the children, not about me or the parents.

I see parents and schools as a partnership, who need to work together to ensure that the children in our mutual care make the best educational progress that they can. My part of the deal is to teach the children as well as I possibly can, to get to know them, to motivate them, to help them when they're stuck, to investigate any difficulties they have and to continually challenge them to learn new things. If I teach a bad lesson, if I ignore your child's needs, if I move them on too fast or too slowly, I'm letting down my side of the bargain, and that (pathetic, I know) saddens me.

Equally, I feel that parents who take children out of school on holiday 'because it doesn't matter', due to a want and not a need, are not quite keeping their side of the bargain, and (again pathetically, I'm sure) I feel that if I keep explaining that yes, it does have an impact, yes, it does affect the whole class too, more parents will understand this and choose not to, whatever the position on fines etc.

[teacherwith2kids]

(I sound SO sad!)

[teacherwith2kids]

I suppose what I'm saying is that I want the children I teach to make all the progress they are capable of - not because it will get me a promotion, or to ensure that I get my full salary next year, but because THAT'S MY JOB. And I want parents to work with me rather than against me, because surely that's what they want too?

[GruntledOne]

I wonder whether the council will appeal this decision? The duty set out in section 7 Education Act 1996 is for parents to ensure that their children receive full time education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise. Section 444 sets out circumstances where failure to arrange regular attendance is permissible, i.e. religious reasons, illness etc, or when the school has given leave.

If the report is accurate, this court focused on the term "regular attendance" but s444 makes it pretty clear that a child who is taken out without leave cannot be said to have regular attendance. In any event, it seems to me that the more important requirement is "full time education" and a child who has been taken out of school arbitrarily by his parents is not receiving full time education unless they can demonstrate that they have made alternative education arrangements.

[PacificMouse]

I grew up overseas. When children were taken out on hols out of the school hols, the teacher would never have had to jump through hoops to make it right. He/she would have carried on teaching for the class, the ones that were there. It was expected that the parents would help/teach the child what they had missed.
My mum was a teacher there. As a teacher, she always said that gooing away on hols during term time, the children were learning more than staying in class for a week.

What you DIDN'T have is parents becoming aggessive towards the HT or the teacher (that is completely unacceptable). And children who weren't coming to school were dealt with through a different system (Actually sually SS)

[Nataleejah]

PacificMouse, my own childhood was the same. It was not just parents responsibility, but also the student was supposed to catch up individually and assignments had to be handed in, late forgiven, but still had to be done.

[PacificMouse]

tbh teacher I'm wondering if this is not a lost battle. The culture in the UK is very much that you can earn a lot of money and be successful even wo a good education.
Regularly you will have people saying that it doesn't matter if johnny is not going to Uni (and go and stack shelves at Tesco) because he can go back to UNi later on in life, when he is ready.
You also have plenty of stories of so and so who is doing so well and never went further than his GCSE. Or is doing beter than xx who has a degree. Oh have you heard about yy who is now working as a manager despite having only his A levels?

Education is just not seen as something that important by a lot of people :(

[MERLYPUSSEDOFF]

I took my kids out of school a 18 mths ago as my father-in-law was dying. They live (lived) in Sri Lanka and it was possibly the most expensive time to go as it's Bhuddist new year.

Sadly we missed seeing FIL (he died the day before we got there) but MIL made sure my boys were fully immersed in the New Year celebrations and learnt a lot about their Dad's culture which he was a bit rusty on.

I feel this particular holiday was educational to them and something that enriched their life. They saw where Daddy went to school, enjoyed food, went to temple, learnt basic Sinahla, played with local kids and got to have a lovely time with Nanna. (they in themselves were the perfect distraction for MIL who obviously grieving for FIL). They learnt to swim and got through so many books reading to Nanna which she loved.

I DID feel guilty that they missed school, but they certainly weren't having a jolly riding the roller coasters in Florida. (not that that makes any difference). I think what I am trying to say is it wasn't a frivolous holiday. By OH being there he was also able to get his dad's estate in order and offer support for his mum.

We went back this year in August to a tourist type place and they don't talk about it half as much as the first time they went and saw daddy's temple.