To be scared about unauthorised absence?

[lakeful]

We currently live abroad but will be moving back to England in the next year, have two DCs who are in primary school. I sometimes have to do foreign travel with my job my DH (who is self-employed and very flexible) and DCs have occasionally come with me. I'm talking a period of maybe 4 weeks in total over the past two years. Where we live now, schools do encourage attendance but things are more relaxed than in England and there has not been any problem with me taking them out of school. I have been reading up on the English system and am a bit alarmed! Would I really have to get a Head Teacher's permission to take my own children abroad? Would I really be fined if I did this without their "authorisation"? And is it possible that they authorise children to miss school for reasons such as mine?

lakeful we were talking about the news at dinner the other night, and forced academisation came up for some reason - teenage DD's perfectly sincere response was "even the parents would go on strike if they tried that here" .

I think clare1971 has a point too.

You're preaching to the choir man! Do you think the rest of us like having to pay extortionate prices because we'll get fined for taking them out?

Either suck it up or home educate, you can do what you want then.

I can't believe how quickly parents in this country have been brainwashed by this. The outrage at the OP is ridiculous.

This is particularly silly and confused:

"Can you believe that as an adult, you have to seek permission from an employer to take yourself abroad, or risk going anyway and being sacked?

Why is it different when you choose to send your child to a school?"

The difference is so blindingly obvious that I can't believe I am going to explain it, but I will.
When you take a job, you explicitly contract to do certain hours of work and you are essentially selling your time. Not to provide them with the hours or days of work you have promised is to renege on your contract; it is the fact that you are being paid for work that you have promised to do that makes it wrong. In other words, once you are on that salary you owe them the days' work in the same way you owe your mortgage payments to the bank. It is no longer your time to choose what to do with; you have sold it.

When you send a child to school, you are availing yourself of a service that the local authority provides to your children. You, as a parent, are responsible for providing your children with an education, and the local authority is responsible for making it available through schools. The transactional nature of owing time to a school simply does not exist. You have not sold your child's time to the school and you are receiving no payment in return for it. On the contrary, you have paid (via taxes) for schooling for your child and your availing yourself of it.

What you do owe - ethically - is a decent education to your child, in the same way that you owe them a decent upbringing in all respects. The detail of how you manage it should be up to your discretion as a parent. In a looser and more general way, you owe certain courtesies to society and the professionals educating your child, but it is a recent thing that this social contract has been tightened and distorted to this extent. Making criminals of parents who don't "obey" term times.... this is rather a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

This is a choice, made by a certain government, it is not a natural state of affairs. To be surprised by it and even resistant to it is not to be somehow hard of understanding. In fact the opposite is the case - to be so myopically convinced that things can't be any other way, is rather tragic and craven

Coming back to the misguided analogy with employment: if you didn't have enough leave to take but you were dying to take up an opportunity to go to a wedding abroad, or something like that, a reasonable boss would try to exercise common sense and sympathy and temporarily release you from your contract, i.e., offer you unpaid leave.

I disagree with fining, but you clearly don't think much of teachers! You could do the job whilst simultaniously doing your own job it seems.

Most people can't even see the government is saying we can parent your dc better than you so this is how it's going to be.

Some can. We home educate

HowBadIsThisPlease that is such an articulate synopsis and I agree with you. I am quite taken aback by how outraged people are at my (I thought fairly low-level proposal of occasionally travelling abroad with my own children) but not outraged that this was ever introduced in the first place.

Owlinatree I possibly don't think as much of the education system as some posters on here do, I have no issue with teachers.

Parents in the UK are generally more passive than in many other countries, and less likely to question authority (and for some reason this is particuarly true on MN - I am not sure why this is)

This.

Personally I think a great deal of teachers, but objectively it is much easier to teach something one to one than when you have 30 kids in a classroom situation. This is why home schooling parents routinely report that a normal school curriculum can be taught in relatively few hours a week. A child missing a few days of school is unlikely to suffer any long term disadvantage as long as the absences aren't repeated.

I am sure that many parents who work in schools would like to take their own children off for weeks at a time, during time for some
Cultural experiences. To have an education outside the classroom. To experience different things. So save a fortune by avoiding school holidays costs.

What drives me insane about this policy of coming down heavily on unauthorised absence is that it is all so one-sided. I absolutely mustn't take my children out of school for a trip that I consider really enriching or interesting (and I'm fortunate enough to have children who are all doing well academically and I don't think a few days off especially at the end of term when it's all wear-your-own clothes and bake sales would have a huge impact) but the school is completely free to haul my children out of their lessons for several days at a time. For example, my eldest was a props hand in the school production a couple of months ago - she spent three days prior to the first night in dress and tech rehearsals basically sitting around playing on her phone. Last week she was part of a choral performance and, again, was out of lessons for a day and a half. The school might argue she learnt valuable lessons about being a member of a team and taking responsibility for her role in that team but I find it hard to stomach that I can't argue that taking her away for a few days wouldn't give her a chance to practice one of the languages she is learning etc. It is completely normal for parents in other countries to take their children out for occasional days away and those countries are, quite often, ones doing rather better than ours in international education league tables.

It can make a huge work load on their return for the teacher, or before if you request additional work. Our head has made it very clear we do not have to provide additional work at all - it is down to the students to catch up when they get back, mainly from copying others notes or us providing the slides from the lesson with no support. Most teachers don't follow this to the letter.

I am secondary and our school has fined, it does happen. At secondary missing a week or more in my subject can mean you miss a whole chapter of the book. The current curriculum is moving towards learn it once, learn it well in my subject so it will impact on future learning. Our text books are not designed to be 'self taught' books so its not just a case of photocopying the pages we are about to cover.

If students are ill I will support and help students on their return, will spend my free time going through work etc. I am less likely for students who have been on holiday.

As for lying - happens all the time, unfortunately children talk and can't keep the excitement of the holiday from their friends and it often happens I can see a student has been marked as ill but the students are talking about x being on the beach in xxx!

Mistigri I have heard that too and I find home education fascinating. I would be really open to trying it but I don't see how parents manage to afford it unless you can live on one salary and I am currently the main earner.

It's also not really that big a worry for a child to catch up on work if they were to miss a week if the school was to give them some pre-set work to take away with them.

Why should teachers who spend hours carefully planning lessons for their class prepare extra work for children who are not in school?

Right, let's get a few things straight here:

1. Th e whole concept of fines for unauthorised absence is currently up in the air. There are pending legal cases....

2. Parents are not rolling over; there've been huge petitions about this issue.

3. Your child will not be removed from the school roll for a week's absence. That would be unlawful.

4. heads can authorise absence in exceptional circumstances.

I'm with you, anyway OP. Personally, my opinion is that travel is one the best things we can do for our children - the ranges of experiences children will get by going away from home (anywhere - UK or far-flung) are second to none. I think it's terrible that parents are financially penalised for taking their children out of school for this.

That's very interesting Ragusa to hear that there is a movement against this. I wonder about the status of fines within the law, when you consider parental rights etc.

Lakeful how old are your dc? (I may have missed this) and why can your dh not do the home Ed bit? It really really doesn't have to be expensive at all!

At my children's schools (not UK) it's the childrens responsibility to catch up missed lessons, eg copy from a classmate. This is NOT the teacher's job.

I don't have a problem with this - it's a useful disincentive to taking unnecessary time off and IMO it sends the right message to secondary school students (teachers are responsible for teaching, but students also have personal responsibility for their own learning).

Remember education is compulsory, school is not

I agree with you lakeful , there is absolutely no need for people to be so attacking, especially when you only came on here to ask for advice.
WorraLiberty you're right, many parents do choose to use the 13 weeks holidays to take their children abroad, but there's also many parents that cannot afford to do that as the prices go absolutely ridiculous as soon as those 13 weeks come around.

lakeful - A recent case

It's so offensive that private schools don't have this rule. Either it's essential for children's education, so much so that thousands of state-educated families can't take holidays together (as not everyone can take time during school holidays), or it isn't. If it is, privately educated children should be as well protected as others from failures to educate them. If it isn't, well, then this draconian law is silly and is costing families too much. I agree with OP that a lot of education can happen outside the classroom, and I think families need time together too.
But whether it's right or wrong, separate rules for the wealthy are offensive and undermine political will to make good and fair decisions.

I wouldn't bother coming back to the UK if you hope to remove your children from school to take them for educational weeks away.

I am unclear why this is unachievable in the 13 weeks holiday?

I am a teacher - whole tracts of learning are missed when kids are off school (for any reason). They copy up notes (or they're meant to) and luckily attendance is excellent where I work so it's pretty rare. However, if you are the main earner, could your partner not home-school? If it's practically 1:1, like you say, how hard can it be?