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?

Also you are only fined if absence is 5 days or more so could you tag on to school holidays

Re. Authorised absence for funerals - this is not the case where I live.

My dad's funeral was 2 days ago. Last week I sent a letter into school requesting a days absence for the funeral.

The head teacher phoned me to say that they are no longer authorised to authorise absence for a funeral. She was lovely about it and said that she'd pretend she'd never received the letter and to just phone them in sick on the day. She notified the school secretary who didn't ask why they were off.

At the funeral were my cousin's 2 DC. They live in another area of the country and had had their absence authorised though.

The whole system is bizarre.

Sorry, I should've said that the school absence was requested for my 2 DC's!

Private schools vary on this issue.

Some take the view that the parents can avail themselves (or not) of the service they are paying for, others make it a firm contractual obligation that the DC attends and will remove from their role DCs who don't comply.

However, in both cases, private schools do have a legal obligation to send registers of attendance to the Local Authority, who do involve EWOs and issue fines to parents whose DCs don't attend school regularly.

Regardless of the issue of whether you'd be fined, or whether it's right to take them out of school during term-time, how do you manage to do your job with two small children in tow?

Natty flexi schooling is allowed legally, but it is at the discretion of individual schools I believe, you have to approach the HT and discuss it - they are entitled to say no. I've heard of some schools that are very flexible and accommodating, but many refuse

Jenny i'm sorry about your dad

BIWI I assumed the OP meant her DH comes with them and does the childcare during her working hours

Pretty, is the trigger point of absence for fines the same for state & private?

Just asking because the Isle of Wight bloke who challenged the fine also had a daughter at a private school and was not fined for that daughter, only the daughter at state school. How is that?

Ah yes - I think you're right, Cagliostro!

BIWI - I think the OP said her DH works flexibly and is self employed and could come too - so for him and the dcs it's a holiday.

That's what I had in mind for taking my dcs away - although in my case dp is an employee and would just take annual leave. I usually have meetings Mon - Wed. I'd like Thursday and Friday as leave and then you have a weekend either end. Mon and wed the rest of my family would be hanging out together and we could have dinner together. I think it would be really fun and we'd save on travel as my work would pay for my flights, and we'd get an air bnb apartment for the cost of 3 days in the insane hotel my work would have put me in for 3 nights.

Jenny

Your HT sounds like a shit, because HT's are allowed to use their discretion, and many do authorise for funerals. Or perhaps 'just' spineless. Either way, it suggests poor leadership, and I hope something means they move on and you get a better standard one next.

There acquire a lot of myths about what is and isn't permitted, not helped by HTs such as that one displaying incompetency by misrepresenting the situation to a parent.

I used to take my kids out of school a couple of weeks a year at primary school in the old days - they are doing great, teachers didn't care, and my kids learnt loads. Missing watching films during the last week of term has not scarred them!

Op, I am one of these people who would encourage you to take kids away as its a fantastic experience. Perhaps you could say your husband works with you on occasion and hence you have to take the kids. As long as they don't miss exams or start of school year, no problem.

Pretty, is the trigger point of absence for fines the same for state & private?

Just asking because the Isle of Wight bloke who challenged the fine also had a daughter at a private school and was not fined for that daughter, only the daughter at state school. How is that?

Each case is considered individually - there is no 'trigger point' written into legislation. Different LAs apply the legislation in different ways - and do take individual circumstances into account.

That's what Jon Platt challenged in court - the LAs interpretation of the phrase regularly. As for why he wasn't fined for all his DCs at different schools in the same LA - my understanding is that they had differing levels of attendance - the fine wasn't issued on the basis of one period of absence alone.

lakeful

The MN Hime Education topic is here and it might be a good place to start your research.

Because at the crux of this is whether your family ethos matches that of the school. The school (and the families happy with it) sees themselves as a community, working together (and only being absent when absolutely essential) and that level of community is in itself valuable and provides a kind of education from simple participation and belonging (not just the lessons).

Other people do not value that sense of community, and for them it's all about their rights to do what they want with their kids.

It's not a grey area, because removing their kids for holidays changes the nature of the remaining community, and that's neither nice nor fair.

So if you don't want to be part of such a community, you don't have to. Using state schools is not mandatory. I won't recommend private schools, as they can be much more hard line (practice varies, but some will just ask you to leave) but Home Ed might be the right think for the ethos you want.

We don't have this system for schools in Scotland. Schooling was one of the reasons for moving here from London before DS started primary school.

Friends moved about 400 miles to the north of Scotland for the school's too. Private school fees for their 4 kids were just too high.

Sorry - schools.

I will be taking my DD out for one to two weeks a year and continue to do so when DD2 & DS start.

Academically she is well ahead.
We are in an area that rarely fines as per the FOI request that showed how many areas issued fines.
If they do fine we can easily afford it.
Cost of holiday is not an issue my ALLOCATED annual leave is, plus DH is armed forces.

If anyone is armed forces you may well be able to get the fine dropped in the service person is away during the school holiday so you can't go then - check out the Military covenant.

An aside for those with school aged children who are serving in the forces you NEED to read the miltary covenant. It is incredibly helpful with things like school admissions.

"It's not a grey area, because removing their kids for holidays changes the nature of the remaining community, and that's neither nice nor fair.

So if you don't want to be part of such a community, you don't have to. Using state schools is not mandatory. "

This isn't how communities work. It is a grey area.
Communities work by people more or less sticking to agreed codes, with leeway on a case by case basis for people who can't or won't.
Communities don't work by kicking people out who struggle with aspects of individual codes. Communities - good, successful ones - work by managing a balance between collective behaviour that enforces codes and a collective degree of tolerance when codes are bent or stretched by individuals.

Yes, in one sense it is harder to teach when pupils are not robots who all turn up at exactly the same time every day and do their homework in exactly the same way.

But in another sense that is what education is- engaging with the whole person and the whole family - and understanding that the absence of a week to go to a cousin's wedding in India comes from exactly the same place as the warm loving family that support the child, want him to do well, and have brought him up from birth to learn to walk, talk, be polite, tell jokes when appropriate, treat adults with respect and treat little ones with kindness. You can't have children without parents and parents deserve respect and support for everything that they, in turn supported by their extended family, do.

You might be further put off by the fact that our BRILLIANT education system, of which you can't miss A SINGLE DAY, has presumably churned out all the posters who lack the critical skills to deduce from the info in the OP why you can't go in the holidays, and are asking you it repeatedly...

HowBad what an excellent post.

I was recently told in some Kafkaesque doublespeak, that my son's orthodontic adventures "are authorised absences but not authorised" ie: the school recognise it's medical, but so it is authorised, but still treated as an absence.

The problem with our orthodontist is he is two lengthy bus rides away (one bus ride of an hour, one of half an hour), and even if I get my son an appointment for 9 AM - which I was doing - he can't be back in school til mid day. But even though he signed in at the office and knew where he was, etc etc, it was still authorised but not authorised.

They have recently tightened up as I have had sons at this school since around 2002 and never had a problem with medical appointments.

I have had "the threatening letter" about my son's mighty absences - a few missed hours for orthodontics and two one day sickness bugs - twice, now. I take it with a pinch of salt. Jesus, I missed an entire year of school through skiving and it didn't affect my grades even remotely so I think it's all a bit paranoid.

When my dc were at primary school I took on board the endlessly driven home message regarding the necessity for them to be there every day, high attendance important, big curriculum to cover etc. So we didn't remove them.

But when they'd come home and tell me the final weeks of term were more often than not very laid back with DVDs, and fun activities (especially in yr 6 when after SATS in May they didn't seem to do much more than concentrate on the end of term play until they left) I did wonder why I was so bothered. I'm all for a bit of winding down time, but you can't have it all ways.

Oh and when I phoned them about the last orthodontic evil absence, I asked the admin woman to clarify the school's policy as I have had kids at that school for years and never had a problem with the snitty letters before. As "authorised but not authorised" makes no real sense.

After her lengthy peroration, I asked her why the school had previously sent out letters bitching that if a kid has a sickness bug they should be off for at least 48 hours after. She denied such a letter ever existed. And said, despite the risk of infection, they should go back the following day if they've been sick - not have an extra day at home afterwards. So the policy of cutting down absences will create... absences, as diseases spread to more kids than necessary. Their choice. From now on, if my kids are ill they are back at school the next day.

AS, I used to be a primary teacher and that was precisely my feeling when my kids were at primary school. Why all the endless time wasting crap like World Book Day, etc, that takes away time from the curriculum? When I was a teacher there were whole areas of the school week that were essentially pointless, like assemblies etc (and the nightmare of having to do a class assembly - that seriously eats into learning time and, however you spin it, has little actual educational value). There's enough wasted time as it is without red nose day, world book day, etc etc.