AIBU - school fine for holiday absence

[MrsOprah]

Whats people experiences with these - ignore and they go away? Council doubled the fine and chased it? Successfully fought one with school? Got it taken to court and won/lost? TIA

Holidays are educational as well. Quality time with parents in a relaxed environment can also be vital in their busy stressful world. Councils need to sort themselves out. Either that or just tell the school your family have norovirus, and stay away for a week . Although this won't be effective if your children return to school with a sun tan

Councils will blindly pursue tiny debt.

Pay the fine with the money you saved.

Holidays can be educational in school holidays too. Unfortunately, the curriculum moves so fast that any missed time needs catching up on in student’s own time. A few days at the end of the Summer term is fine though but fines should be expected and paid.

If we used schools I would happily remove them for a holiday. But would pay the fine as well.n

Fines have been with us for ages now yet there always seem to be threads about them.

What more can there be to be said that hasn't been already

I wish they had their own topic so I could hide it

I’m waiting for the post about a head teacher who positively encourages children to go on holiday and waves them all off with a cheery “enjoy!”.

There’s one on every thread like this.

I’m a Head Teacher and happily wave children off on term time holidays with prepared work packs which my staff put together on their weekends off. If parents are struggling I pay the fines for them too.

It's ok to say 'there's 13 weeks to go on holidays!'

Would a teacher request holidays during the other 39 weeks? No because they aren't allowed.

Guess what- dp can NOT get annual leave during 'school holidays!'

So that would mean we wouldn't go on holidays for 18 years.....

So yes every 2/3 years we take 5 days off.

To reply to a few points....

No money saved - as it wasnt a holiday destination or restort, or package deal.

Fines are issue by council, at schools request. Fine says any queries are to be dealt with by school.

Absence was 5 days requested off, location abroad.
Not a two week holiday.

I will look put for those stats tho, might be useful.

Yes, it does seem quite hit and miss on how these are handled after theyre issued.

I used to be a governor of our local school and it doesn't fine, as an academy it can choose not to.

Sadly ours chooses to fine @babyplaymat

Holidays are at the correct price (they say) during term time, but term time holidays are heavily discounted.

Fines and instructions are issued by the council, but of course it’s easy for them to pass the buck back to individual schools to do the work for them. Perhaps there should be a national ruling? But then, so many schools are part of academy chains and they will do what they want to do.

If you choose to take your children out of school during term time, you choose the consequence to that action. What seems to be the case is that it’s different everywhere.

Ours only fines if it for 5 days or more so if people are going to centerparcs etc they send them in on Monday morning so it is only 4 1/2 days. Our few days were authorised anyway due to severe sn but if it came to it we would just pay the fine although we would be annoyed by it as it should be exceptional circumstances.

I took mine to Florida for three weeks and didn’t get fined...

Yea the varience/inconsistency is quite sometime

Appreciate some people have diff views (and dont mind their lives being state run)

Appreciate some people have diff views and don’t care about disrupting the education of their children (as well as that of other children in the class).

Scabetty Fri 23-Mar-18 18:51:53
"I’m a Head Teacher and happily wave children off on term time holidays with prepared work packs which my staff put together on their weekends off. If parents are struggling I pay the fines for them too"

[shocked]