Is this your child? Staying home on Friday?

[NetballMumGrrr]

Article about how more children are staying home on a Friday as their parents are at home?

Link to BBC News

I’m assuming it’s vulnerable children. Not sure why people are not valuing education more or AIBU?

@carriedout - that’s my point. I wouldn’t mind paying for others to still go to school Fridays for activities even if I didn’t send mine. As it would benefit them. Hence saying it wouldn’t be a waste of tax payers money.

I had parents evening on Tuesday and the teacher said that they have children who are always off on a Friday as the parents have caravans and like to go away for a long weekend. (During a conversation about attendance)

"nobody needs to go on holiday" tends to boil down to "poor kids can miss out on going on holiday"

Rich kids can pay the fines, middle-ing kids can go in summer. Poor kids get priced out.

Actually I think holidays and travel are important.

DS has ASD. We occasionally give him ‘mental health days’ to recharge (about one a term) and these would always be on a Friday for the benefit of the long weekend. The school know and are fine about it.

I never went anywhere as a child (poor and couldn’t of afforded it even if we were skipping school). I travelled loads as an young adult, when you are happy with cheap and cheerful accommodation and it’s easy to pick up odd jobs abroad.

Holidays and travel are a nice to have imo not essential and you can see the world when you’re old enough to appreciate it.

Holidays in peak school holiday times are more expensive for everyone, not just parents. yes they are but parents are usually paying for multiple people to go on holiday not themselves so the difference is more marked.
Nobody needs to go on holiday.
Rather depends on their life situation and how much they prioritise wellbeing or family.
setting a week’s worth of work for one member of the class is a big task that does have time allocated for.
yes but teachers actually plan their lessons and are perfectly capable of describing what the content is and what works was done. They certainly HAVE textbooks or worksheets already or at the bare minimum can point to the skills taught that have been missed.

Massive changes were made to the curriculum since 30 years ago. Gove in particular went content crazy. It is significantly bigger than when you were last in a school. I’m not sure this is accurate but I don’t think it’s a widely held view. Certainly most of the first year in university now is spent doing what would have been considered Alevel maths for many stem subjects. But if more IS being taught at what stage and in which subjects.

Reading is not just reading a book (which we encourage children to do at home). The reading lessons we do cover retrieval, inference, prediction for example, and that has to be taught. Many parents at my school would not know how to teach this as a skill, which is developed over the primary years.

I think you're thinking all parents are like you. Some parents would keep their kids home as carers, some would just let them roam free, others would just give them unfettered access to devices. We are battling this as it is for some children on a daily basis. Not all parents would do what you are hoping they will do to support their children's academic education.

Also with the PE curriculum we plan, teach and assess. The Govt want us to do this in a particular way, hence the various schemes of work we then subscribe to and pay for. Will parents do that? Or are you asking the Govt to not include PE on the national curriculum anymore?