To take DC out of school for two weeks for a holiday?

[CroccyWoccy]

Thinking about taking the family on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday next year, but having looked into it, we would have to take the DC out of school for a fortnight to make it work.

They have good attendance record - I have never taken them out for any reason before and they are rarely sick.

I was hoping we could do the holiday only taking them out for 5 days, but it isn’t feasible, to make it work they would need to miss two weeks (though one day is an inset day, so 9 days in total).

Is this too long? Either in terms of lost education or the amount of trouble we’d be in? DC will be Y6 and Y3, holiday would be tacked onto October half term.

Do your kids have an opinion? My children would have hated missing two weeks. For academic and social reasons. I appreciate they may be a minority though!

So therefore asking the secondary school staff to give up their time for someone who’s going on holiday - great idea, as if they haven’t got better things to do than accommodate someone who deliberately chooses to miss the open evening.

Go! Big holidays are brilliantly educational and fabulous experience for your DCs. We took ours to South Africa a few years ago for a family wedding - needed about 8 days off school to make it work with half term and wedding… We were away for 2.5 weeks… Our Head was very much in favour of us going - we took kids on safari, hiked up table mountain at dawn, went to Zulu battlefields… caught up with our gorgeous fam and went to wonderful wedding - kids were 10 and 12 - fabulous lifelong memories. It is the only time I took them out of school for hols - I do believe that school dates should be respected… but very occasionally… it is justified to break the rules!!!

I’d take them. The end of term appears to be wasted time in a lot of schools anyway. My daughter had a treat day on Friday ie a full day watching despicable me rather than studying. Somewhat ironic as her teacher spent parents evening telling me off for not doing enough homework with her when I do 30 minutes on weekdays and an hour at weekends. I remember full weeks of no work at the end of term!!

Actually you are wrong. Perhaps fact check before posting such bollocks

Gov Website

@CroccyWoccy I am a school governor, whilst you will have to apply to school and it will almost certainly be declined unless one of you works in the military or similar and has fixed holiday times, that doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't go. It just won't be authorised and if the 2 weeks pushes their overall attendance for that term to below 92% you may find the school is forced to refer to educational welfare.

Please remember this is not a school decision. Most of us as governors are parents and we get it I promise. But both us and heads are forced to follow very strict guidelines.

That said, Y6 is a key year and I think taking them away for that length of time in term time is irresponsible. Your child will miss too mcuh to catch up amd whilst they aren't supposed to, a lot of secondary schools use the SAT results to base the initial sets for maths and English on for the first term.

There is a 6 week holiday 7 weeks prior to when you intend to take them away, why can you not do this trip then? Most places weather doesn't swing that dramatically in. that length of time

Life's too short and nothing more important than family

Imagine if every teacher took 2 week holidays during school time.

Please don't ask the teacher to provide work for them to take.

How is that in any way the same?

Oh I'd do it.

And I am a rule follower type.

But don't expect the teachers to give homework. And don't regale the parents whatsapp group with your wonderful time. [Looking the side eye at a certain family in DS2's class who took their kids for a month to Indonesia and spammed us all with photos... I mean WTAF ]

I took mine off for 2 weeks in the October of Y6 for my brother’s wedding. There was no other choice other than missing the wedding which was not going to happen! No ill fate has befallen her We went again last Easter holidays in Y9 and she missed a few days on either side. Won’t be able to do it again so no regrets.

Only difference is that I’m in Wales and the heads could (and did) authorise it, so no fines or anything. DD had/has a good attendance record anyway so didn’t trigger any actions.

Just go! School isn’t everything, they’ll learn lots on this trip by the sound of it. I’d love to know where you’re going!

I wouldn't, I'd use the 6 weeks school holidays.

As for holiday of a lifetime, that's a matter for interpretation - there are trips that would be worthy of missing school for but they don't include beach resorts, theme parks etc. I was pretty strict with mine, they didn't miss school for family holidays ever, the only days I took them out were for special occasions eg a couple of weddings, a few funerals and a few musical performance opportunities which were sanctioned by the school. We did Disneyland when we were moving area this schools before they started at the new school

Op do it.

Life is too short and unfortunately during covid whilst something schools happily got on with teaching days into lock down others just dumped dc with the basics or nothing... And didn't do anything for weeks.

So decide on your own dc, maybe keep some basics going like times tables and spelling etc.

Enjoy..... Don't worry about it

You know your DC, so as long as they won't mind being on catch up when you get back and if you as parents are happy with it then I would absolutely go on a once in a lifetime trip

I mean they’d probably rather go to Disneyland TBH!

We went on an epic family trip when I was in primary school and while it was definitely an adventure I have a lot of memories of I was too young to totally appreciate - didn’t really understand the full significance of the places I’d seen.

So I am a bit torn - there’s a selfish element to it being a holiday that excites me, and that the DC would enjoy, but would it be their trip of a lifetime?

I’m really intrigued by where you’re going. I did wonder if it was the Inca trail or something else with a significant hike or tricky travel conditions for children given the extremes of temp.

Our school is pragmatic about taking time out. They won’t authorise but will generally wish you well and have arranged inset days to extend half terms to be helpful. I suspect they would be less happy about it in year 6 though. One of my friends went away for a month using Easter plus term time for 2 weeks. I think they just kept a diary each day and did some worksheets but they were younger. I’m taking mine out for 3 days before Christmas for Lapland but that will be under the fine threshold for our county (10 sessions).

I think you have to be pragmatic and accept you might get fined but make a decision on balance between the trip, the fine and the education for your y6 child (y3 seems a dead year so would not be so worried about that one). I have seen parents on the Disney world boards tie themselves in knots trying to write utter bollocks about educational outcomes- some of it is so bad it’s hilarious. At the end of the day if you think it will benefit your family then just own it and crack on, accepting you might get a fine and probably can’t expect the teachers to go out of their way to help catch up.

If they’re like me probably not cuz for me every trip is the trip of my life (or so I tell my husband to convince him we have to go on the next trip 😂)
my son is 5.5. He’s been to 45 flights. Probably half of those he won’t remember but some of them he’ll. he’s still talking about the nyc trip we did this summer and remembers things that happened there. Next year he’s going to Asia. Will it be the trip of his life ? Probably not but as a family we will have amazing memories that also count and not only maths or English lessons. I also think taking into account what the world is turning into and the cancer news close relatives keep having maybe im not in this world for long so I’d better make the most of it whilst I’m cuz there might not be this holiday of a lifetime in 20 years

This just isn't true. There is a whole curriculum still to teach in Y6, rather than just reviewing. However, most of Y7 and some of Y8 is just repeated content from the Y5/Y6 curriculum. That's one of the reasons why research projects into this area have termed Y7, Y8 and Y9 as "The Wasted Years" because a significant number of children do not make real progress here and some, in fact, slip backwards during the earlier half of the 3 years.

@Iamnotthe1

Possibly depends on the school. Ours is absolutely obsessed with SATs due to a poor SLT that don't really understand what a schools purpose is.

I think not, in part given their ages, and also my view is that term-time holidays should be for things such as visiting an elderly relative who lives abroad and cannot travel, or for cultural events where the date is fixed.

What you seem to be describing OP is something that seems will still be there or take place when they are older.

It's really quite depressing how many posters think 2 weeks missed learning is "nothing" because "it's just primary". No wonder schools are struggling to recruit and retain staff when the general consensus seems to be that nothing they do matters.

To those saying its fine "as long as you don't expect the Teachers to catch them up", how do you think that works in reality? Even if parents aren't entitled enough to expressly request that the Teacher give up their time, that child will still need to be caught up. Learning, especially in Maths and English, is a series of building blocks. So when a child comes back from a term time holiday the rest of their class will be building on skills, concepts and vocabulary that have been taught while they were away. This means they won't be able to do the work that the rest of their class are doing. As a Teacher, you can't just ignore that or they will fall further behind. So the Teacher either re-teaches that content to the holiday child while the lesson is going on (ignoring 29 other children), or they do it outside of the lesson.

So change schools or home school then instead of moaning

We took our kids out for two weeks in Y6 and Y4 to visit family in Australia. School didn't authorise, but they did informally support it and the Y4 did a class presentation when they got back (it was around Easter, so Y6 were in full SATS mode then).

Kids have good attendances (though one always has about a week off over the winter with bouts of tonsilitis and we were watching anxiously as he crept towards the 92% mark) and no problems academically.

Kids are mid/late teens now and remember the holiday well. No regrets here.

We have many children that miss huge chunks of school as they return to their birth country regularly. We make it very clear that if a child is not in school for any reason other than illness, we don’t do catch up teaching. It’s a paternal choice, so parents need to make up the shortfall in learning.