To think raising school absenteeism fines won’t help much.

[Boomer55]

Fines for parents taking children out of school without permission will rise across England from September.
The minimum fine will increase from £60 to £80 per parent as part of a government drive to return attendance to pre-pandemic levels.
One school told BBC News one out of every three of its pupils absent without permission had been on a family holiday during term time.
A head teachers' union said fines were needed to avoid "chaos" in schools.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-68420275

Kids do not need to go to school. School is not important. Surely, we all know this from the time when schools were closed and kids locked down at home.

You can’t have it both ways.

DD's school was under a different LEA than her half sister and step-sisters. Every year DD would miss a few days of school to go on holiday with her dad, SM and the girls. If the LEA's actually co-ordinated and had their half terms at the same time then she wouldn't have needed to miss any of her schooling due to the fact that her dad and his family always (quite rightly), prioritised their half term dates when considering their annual holiday. Had I insisted DD not be taken out of school, she would have missed out on valuable time with that side of her family. I often wondered at the time how many other families had that kind of dilemma.

Yet, parents sending their children to private school don’t have any fines if they take their kids out of school on holiday (and have longer holidays in which to do so slightly out of season anyway).

It’s another case of the government making rules that, for the most part, they and their friends don’t have anything to do with
To be fair the school days in the independent sector are often longer than the state system and if friends' experiences are anything to go by there is an expectation that families take holidays in the school holidays.

Most parents will follow this expectation because if you're paying a small fortune on education you're not going to want to pay a huge amount of money for your child to miss a fortnight of school and be lagging behind when you return.

It's also very easy, based on anecdotes admittedly, for private schools to ask children/families to leave. State schools rightly can't tell students to leave for any old reason.

I don't agree with this announcement by the way.

That would probably be authorised in our setting. Authorising absence is at the Headteacher’s discretion and they follow strict guidelines in order to determine it as exceptional which will include pastoral need. You have to properly state your case and provide supporting evidence.

Are you for real?

It's just 'unauthorised' absence though, ie holidays, rather than them being ill.

If the child went to private school or was home school...then there would be no fine

Of course it won't make a difference to schools but might just solidify a few more votes in the typical Tory demographic - older and wealthier, so with no current experience of state schools or indeed any schools, and keen to tell themselves that the UK's economic woes are all down to young people being lazy/gentle parenting/unfettered wokery.

Precisely. Stick attitude wont work, it will make more parents disengage.

A school taking a selected group of kids for a week-long skiing trip (while the rest of the school continues with normal lessons) is not detrimental to their educational outcomes… but if I took my kids out for a week to go skiing it would be an absolute disaster to their future outcomes, worth taking me to court for.

Agreed, and it particularly won't work when administered by an administration who've so comprehensively shat all over child welfare as this lot.

A school taking a selected group of kids for a week-long skiing trip (while the rest of the school continues with normal lessons) is not detrimental to their educational outcomes… but if I took my kids out for a week to go skiing it would be an absolute disaster to their future outcomes, worth taking me to court for
I'm not a fan of enrichment trips happening in term time for this reason.

Lots of schools come to that view as well which is why a lot of schools will run some trips the last days of term and into the holidays. Annoyingly though we don't get paid for the extra days were working though.

Teachers don't have to work in their holidays to run enrichment trips so the school ends up having to make a call: offer the trip and ensure it's in staff work time or don't offer it (and accept the inevitable parental complaints).

That's awful we were given one of those holidays not due to low income we still had to pay, but due to the location being suitable for child's disability. My daughters high school authorised it as we couldn't pick dates in school holidays.

Honestly if the fine is cheaper than the holiday premium, the people who do it now will continue to do it.

I always thought the fine was per parent, per day. Glad to hear that it's not, as my eldest goes to school this year.

It's still cheaper to take them out of school for a week mid-term than go somewhere during the school holidays 🤷‍♀️

A school taking a selected group of kids for a week-long skiing trip (while the rest of the school continues with normal lessons) is not detrimental to their educational outcomes… but if I took my kids out for a week to go skiing it would be an absolute disaster to their future outcomes, worth taking me to court for

When i was at school the ski trip was always in half term. You didn't miss school for it!

Private schools aren’t fined.
I personally think horse has bolted.

Im so pleased them days are over for my son.
No more schools ever heaven.

Schools have different holidays with some being academies. So parents may have no choice but to take 1 out if dates differ.
School trips that have restated post Covid seem to be in term time, I assume as teachers won’t give up hols to work for free (don’t blame them!)
Dc’s school German trip was hours travelling on a coach and a theme park one day but was in July in term time - they were excused other lessons yet if parents had taken child to Blackpool pleasure beach that day it would be unauthorised it makes no sense.

I think most people think it’s ridiculous to fine families for absences.

Totally agree.

No, according to the minister, it’s also about kids being kept off with “minor” bugs and illness - whatever that means.

It's tricky isn't it.

Most people expect cheap holidays so pulling children out of school now seems to be the norm.
It shouldn't be happening.

It annoys me that it's an expectation that parents should be allowed to take their children out of school to save money on fancy holidays.

How about saving to go in school holidays but if you can't or won't afford it then don't go?

I've been an TA and an HLTA.
I was often pulled in to a class where a child had missed multiplication in Yr2 or some other essential skill as they'd been on holiday.

But parents can just do whatever.
We never took leave outside of term time so our holidays were simpler.

Parents seem to just expect everything these days.

Fines are not the answer in my opinion.

Making the cost difference between term time and school holiday time holidays a bit less might achieve a bit. Package holidays not being allowed to have child rate other than for pre-school ones during school terms would not penalise those without children or those who had left school, and might have an impact.

Serial offenders should end up in court and the options for non-attendance should include parents losing their passport for a period of time.

Yeah, you really can't take folks' passports off them just because you don't want them to go on holiday in term time.