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

They'd had six bloody weeks to do it

You have misunderstood. The previous poster was pointing out that 5 Inset days were removed from teachers’ holidays, so pupils have never lost any teaching days.

They are obviously held throughout the year whenever the head decides they are best placed. So, yes, they are held in term times (as they couldn’t be held during the staff holidays which is what I presume you were referring to with the above comment) but no teaching time is lost. If all 5 were held during the ‘school holidays’, your children have a 7 week summer holiday and the teachers would have 6 weeks off and then a week training. This is generally not done and the days are peppered throughout the year instead.

Inset days take place in term time at our local schools.

Last year, schools here were delayed returning to school after the six week holiday due to a teacher training day!

They'd had six bloody weeks to do it, but delayed the start of term instead.

Seems perfectly acceptable to do this, but not take your child out without a fine.
It may not happen in your area, but it certainly happens in mine.

Ok let's try again.

Term time is 190 days.

Teacher contracts (and some support staff) are term time + 5 days = 195 days

The 5 days for training are outside term time. It doesn't matter where those 5 days are in the year, the pupils would not have been in school.

If a school has a training day at the start of the school year (which is common sense) then it doesn't matter whether there's a training day or not because your kids would not have been in school that day.

So you’d be happy to tell your boss that you are fine for a mandatory training session to take place during your holiday?

Google Baker days for the history so you can see that the 5 training days were removed from teacher holiday allowance in 1988. I’m presuming you don’t want them removed from the teacher holiday allowance again…

6 to 8 weeks. France however staggers the holidays, by splitting the country into 3 regions, to avoid everyone being on hols at the same time.

If a school closes for 1 day, because of an emergency, or staff day- then all children are off, and the programme adjusted to make sure all catch up at the same time. Totally different.

Teachers often have to spend their breaks, lunchtimes or after school helping children who have been away to catch up and not fall behind, do badly in tests and not setted properly. They never mind when it is because of illness or accident, but they do resent it when it is about time off for a holiday.

So basically, what we're talking about are the views of people who don't actually face this issue and indeed may benefit indirectly from it, because prices in June and early July might be higher if they also had to compete with more English families for holidays then. And one of the groups mentioned are off for almost the whole summer, so practically speaking would barely have chance to remove their DC during the season even if they wanted to. The state's done it for them.

Yeah, not sure they're qualified to speak on this one tbh.

Exactly!

People living in countries who have longer holidays and no fines, being aghast at how parents living under these situation react, isn’t particularly relevant here.

I'm taking both mine out in June and if I get fined then so be it. They are 10 and nearly 13 and both working at a Yr 1 level so no chance of catching up. Last June the talk of transitions started early and caused so many issues for my son that he was self harming, having panic attacks withe hyperventilating and has now developed an extreme stress disorder where he vomits several times and goes gray which is not great for s child with ketotic hypoglycaemia. So we are having a break to take a breath and start again and hopefully reduce some of the anxiety a little

On the question of regulation of holiday companies, you could make it illegal to offer child discounts in term time. Where they use their own planes, if they won't comply, you could deny them landing slots at airports in the UK.

As for my suggestion about withdrawing passports for serial offenders, it should only ever be after a court appearance.

If you want a carrot not stick approach, first in the queue for university places for those who don't take children out for holidays might work.

None of those are workable or would achieve anything much.

The first suggestion will simply mean companies charging the same but adjusting it so they're no longer advertising it as a child discount, plus fewer package holidays and more separate booking of accommodation.

The second faces the same feasibility issues that any policy relying on courts does, when our court system is creaking and delays of years are commonplace now. Even if workable, it wouldn't prevent travel within the CTA for anyone or outside the UK for people with more than one citizenship.

For the third, where do you think the resources are going to come from to organise and enforce this, bearing in mind it's the student who applies to the university not the parents? You'd need a system that not only identifies two entirely different people but also manages to link fines that could be over a decade old, more for mature students. Good luck with that! And save some for the inevitable legal challenges from applicants.

I was a truant. My mum couldn't drive, had my siblings to look after, and lived rurally so I took the train/walked to school and could disappear at any point on that journey. My dad was out of the house working from 6am to 6-9pm every day. What were they supposed to do to make a 14 year old go to school (and stay there) exactly? How is would fining them have made any difference at all?

It does nothing to help the situation, it just piles financial pressure on families in lieu of finding out what the problem actually is and fixing it (I was bored)

It does nothing to help the situation, it just piles financial pressure on families in lieu of finding out what the problem actually is and fixing it (I was bored)

Exactly. And this is why it's so important we don't pretend adding £20 to fines or whatever other harebrained, pointless ideas people come up with are going to do anything to address the problem. It's a distraction.