To think the penalties for term time absence is ridiculous..

[JKbowling]

I got this in my email inbox today, sent to all parents and guardians.

"Failure to safeguard a child's education" appearing on your DBS, really?

As for term time holidays. If a family can't afford to pay for their one measly UK break per year to be had during the 6 weeks holidays (because the prices are hiked right up and become unaffordable) how does school suppose said family is going to pay the fine?

Just responding to the example proposed. Any time you prioritise holiday over education you are sending a message, though. Sometimes it is a good message - visiting a sick or dying relative is probably a higher level priority, but most of the time it is about fun in the sun for cheap, which shouldn’t ever come ahead of education.

That's a really sad way to look at life

Well we will have to disagree agreeably there. Fun in the sun for cheap can occasionally be prioritised over a week in the classroom IMO, to no negative and indeed positive effect on the child and family involved.

That's really interesting

It probably depends on how smart your kids are too, the smart ones will be ok to miss a couple of weeks, for the not so smart ones it probably is a material difference. Especially if it's a regular thing

Also how many sick days, how supportive the school is for eg giving extra work so many factors

Hardly a “fantastic point”. Children weren’t taken out of schools because it was a lark and the whole world thought that education didn’t matter any more. Incase you missed it - we were in a global pandemic and it wasn’t safe for children to attend school en masse.

If you register your child with a school you have to follow the local authorities rules as they work in direct conjunction with that funny little thing called the law. Having a holiday isn’t an entitlement and if you can afford a holiday either within or outside of term time then you’re in a luxury position. Don’t like the rules, don’t register your child at school and home school. Can’t afford to home school? Well then I guess you’ll just have to follow the rules like the rest of us. It really is that simple.

PS - Take the time to learn what hyperbole actually means because it doesn’t just mean what you seem to think it does.

Amazingly we eat well and live in a (mostly) tidy home! And still have fun! With each other! How do I unwind in the midst of all of that eating and house making? First of all, my kids are capable of feeding themselves for breakfast and lunch from 6/7 years old. Dinner is then something I do solo or with their joyful participation - rarely more than 30 mins is spent cooking. My kids also have responsibilities around the house and I either spend an hour a day or a day a week on the house, which keeps it generally tidy. When we are away I still need to do most of those things, or different things, every day - it isn’t like you get a vacation from parenthood. Or is your ‘family holiday’ really just sticking the kids in the resort club and getting drunk by the pool?

Why? Education = sad?

I’ve taken my son twice out of school
one for a day to go to my sisters wedding (abroad)
and another time 8 days + half term to go to an expensive holiday. He keeps mentioning the countries we visited and the places he wanted to.

in your chart of should / shouldn’t take the child out of school where are these scenarios as none of them represent the dying relative or cheap holiday in the sun.

also, whilst I expect my son to have a successful career in the future I also know that this won’t be dependant on whether I took him out of school for 8 days when he was 6. I also teach him how important education is during the rest of the year. If I didn’t care , then I’d not bother with some mornings when he doesn’t want to go to school and I still drag him in. (And no this is not because of the holidays , but because he’s a child that some days would prefer being at home doing whatever he wants rather than being in a class)

Unlike you who does prioritise education and, presumably, teaches your kids follow every arbitrary rule in the book so they can <checks notes> “holiday” in their own living room and not leave the house all summer?

Absolutely stark raving bonkers.

Tea total here but I can see exactly what type of person you are from that comment alone. You really have a stereotype in your head there don’t you?

You have done nothing but describe a regular family day. You have just listed every day responsibilities and duties that, while joyful, do not equate to a physical break, a mental change or extraordinary special experiences. So while I can have a perfectly happy home, that is not what is being discussed.

Having a week off work doing the same things I do evenings and weekends is not a holiday. It’s just life.

And no, you don’t get a week off from parenthood, you get a week off from the chores that take you away from the quality, uninterrupted time you have with your children at home. And that’s the point of it.

I’ve worked in both primary and secondary school settings, I can assure you that hardly any structured lessons happen during the last week of the summer term!

In case you missed it , school was safe for most of the kids, in fact was safest than staying at home , and many are nowadays suffering from poor mental health and education as a side effect of locking them. It wasn’t safe for some people being near kids that could have spread them a virus that could have killed them , but for the vast majority of kids lockdowns and not being able to go to school did more harm and damage in their education than benefit.

You’re 100% thinking of a different poster because Noble leaps on almost every school thread of this type, to whinge about her job.

Whenever anyone suggests she chooses another one, it’s usually met with some sort of martyr type reply.

It’s like repeatedly smacking yourself on the head and wondering why people are telling you to just stop doing it.

I’m going to assume that you can point me the direction of reliable data that can show that pre-vaccination it would have been safer for children to be at school in usual numbers than they would have been at home? Also that it would have been safer for the general population for them to not have been quarantined? I’m happy to be proven wrong so please feel free.

In a world where as humans we are not built to cope with the consequences of a pandemic, and the extreme approaches needed to be taken to contain it then poor mental health will always exist as a result.

This still doesn’t mean that education was any less important, it just meant that before it was containable through the evolution of the virus and vaccines that preservation of life had to be prioritised. You only have to look at previous pandemics to see what would have happened if we hadn’t. You’re absolutely right though that there is a detrimental affect on children’s mental health and subsequent difficulties placed upon their ability to learn when they have their education disrupted which is why they have put such tight fines in place for repeated holiday absences. So, your argument has actually helped to prove my point in a roundabout way.

I struggle with the whole 'attendance' is so vital issue when there is nothing done to reduce the amount of illness in schools, given that's the primary driver of absence.

Some trips have huge educational value - I’d happily pull my children from school for a trip that provided experiential learning. It’s one of the reason I’m hoping to flexi - I recognise it’s a privilege but it’s weird to me you could go to an actual lake and study it but instead you just sit in a class room- or if it’s a once a year thing, I’d rather take them to Italy to learn about the romans than have them in a class room?

That to me is a like for like opportunity- yes it’s missing classroom learning but it’s gaining experiential /practical learning which has greater value imo. Very different from chilling by the pool all week (which is delightful and certainly has its own benefits!)

This is draconian. Other countries manage without such ridiculously punitive systems around attendance.

There are plenty of reasons parents might need to take kids out at term time occasionally. For example, there’s no way I’m not taking my child back to my home once every couple of years to have Christmas with my family. It’s the kind of distance and cost that just isn’t practicable for shorter, more frequent trips, so it’s going to involve a week or so out of school. These aren’t a jolly, they’re part of my child being able to be part of both sides of his family and culture.

Other families may well have significant cultural events in other countries that they wish their child to be part of.

Schooling systems should be able to cope with having this kind of flexibility.

I'm surprised by the posters implying that holidays are 'just fun' and not educationally and culturally enriching. The trips to Europe I was taken on as a child (occasionally including days off school) inspired a lifelong interest in different cultures, languages and places - experiences that no classroom could have provided. And yes, they were fun as well - is that so bad? Even if you are mainly lying on a beach, your children will be soaking up fresh impressions like sponges. I don't remember having any difficulty catching up with schoolwork.

Holiday businesses ruthlessly rack up prices in school holiday periods making it difficult or impossible for less wealthy parents to afford a holiday. It seems sad if less privileged children are denied the excitement of holidays because parents either can't afford to go or risk fines if they do.
YANBU

I will be taking mine out for a day and a half. My dd secondary last year went in on last day till 12pm and watched a film for 2 hours, coloured made loom bands etc. Previous Monday of same week similar.

This was government legislation put in to backtrack the damage caused by covid and mistakes made. Yes please keep pubs restaurants open (yes I get the economy argument) but we must close the schools or the super spreaders will cause the damage. Even the covid review confirms the ill advised advice re school closures.

Everything in this.

In addition to my previous post about cultural and family events that might need to be attended, sometimes there’s also value in taking kids out of school for simply something fun with their family.

My mum did it for us and my siblings and I are all functional members of society (as functional as anyone else anyway).

Nope.

TBH this is just the government trying to tackle an incredibly complex problem (kids falling through the cracks and being left behind) with an over simple intervention that is only aimed at a symptom of the problem (absence) and does nothing to tackle the root cause and in the process penalises everyone, including putting an unfair burden on teachers to basically police parents and students.

😂