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?

This applies both ways, however. The state interfered with the social contract regarding education, and now reaps the consequences. One of those is that fewer people are persuaded by this argument than they were a few years ago. Another is that making schools participate in fining parents interferes with trust and further alienates parents.

Which is why we need to be talking about whether any of this is helpful, particularly when it's paired with a transparent failure to tackle the root issues of the persistent absence problem. I know Labour have only been in 5 minutes and it'll take more than that, but continuing with the changes the Tories made to holiday fines is a choice.

It is quite interesting how many of the posters on this thread evidently can't compute not having enough money for anything other than a term time UK break. British holidays are many things, but they are not cheap in school holidays.

My household are lucky enough not to be in this position, but some certainly are. I know people who do a Haven Monday to Friday during term because that is what they can afford.

Should children never have a holiday?

Not if they're poor apparently. They haven't earned it.

Exactly. Tell that to the poster who swore at me first. :(

Obviously that's additional work: notes that already exist do not extract, copy, collate, annotate, and deliver themselves, just because some entitled parent demands proof that the rest of the class did some work while their own child was on holiday without approval.

I don't think you're old enough to be on this thread.

I went to school in the 90s and went on term time holidays, as did my peers. You would go to the office for a holiday form, I believe holidays were authorised as long as you agreed to do any set work whilst away. Maybe the government focus needs to be on supporting teachers so they can teach like they did in the 90s.

It's unnecessary and rude. Sorry on their behalf.

I don't. A large number of the population don't have school aged children, and prefer to holiday when it isn't school holidays.

Why does it matter what age a poster is?

Do you know why some can’t go in August? Hint: it’s why we have a school holiday in August (more hands to get the harvest in). Some jobs are season dependent.

Well of course everyone needs education (and holidays) but to they need it for 39 weeks a year? Likely not.

As someone who missed considerable chunks of school for health and extra curriculars without any impact other than positive (and I was a fast learner but no genius) I really don't get the attendance obsession. Really, really don't.

But then I was attending school in a system where the responsibility was on the child to learn and prep for exams, not on teachers to carry children every time they fell slightly behind. There was no bad reflection on teachers if students failed.

I agree that closing schools during covid was wrong, should never have hapenned, and was really harmful. However, that's hapenned now, we can't change it, but we can learn from it that school attendance is really important.

Schools do not fine, local councils do. School have a legal responsibility to report their attendance and absence data.

There are of course children who have reduced attendance due to medical appointments, unmet SEN needs, SEMH needs, but I don't think this discussion is about that, but about parents who make the choice to take their children out of school during termtime.

And I have done that - my daughters were being flowergirls for my husbands cousin, abroad in my husbands home country, originally planned for summer holidays but brought forward due to grooms Dad being given not long to live. So we took them, I was honest with both my girls heads what we were doing and why and politely said that I understood if they couldn't authorise it but that we would be going and would pay a fine if that was felt to be appropriate. We made a choice, we would deal with the consequences. I don't judge anyone who makes the same choice, but they do it knowing the potential consequences so cannot moan about them.

Taxpayers are paying £7460 per year to cover your child’s education whether they attend or not. Most are very happy to do so, it’s a brilliant public good. £160 is roughly the money wasted if you choose to keep them out a week. You have the alternative of going private all year if you prefer. Bitching about having to pay £160 for a years education is ridiculous.

Crazy how much it's changed
I used to be taken out of school for a holiday every January for 2 weeks. Always a load of school work to do while I was off!

Was it much of a holiday if you had to do several hours school work every day equivalent to being at school?

So I don't actually think it matters at this stage whether it was right or wrong to close schools. It happened. There are consequences, and one of those is that the lesson we administered was the opposite of school being really important. The social contract was more hard won, fragile and recent than a lot of people realised, and it's been fucked with. We can't make it come back just because it's convenient.

And yes, schools don't fine, but that's my point really. They get dragged in anyway, and as the first point of call is the school not the faceless LA office worker, the relationship with school gets undermined and interfered with. The ones with the LA and government might too, but most people experience these things as quite remote anyway. Whereas the teachers at school aren't. Which is why this is all so harmful.

@Bushmillsbabe it was what it was
My parents couldn't holiday at any other time, it was in the U.K. and I couldn't be left home alone
They did it from when I was age 4 until 15, then the last school year I stayed home alone

We still had trips out etc but I had a couple of hours work to do a day or my GCSE coursework etc

Yes, but relationships are a 2 way thing. Giving your child's teacher the message that you don't value their skills and time teaching your child enough to send them in every day, isn't going to help that relationship either, especially when some parents don't even have the guts to be honest about why their child is absent and call them in sick for 2 weeks, and then they return with a fabulous tan and tales of their holiday fun and pictures all over social media of their fun in the sun.

Maybe I am biased as my children attend a fabulous school which meets their needs, including SEN, medical etc. I can see how those whose school intentionally isn't supportive, don't feel they owe them respect back.

My great grandmother and her friends/sisters used to trot out that old line.

I genuinely haven't heard it for years.

Possibly because it's now universally recognised as rubbish, given how many super intelligent people like to swear.

Teachers sometimes being pissed off about term time absences doesn't change any of the fundamentals here. There isn't a mechanism whereby making parents mistrustful becomes less of a problem if some teachers are also alienated.

I think there is a problem with school being generally made worse too, yes. Things are just a lot worse than they were, on the whole, even a decade ago. It becomes harder to sell the idea that school attendance is vital when the quality of what's on offer is less attractive. Again not the fault of teachers, they just happen to be the ones on the front line.

We have just been sent this through too, def have to plan the holidays wisely! Crazy times, my parents were always taking me out of school and no harm done.

Good points. What education practices does your country use?

What exactly do people think that UK government can do about school holiday prices? It can’t control the fares charged by all the different airlines. Or the rates offered in all the different hotels around the world. Prices are always going to be high in peak season and there is very little our government can do about it.

My school does FA in that last week. Reports have long been handed out, they play games and have parties.