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?

Fuck off swearing at me.

I grew up with a working mother in the late 90s/2000s. I never had a family holiday. Couldn't afford it.

What impact has it had on me as an adult? Nothing.

I'm going to get caught in this. Currently on holiday with my 5year old, he was off-rolled by the private school he attended (when they didn't consistently send him home - his ASD didn't fit with their standards) at the end of last term. We had our holiday booked and were told no school places were available. We finally managed to get a local school place and they've asked me to retrospectively apply for the holiday. Will I get a fine? We weren't even in the state system when we booked? Between the off-rolling and now I had to home school, they said I couldn't register him at the school starting at the end of our holiday. Shoot me but the holiday discount effectively pays for the private education...

Ah, so everyone then starts seeing the last week of term as optional, and holiday companies put up prices to reflect increased demand and now suddenly parents are having to go earlier to get that precious cheap break.

I had a kid miss an actual exam last year because their parents took them on a term time holiday. Another kid had 4 holidays. The assumption that all the parents taking their kids out of school are carefully timing it so that they don't miss anything important and are only doing it because they couldn't possibly afford any sort of holiday in the actual holidays is just bullshit.

Kids missing are a problem, it's bad enough missing for illness but that can't be helped. Teachers can't be making sure kids have caught up. There are exceptions, and Sen is one of them

Yes, I'm sure every single one of the children not in school during the final week would've had access to an absolutely extensive and essential educational experience during those few days. That definitely always happens in the final week, for every single child. Including the ones being failed by the education system. That would magically stop at the very point they go on term time holiday.

If your argument is that we're providing more education than schools with shorter hours, that requires proof.

As kids in the 70s, we had 1 week at Butlins in early May. We were taken out of school. Our mother wrote to say we would be absent. Job done. It was normal to go out of expensive school holiday times.

@noblegiraffe I wasn't talking about it in reference to money/affordability - more that it doesn't matter in terms of education.

I missed school most years for holidays so maybe that's why I don't see the big drama.

It’s everything to do with the children. A standard day at home is not as fun and running a home is more than just ‘a few basic adult responsibilities’

It’s neither a mental or physical break.

My kids are privately educated at enormous expense. We have not had a holiday in 3 years for various reasons, unrelated to the cost. Are they overly spoiled privileged brats or suffering deprivation from their lack of holidays?

It’s not teachers responsibility as some pp suggest to catch students up or provide detailed lesson plans to enable parents to attempt some home school to make themselves feel better

1. children should copy any notes and ask their friends what they missed
2. primary school children will repeat and repeat most of it so is less of an issue
3. my lessons certainly don’t work in the form of click and deliver PowerPoint. I don’t know the details of what we’ll cover because it’s child led a lot of the time - I know broadly and what needs covering by the end of the unit but we’ll do all sorts alongside and around that. To ask ‘what will we miss’ is reductive. I get the impulse but you need to own your decision

btw I would take my kids and would seriously consider using my unpaid dependents leave to do a term time holiday as it might well still be cheaper than holiday time

It's also about teaching your children to follow rules and prepare them for work when they are older. I agree with the PP who mentions if they took unauthorised time off work they would be reprimanded. So many parents in my school take kids out to see Santa because it's cheeper for example or even when it's too hot l, snowing or it's raining so they cannot be bothered to take them to school. These same parents won't work and these kids will grow up to treat work like they are doing the place of work a favour. I see it in our place of work every day.

The opposite, actually - our children are much more conscious of the environmental impact of travel. Also, if you are an adult now then you grew up during a brief window when foreign travel was cheap and accessible to all in the uk - that is not the norm historically, and is likely not to be the norm in the future as environmental regulations fall into place and the cost of a flight skyrockets.

You are doing something wrong, then. Last summer I had my kids at home for the entirety and we had a blast - all of us.

Like I said, if you think term time holidays only happen when there's nothing happening in school, you are very much mistaken.

So what do you think the rule should be? That holidays can happen in the last week of term? Last week before Christmas? How about teachers can agree that if fuck-all is agreed to happen in those weeks then we can knock off early and go on holiday too? Oh, but then the prices would go up. What to do.

If you think that kids shouldn't be allowed by their parents to bunk off school during other weeks of the year, then there needs to be a rule that applies to all weeks, don't you think?

Says you whose first line in your post to me was 'fuck off' pot, kettle, black.

I didn't go abroad until I was in high school in the mid 2000s.
Because my mother was a single working parent and couldn't afford to take me away.

It has certainly not impacted me as an adult at all.

It’s not the schools who are doing it though. HTs are given strict guidelines and these have just been made even more punitive. Persistent absence is a huge problem in primary schools. Some children, many of whom are vulnerable to start with, are constantly off and it absolutely does impact on their progress.

I meant within those 13 weeks. Not one or two weeks? Sad

It's a fact that people travel more now than they did in the 90s.

Whether or not the current cultural attitude to travel is able to persist in the future is a separate issue to how people feel now. Not that holidays have to be foreign anyway. But you're not proving anything about how people feel in 2024 by saying they won't feel like that in the future. People take their cultural cues from the present, not a world that no longer exists or one that hasn't yet come into being. Don't confuse how you feel about something with whether it exists.

I agree with this.

I grew up with a working mother in the late 90s/2000s. I never had a family holiday. Couldn't afford it.

What impact has it had on me as an adult? Nothing.

How could you possibly know that? If you never did something, you can’t gauge the effect it would have had if you did!

Meh

It's the penalties for kids being sick when they are off school because of an infection caught in school where government are doing sweet f.a. to reduce spread of infections in schools that bother me.

If you take your kid out of school for a holiday you need to be prepared to pay a fine. It's a fair cop.

Great for you. I also have a lovely time with my children at home. But that is the same as weekends. It’s not a break from routine in the same way as a holiday and there are still responsibilities that reduce the time we have to focus on them.

When you only get a week or two max a year where all of you are off together, getting away from the stresses of home and the mental load it brings is important for some people.

Well I feel I didn't miss out, I have made up for it since.

I had a great childhood, thanks. :)

My sister took my nephews to Butlins for a week the last week before they broke up for summer. She factored the fines into the cost of the holiday, it was still cheaper than going abroad in the summer holidays.