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?

Would love to read back that thread.

The 10 sessions is misleading.
Local authorities can still issue penalty notices or take you straight to court for less than that, that's not changed.

It's not falsifying attendance data.
The legal attendance register is only relevant for the time period the register is open. If the child was present during that time, and marked as present, then it's accurate. Leaving the building afterwards doesn't make it false.

A bit like a car MOT is only accurate on the day it's carried out.

Rightho. So kids suffering from school trauma who refuse to attend could just turn up to morning and afternoon registration then come home and expected to be marked as being in attendance for the full day? Or again, does that rule only apply when it suits the school?

They will be counted as present for statistical purposes, but their absence could still lead to a fine or other legal action against the parents.

I didn't say we had to be ok with it, I said we had to work within how things are currently, rather than how we wish them to be. I wish I was paid 100k per year, but I'm not, so I have to budget based on what I do earn.

Yes we absolutely do need better working conditions for teachers, but we as parents have a part to play in this, which includes treating them respectfully, doing the things they ask us to do, making sure our children behave in class by teaching them good behaviour standards at home, making sure they get enough sleep, eat well, turn up in the correct uniform. And not taking termtime holidays unless there are once in a lifetime style exceptional conditions.

Of all the friends who I know that are teachers, the number one reason they say they have low morale and consider leaving isn't the pay, but poor student behaviour and lack of support by the parents on changing this, and how the parents treat them.

And it's much easier to plan for individual learning differences as these are known and can be factored into lesson planning from the start of the year. They can group in smaller groups according to need and ability - my daughter in primary is in groups of 5-6 students for core subjects of maths, grammer, phonics etc so tailored to her learning level. Much harder when walk into a classroom and find that Billy Bobby and Mia are missing on 1 week, Jack, Jake and Freya are missing the next week, Liam and again Jack are missing another week. Sara has gone away and family are vague when will be back and reasons etc.

Problems in education are not only linked to funding. My daughters fabulous primary is currently undersubscribed and they have on average 20-22 children per class. School funding is per pupil so their funding is lower than most primaries. But they have a highly qualified teacher and at least 2 teaching assistants in every class, 2 additional teachers on staff to cover for staff sickness and PPA time. They get fantastic outcomes, with double the average SEN and pupil premium. I'm a governor so see the budget, and we are in surplus. The driving factor in the school is the engagement between school and families, the head is laser focused that children's education is the absolute priority, no made up excuses from parents about missing school, lateness, homework not being done are tolerated. Families who are genuinely struggling are well supported, and those that are not prioritising their child's education are brought in for meetings to let them know improvement is expected. Every parent knows the head will go the extra mile for their child, and that she expects same from them in return.

Feel free to turn down the free education for your children. Then you can homeschool.yiur kids and make your own rules.

Horses. Water.

You do realise that some fines have been given out due to ill health. You child attendance due to medical appointments will make it low. If child then has a series of illnesses (that can't be proved with hospital stays), you also become.a risk of receiving a fine

This sounds like an urban myth.

My daughter misses school because of her disability. I can guarantee you, if she was off sick for non disability reasons and an authority tried to fine me for that, I can guarantee the fine would be reversed.

Apparently inset days are counted as school days so if you use them to get a week off you can get fined anyway. Seems a bit petty as they aren’t allowed to go to school that day.

I assume everyone saying nothing happens in the last week would be happy if all the teachers randomly took time off and said kids couldn't come in today because they weren't teaching anything much?

And would be happy if the school week was cut to four day weeks?

I'm not a fan of going after the low hanging fruit of term time holidays to try to reduce the number of absences, as these are not the kids who need to be brought back to school. We should be solving the other absences first.

But, if you take your kid out of school for holidays, stop making excuses about it being when education isn't happening, or that your week in Fuengirola is hugely educational. Just own it and say you want a beach holiday but can't afford it in term time.

I don't know where you get this from, but it is wrong. If you take your child off school for a week that includes an INSET day, that is only 8 sessions absence so will not trigger a fine.

The problem is that’s a luxury for many families - I’d love to homeschool but I’m a solo mom and need to pay bills

Of course they can learn from both. But at different times and in different ways. And as pps have stated, you do seem to be quite dismissive of formal education. I am also quite curious as to what kind of holiday you are actually talking about that is so much more educational than school, because unless I've missed something, one of your previous posts seems to imply you're talking about beach holidays, and you weren't able to come up with many examples of how a week on the beach wins out educationally over a week's worth of missed school work. 🤔

I do understand that the real problem here is the greed of the tourism industry hiking its prices up during school holidays so that it becomes a case of pulling kids out during term time vs not getting to go away at all. It sucks. But the 'my child can learn more on a wonderful enriching family holiday than in any classroom' type of sweeping generalisation does kids no favours either; they do need to learn from the books you seem so derisive of as well.

I agree it's a myth. It may be that if they have lots of authorised absences due to hospital appts, and then take a termtime holiday they may be more likely to be fined than if excellent attendance, but they cannot fine for absences related to hospital appointments and stays, or periods of illness supported by a GP.
My daughter has loads of appts, sometimes a couple a week, and we have never been fined. We do try to time them for 2pm onwards if we can, or at least 11am onwards, so she gets marked in and then we collect, to limit impact, but some of it can't be helped. Her teacher has been fantastic at doing catch up sessions with her 1 to 1, but this is an added extra, and not something we would expect as standard, and previously paid for a tutor ourselves when we felt she might be falling behind.

The issue is where people say their child is off sick, and the child then comes back raving about their fantastic holiday, and then schools become doubtful about those who are genuinely off sick. If someone is going to take termtime holiday, at least have the guts to be honest about it and deal with the consequences.

Since when is going on a holiday a right? You can't afford it, don't take them?

They could only do that if they recorded the INSET days as an unauthorised absence, when they have instructed the parents that the children cannot attend so it does not fit the criteria.

This sounds like an urban myth.

It's not an urban myth. The Head Teacher at my children's school recorded all of her absences last year as unauthorised even those for medical appointments, for which proof was provided.

Their refusal of previously agreed support for her diagnosed medical conditions led to her being absent for months, during which period they refused to discuss it, despite the Local Authority teams and SENDIAS and her advocate (who I hired in desperation at great additional expense) all requesting they have a meeting with me about it.

Her GP, consultant and other specialists wrote to the school but all of their evidence about her medical conditions and what she needed to return safely was ignored, even though Dept for Education guidance states they must record all absences due to physical or mental health conditions as authorised.

The Head Teacher then tried to get the Local Authority to prosecute me for not sending her (despite my son still attending every day) and has refused to correct her absence record. She has never had a single day off for any reason other than medical ones.

We used to take our kids on term time holidays, before fine. They learnt about other cultures, including a tiny bit of the language. They loved going to archaeological site and museums and even now 20 or years later they still say things like do you remember the year we sent to x and that dog followed us? . Holidays can be a great education in the way school cannot and I agree that fines don't work as you can save more than the fine in holiday savings.

Yes, @Whammyammy is in cloud cuckoo land.

I gave a whole list of what my five year old learnt in the one week they spent in Greece including swimming, language, culture, Greek dancing, wildlife plus the stuff you don't even think about like beach safety, sun safety, how an airport works, what flying feels like, that their is a whole world outside of England. When we came back she did a show and tell and talked about the turtles we'd seen on a boat trip. She isn't behind in her school work from having 1 week of in her education and her teacher wished us a good time. She has had high attendance the rest of her school life so far and she has some lovely memories from our holiday which she still talks about she wants to be a flight attendant when she grows up she wouldn't of even known that job existed if it wasn't for that holiday

I can see that some of that is educational, of course. But you've also made some very sweeping statements on this thread that give off a sense of your not valuing classroom education very highly in general, so it's impossible not to wonder if you're planning to continue pulling your DC out of school to go on holiday. I do think gaps even in primary education can be problematic, especially as these are the years when kids are taught the basics of maths, developing their written English skills, etc. One holiday in term time doesn't create too many problems, I agree, but it's a different story if it becomes a pattern.

And it won't just be the parents having to take the consequences, but the kids too. 😕

She's 7 we've been on holiday once that's it, it's likely we will go 2 or 3 more times for a week at a time over the next 11 years of her education obviously avoiding exam times that is all we will be able to afford unless we win the lottery then we will be travelling the world and hiring tutors as I do think travel is so important for children

Education is a basic right for children. A week in Butlins really isn't.