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?

Because grammar schools, TBF

Because I talk to the kids who come back from them?

You are correct that they aren’t mutually exclusive- that is why we make the most of the 13+ weeks (in addition to weekends) outside of our children’s education.

This is it.

The new policy is all mixed up.

Labour think stamping down hard on holidays will magically fix attendance rates?

It’s completely arse about face. Doesn’t make sense.

long term anxious refusers aren’t going to get any less anxious.

Feckless parents will still be feckless. There’s no space in jail anyway and who is going to look after the kids while mum and dad are ‘doing time’?

But if kid is in the top 5% of the school, worked hard all year and I take them out the last few days of term when usually yes not much is going on, why should I be fined?

All they want is at the end of the year to be able to say, look “attendance rates have improved under Labour”.

But all they’ve done to achieve that is frighten us with a sledgehammer policy, made us more sad, more depressed, less happy because now we have to worry about going to prison because we took the kids to Europe for an actual bit of fucking sunshine without it costing heaven and earth.

Wankers. I will write to my MP except it’s not Labour.

All of them? Ok.

For me op a holiday is not something "every child should have a right to" for me it is a luxury. One my own children have not had every year as we could not afford it.

Children in my opinion
Should have a good education
Should feel safe and loved
Should be fed every day.

Those are the areas I view of importance not a yearly holiday.

I agree with the fines personally.
Speak with the charity see if they can support you getting the schools support or if they can help with the fine. If you feel your situation should have special consideration.

Same in Ireland too though, where there's no grammar schools and very long summer holidays.

Term time holidays are grand, and normal. Like I said, England is an outlier. Does any other country fine for them? Genuine question.

Shockingly, I've tagged a week onto October half term nearly every year for the past 11 years. I genuinely do not care that the kids miss a week of school, it's been their only absence for about the past 6 years. Yeah I could afford to take them in the summer holidays but their dad wouldn't be able to come. I cannot imagine a time in my life where I will ever think I wish I'd sent them to school instead for those weeks.

I'll probably ring them in sick this year though, otherwise the rolling fines will get me, which is a shame as I'd rather be honest.

If they don't get a single family holiday throughout childhood then yes I would consider that to be deprived of a valuable experience.

Just missing it for a year or a few years is not an issue

My DS isn’t school age yet but I absolutely hate these fines. A weeks family holiday is far more memorable and important than the average week at school. I have the best memories of family holidays as a child and my parents always had to take me out of school for the week for them. I still had one of the best attendances as I was extremely rarely poorly.
It shouldn’t however then be on the teacher to catch that child up on what they missed. But it should be the parents decision (to a reasonable degree).

So you don't think travel is educational. Language, culture, food, swimming, even things as basic as what an airport is what flying feels like. That beaches in different countries have different oceans/seas different wildlife/fish. That water is a different colour/ temperature abroad. Watersafety/sunsafety all these things that seem so small and unimportant kids are soaking up.

I saw lots of kids soaking up AI environments where they hardly went to the beach. No one was shring the wonders of nature, tides, oceans.

They did leaarn that there was always free ice-cream available. Lots of fizzy drinks, and that Mum or Dad loved to drink cocktails and dance.

I agree with the fines and think they should be higher. Parents need to value their child's education and stop disrupting it.

It will catch a lot of people out.

The 10 session threshold has discretion to issue below 10 sessions if parents are trying to circumvent a fine such as by using an inset day or keeping just below the 10 in 10 rolling weeks repeatedly.

Additionally you may do 4 days off then end up with a couple of lates and bam, you are fined.

The fine won't bother people as a legitimate one off. Prosecution could pose a real issue for many

As I said before, the assertion that parents are diligently only taking their kid out when there's nothing going on at school and they are taking them on wonderfully culturally enriching holidays is bollocks.

Like I said, one of my kids missed an exam. Another went on 4 holidays. You seem to think government policy should be based on the assumption that all these parents are really doing the right, laudable thing, when actually they're not.

Don't call them in sick, if you have a pattern and they have reason to disbelieve you they will ask for medical proof. They can ask for medical proof if there is a reason to disbelieve you. If you can't provide proof then you get the fine anyway and justify them asking for proof for all future absences. Just keep it to 2 out of 3 years.

well, we must be the exemption to your rule then. plenty of cultural enrichment going on here in the odd (albeit very short)_ term time holiday we've been on that we would have been categorically unable to afford otherwise. Sorry to burst your bubble.

I could ask my children how to say hello, goodbye, please and thankyou In Greek and they could tell me. I could ask them what currency they use in Greece they could tell me. They could show me Greek dancing and tell me about plate smashing. They both also learnt to swim on that holiday. Yet if I said what did you learn between June 16 and 20th at school in 2023 they couldn't tell me. However luckily they have really good teachers who catch them up as soon as they get back so their education hasn't been destroyed for life and they will still be able to go to college because they took a week of at 5.

That is a very specious argument. Plenty of people do things that other people do but it doesn’t mean it is right. If you need to travel then do it in the school holidays but remember it is your children that will be inheriting a very fucked up planet.

Some American states summon parents to court for truancy notices.

Great for you if you can afford to take holiday during those weeks or get time off work.

And especially great if you don’t have a job that gets really busy during school holidays.

So just part of the week then? What else were they doing? What was so crucial that it would be damaging to kids that are off? What if it were the kids likely to recall come September do you think?

And so we should let education become optional to all those other parents because we should base government policy on you, and not give a toss about the millions of hours of lost education?

😂 I realised that after posting although considering I have a brain injury I don't think I do too bad on the whole, you rude pedantic person.

If I were you I would worry less about my grammatical inaccuracies and more about the type of person you are.

Mocking people for their perceived intellectual shortcomings isn't a good look.

I can't tell you just how disappointed I would be if I went through 9 months of pregnancy and the tolls of labour.. to give birth to somebody who corrects other people's spelling on anonymous forums.

Shudder 😐

There are a lot of people caught whose children are SEN and who, as yet, have not got EHCPs or diagnoses. A lot of these parents are caught in a system and unable to get their kids into school. Schools are not set up for all SEN kids and this problem becomes more apparent as children grow older.

Having been a parent who has a Sen child and who has not yet been able to get diagnosed (massive waiting lists for assessments and huge resistance with regard to statutory assessments/EHCPs), until you have jumped through all the mandatory hoops, it is impossible to prove that you fit into these categories. You have to be super assertive, resourceful and skilled (and often educated) as a parent to get through these hoops.

There is a cohort of parents and children who are unable to deal with all of this. They are just getting fined and more poverty stricken. And it’s the women who are predominantly being hit and made more poverty stricken. It’s the women who are giving up their jobs as they cannot get their child into school and keep down their job.

I find it ridiculous that education just vanished during the pandemic and yet now we are all expected to buy into the story that little Jimmy will fail at school if he misses a few days to go on a family holiday