Parents need to stop lying about term time holidays

[Ljcrow]

If parents want to take their kids out of school for a term time holiday because it's cheaper, I wish they wouldn't give the bullshit that it's an "educational experience". There's an article about this on the BBC today, but working in a school I've heard it all before. Can we not pretend that an all-inclusive to Lanzarote or similar is a rich cultural and educational experience?! If you want to take your kids our because it's cheaper that's up to you but don't try claim the moral high ground, no one's falling for it. (Fwiw I think holiday companies shouldn't be allowed to hike their prices up in school holidays, it's disgraceful, and as a parent myself I have no choice but to pay those inflated prices. It sucks.)

Not really. In other western world countries there are price gouging laws. So basically you can’t whack prices up in times of shortages or crisis or during a busy time, I think you can a little bit - like 10% or something.

It would then be managed by trading standards.

So it is a good idea, it does work elsewhere and isn’t hard to manage.

"Because a number of teachers in here have said how difficult it can be catching a student up on what they've missed."

@justteanbiscuits - studies show no casual link between kids missing school for holidays or religious occasions. That's nice that some people on the internet disagree but doesn't really make any difference.

True.

I'm fortunate enough to be able to meet the cost of holidays outside term-time, therefore I can't claim any moral high-ground on the basis that I don't pull my child out of school for holidays.

Some people are not. They are then in the position of deciding whether it's beneficial for their families to forfeit their holidays for the next 12 - or perhaps 14 years. It's a very strange, draconian policy that the state assumes responsibility for making that decision over parents' heads.

As a parent I make my own decisions as to what's in the best interests of my child - as you've done in your time and as other parents are doing today.
Children are people - they are not commodities or robots programmed to state command - and they deserve a holiday too.

As for another key point made upthread: that of travel companies raising prices out of term-time, that's basic supply and demand and it's unreasonable to expect any service provider not to maximise their profits because some people deem that a moral issue is at stake. Such is the price of capitalism.

We can't take our child out for a week without getting fined.

But the school are able to do a week long ski trip where around 20 of the 80-90 children in a school year go. All of the kids that don't go are still doing normal lessons.

Yet this holiday is apparently ok for those who did go as the school is arranging the trip not the parents?!

The government scheme with the fines is really papering over the cracks and so the gov can say they're doing something to improve attendance

In reality the children with consistently low attendance and are struggling in school and at home are the ones that need help but this is a much harder issue to fix.

The kids going for one week holiday in Spain a year in term time but otherwise have good attendance aren't that ones who need their attendance tackling - but fines on these are a much easier win

Individual families need to do what is best for themselves in terms of risk / benefit, and be honest with the school.

My DD loves history and was studying WW2 for GCSE so I took her to Krakow / Auschwitz in the holidays because it was affordable for us. I took her out of school for Italy for 4 days because we could not have otherwise have afforded to go. I was honest about her absence and expected a fine but one never came…

Depends what you think is ‘educational’ and worth it for the child. I don’t blame parents for taking their children on lovely holidays when they can afford it. They will make memories that will last forever.
Bearing in mind most of these law makers have kids in private school and actually benefit from cheaper flights so they can go on their lovely skiing holidays on the cheap whilst berating the masses for daring to take a cheap all inclusive holiday for a week once a year.

Holidays during term-time are great for those who take them, maybe not so good for the rest of the class who lose out on their return when the teacher has to spend time repeating what they missed. It's fine if it's only 1 kid per term, but if everyone did it there would be chaos.

Everybody always says this but it was actually the unions who floated the idea of keeping vulnerable children, and the children of key workers, in school. They were suggesting this in early March of 2020, way before the governments made it policy. People seem to go on and on about the schools being closed, but what I remember of that time was trying to teach the children who were in school at the same time as managing online learning and welfare calls for those who weren't. It was 1000x more stressful than just normal teaching.

The school was very much closed to my children. And I don’t count a couple of Twinkl worksheets a week as online learning.

It may well have been hard for teachers, but my DC and I hardly saw nor heard from either school or nursery for the duration of lockdown. The message very much was state education is non essential.

I have always taught all through the term.
Sometimes the school play, sports day or enrichment activities take place in the last week. In my lessons I teach.

Absolutely, for MANY families there is not any other realistic choice other than state school.

Suspect PP also believes that anyone can jUsT WoRk HaRdEr and afford private school if they want to 🙄

@TheAmusedQuail of course they didn’t what a ridiculous comment 🤣

Our last abroad holiday was an all inclusive in Ibiza. This year & last year it's caravan holidays in this country as that's what we can afford. I'm not being classist by calling out bullshit.

I wish we could afford a villa in Tuscany! I can assure you we can't.

People who think they are ‘calling out bullshit’ are generally pretty tedious.

Could you please tell us which other countries in the world have been able to make laws binding the holiday sector in other countries, and thus ensured 'there wasn't a peak season in the first place'? I'm intrigued to hear how Trading Standards have jurisdiction elsewhere.

Well in that case your children’s school and nursery were not complying with union guidance. They never said schools should be closed and most schools were not closed.

People were very happy to bang pots and pans for us on a Thursday night and are now complaining that we advocated for basic safety measures for ourselves at work. Obviously it would have been silly to have 30 children in a classroom with no kind of social distancing or whatever at the time. I don’t really see what pointing that out has to do with someone going on holiday for a week during term time.

We got grants for every single child who needed one of them to have a laptop for home learning, and yet the amount of children who actually logged in to the online lessons was negligible. That wasn’t us giving the message that education isn’t important.

In the public narrative teachers are either ‘heroes’ who can be thrown to the dogs or they are indentured servants who exist to provide childcare. We are actually just normal people who want to get on with it.

If it helps, I never banged pots and pans on a Thursday night. I thought that was for the NHS though, not teachers.

It sounded that way.

Really, you'd need shit for brains to think everyone can just choose something other than the state system.

The bit I was calling bullshit was the bit where parents claim the all inclusive holiday in the sun is for educational purposes, as in the BBC article I referenced. Hope this clears things up.

I wasn’t confused.

We took dd out of school a week before school broke up for Xmas - we didn’t lie, we told school when we booked the trip (Feb) and were upfront. They were upfront in return that we’d probably be fined. As we were going ‘home’ to NZ & Aus, the fine will be a drop in the ocean when it eventually lands on the doormat.

I defy anyone to say it wasn’t more educational than the last week of school before Xmas - she saw volcanoes, different oceans, the opera house, waterfalls, held a koala, swam in australasia’s largest lake, Sydney harbour bridge, saw geothermal activity in rotorua and took a road trip to hobbiton. I’ll eat my hat if that’s less educational than watching multiple dvds and having the school Xmas lunch would’ve been!

I wish people would read but I'll just repeat myself: our last aboard holiday was an all-inclusive to Ibiza. Fun, warm, not educational. Last year's & this year's are caravan holidays in the UK. I'm the furthest thing from a snob, I just can't stand the bullshit of calling a holiday educational when it really isn't.