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.)

Yeah I bet you would. Sooooo creepy 😮

Oh I remember who you are now :D I see you're still freaking out because you made an absolute tit of yourself on the wolf whistling thread and three other people told you you were one hundred percent in the wrong and you had to run away.😂😃😀😅😆😆

You were awesomely entertaining, it was hugely embarrassing for you. Cheers for that 😅

The dc who are seldom ill, pay attention, do homework, don't disrupt others, arrive on time, have supportive engaged parents .... it probably doesn't harm them to miss a week in a non-critical year. And the disruption it might cause others is no worse than other dc cause daily.

But how can teachers say " well, of course little Petunia can miss a week, she'll catch up and is on target anyway" and also say "no, Tarquin has to stay because he was off for 3 weeks with his heart condition" or "Montague is already behind and won't engage enough to catch up" or whatever it is. Parents should be left to figure that out for themselves? But we all know that a decent minority of them just won't.

Is this the level of debate we're at: "I know you are, I said you are, but what am I?"
Utterly pathetic.
I won't be replying to any more from you whatsoever so continue screeching about "stasi thought police" to your heart's content, but please know that your behaviour is so far from normal or acceptable, it's a real concern.

I agree with you OP and I also think that it's so wrong to think that schools should just accept people taking term time holidays. If your child is at school then you know when your hols are. Why be cross with the school when it's holiday companies taking advantage. Why view commitment to education as different from the relationship you have with your employer? What are you teaching a child by taking them out for a holiday? How to skive or fake a sickie. Holiday companies are laughing up their sleeves, but we are in thrall to business for some inexplicable reason.

That's a bit of a weird viewpoint. Was there ever a time when poor families had the same kinds of holidays as wealthy families?

Personally, I think the best solution is a shake-up of the school holidays. The current system of long terms and long holidays, especially how long winter term is and the weirdness of basing spring term on the phases of the moon. Each county has 13 weeks and should be able to split them up as they like across the year. If it was down to me, I'd go with a week out of every month, and then a couple of weeks at the end of June, but when exactly would vary from county to county. Maybe some would have the 2 weeks in July or August, others would go for a 2 week break every 2 months, and so on. Holiday companies would no longer have the option to hike prices. There would be no "summer slide." There would be no wasted weeks in December and July when the children are too exhausted/excited to learn and the teachers are burned out.

It would be a bit of logistical nightmare for families like ours, where we have two children at school in different counties, but it would make holidays more accessible for everyone.

Anyone else for stopping describing things as “weird” just because you don’t agree with them? There’s absolutely nothing “weird” about that viewpoint. It’s just different to yours.

Definition of weird:-

very strange and unusual, unexpected, or not natural:

Nobody is forced to have kids and kids are not being stolen by the government. The issue schools are dealing with more and more is irresponsible parenting, they are dealing with far higher numbers of kids that don't know how to use a toilet, don't know how to brush teeth etc, there is a higher rate of kids not being sent to school at all, I think it was something like one in five kids doesn't ever get sent to school!

The government would rather the incapable parents didn't breed at all, but they do so the schools have to resort to tougher measures because of those that can't be trusted to raise kids properly.

I hope your child never sees your post claiming that they are not yours and that they are just something you look after for the government outside school.

Because we live in an aggressively competitive, uber-capitalist society. This business model operates on a supply and demand basis so when demand is high, costs go up. I'm aware this is stating the obvious, and that it's frustrating - for me included - but I'm not sure why the tourist industry should so often be viewed as exempt from those standards on some kind of moral basis. It's the way of our economic system and it's not going to change unless neo-liberalism suddenly does an unprecedented swerve.

As to authorised absences, the schools may have some discretion but juding by guidelines, not very much. The exemption criteria are clear. School heads are simply adminstrators of a system passed down to them from the government via the LEA. They are not 'claiming ownership' over anything: if anyone was doing this, it was Michael Gove!

The question of attendance statistics as an indicator of quality raises questions on the judging of so many standards in the education system on metrics , whether SATs or attendance or GCSE/A' level results or retention or research and teaching excellence - from pre-school right up into universities - but that's another thread.

Pity this thread's descended into such a rapid derail as there are some interesting discussions on it. I find the best way to handle trolling is not to expend time and energy on engaging with it. Playing chess with pigeons springs to mind.

I agree, but far worse has been said on this thread. I've been called "creepy" and "Stasi thought police" 😆 (Tbf that was by one person who I genuinely think has their own serious issues.)

I'm not in thrall to big business, the lack of regulation is the culprit here. Why have government if only the market and big business matter?

By the way, I'm assuming you are not saying I'm a troll. Could you perhaps make that a bit clearer? I'm asking politely.

Playing chess with pigeons is an excellent analogy!

These threads are so frustrating!
Its always the schools/ teachers / headteacher who does the judging. If you read correctly it has nothing to do with the school with regards to fining. It's the council and the government. Teacher are human too. Don't tar us all with the same brush because you want someone to blame for the government's rules about fining! I'd love to take my kids out on holiday in term time but I am educating other people's kids...whether people think that's a reasonable job or not. If there was no education system at all you would he complaining about that too. You would complain if the teacher had a week off in Spain and your child didn't enjoy school that week due to having different teachers. It works both ways. MN always bashes the wrong people.
OP, I'm with you but equally will tell parents that I don't judge them for taking their kids out. It's none of my business.

The thing with regulation is that the UK government has no control over a lot of the tourism British people engage in. We've no way of deciding how much resorts and accommodation costs, outside of our territory. We're a large enough population with sufficient means to travel that this, combined with restrictions on when a lot of us can go, means a peak season with higher prices is baked in.

The BBC SW local news had a thing on this week.

Because of the amount of motorist attractions which rely on being open in the summer. The owner of a theme park was saying I can't give my staff holiday during the summer holiday it's impossible. So whilst if you were a parent you might decide not to work there sometimes it's the only choice. Then they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. Then the easiest choice would be to take their dc out of school for a holiday during term time.

I'm not sure I buy into this on any level. Business doesn't operate unregulated. We are not at the mercy of the unelected leaders of industry but perhaps they more power than they ought to be permitted.

And I find it very strange, unusual and unexpected that someone would suggest that the fining system has created "two tiers" of holidays for rich and poor children, considering that your family background has always dictated your holidays. It's a weird thing to say.

My parents could afford to take us on annual trips to far flung destinations and sometimes my brother and Dad would go on a winter ski-break too.

We cannot afford anything like that, we aim for a few days every other year, somewhere cheap, and look at deals in the May half term which is usually slightly cheaper than August.

That situation wasn't created by fines, it's just how it is.

You don't buy into the idea that the UK government isn't in control of what holiday accommodation providers outside the UK charge? I'm intrigued to hear why, I must say.

Also worth pointing out here that, as some posters have already explained, the status quo actually favours rather a lot of the population. There are more people who don't have school aged DC or a family member working in a school than who do. It's not really a power to the people issue here, because some of the people do very well out of it. With this being a website for parents, posters sometimes lose sight of that.

Do you really? How weird… 😉

No, I wasn't referring to you as a troll and my last paragraph was a general comment as to the tone the thread had taken, not directed to you personally. Apologies if this didn't clearly come across.

I agree with you on the point of the lack of regulation - made worse by the deregulation of the banks under the Clinton presidency. The fact that most of the rest of the western world followed suit was in no small part responsible for the Northern Rock fiasco and the near-crash of 2008.

Unfettered capitalism is bad news. I'm just querying why a different set of criteria should apparently apply to specific industries. Consistency and transparency is what's needed here.

Regulation is possible, we not controlled by business and the market despite all that's been done since the notion that we might be rose to prominence in 1979

I do what's best for my child and our family. I am honest with the school but I'm tempted not to be in tge future as I am made to feel like a criminal. My child is top of the class and needs more time making new friends and participate in her sport not more time bored in maths lessons too easy for her.

Before the Northern Rock fiasco, a close relative of mine delivered a paper on the practices of banks mentioning certain specifics that looked set to cause future difficulty. One of the top people at the bank wrote him a nasty letter basically saying that he - an expert in law - was wrong. He wasn't