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.)

A week off school isn’t going to harm the kids. I know I had time off for hols when I was a kid and I’m fine.

it’s crazy the control schools and govt have over kids.

Yes, even beach holidays (or ski holidays, or barge holidays, or cycling holidays).

Scrap the fines, and schools sub-contract tutors to catch-up the kids with the topics they missed, outside of class time so it doesn't disrupt all the kids whose parents made sure they were there when they supposed to be. Parents get billed for the tutoring that their kids receive.

You don't just get used to sensory overwhelm that comes with crowds with exposure.

When you're NT your brain can filter out the bits of the background that you don't want to focus on, when you're autistic you don't have that filter so you are taking on constant sensory input all of the time and your brain has to process all of that information and it is very overwhelming, disorienting, and dysregulating.

It's like if someone was trying to talk to you but every time you tried to give them your attention you were pelted by pebbles that you tried to ignore but just couldn't anymore you wouldn't cope and you'd not learn to cope with that discomfort either.

Our autistic kids do still want to do things, and be involved with the world and find things abroad they enjoy, and sometimes the only way to do that is to go when it is quieter. We should have moved past the notion that they should be kept inside for everyone's convenience.

Then why do all the countries that don't have fines don't have "open season"?

I’ve never known teachers to try and catch the children up on the work they’ve missed. Which is fine, I don’t expect them to, but I really don’t think it’s something that routinely happens.

I absolutely felt entitled to take my dc to America to see family and Canada to do the same. 2 years in primary they missed a week each time as I dovetailed at the end of a school holiday. The value of those trips, for me, outweighed the education they would have received. Head teacher agreed but couldn’t officially sign it off. I really value education but family time is also precious and when you have family abroad, it’s really challenging.

No one is putting pressure on teachers to recap. If a parent takes the responsibility to take their kids out school to travel, then they are also responsible to either help them recap or be reassured that the children gave the self capacity to do so without help.

We can't generally afford holidays. So guess what, we don't go away every year! It's not a human right to have a package holiday in Spain every year.

Some of these replies remind me of that bit in Inbetweeners where Will is at a family BBQ during study leave-

Man- Shouldn't you be revising?

Will- Yes. One day off won't hurt.

Man- It might do. My nephew went to Center Parcs six weeks before his entrance exam to Oxford. He didn't make the cut, decided to take a year out. All his friends went to university. By the time they returned for Christmas, he'd hanged himself.

Depends on the subject you teach, surely. I'm head of Performing Arts and children that go on holiday early from our school often miss nativity plays, concerts, pantomimes, summer Shakespeare, showcases, drama/dance/music exams and the main choir events (services, public carol singing). Not the end of the world, I know, but it's a real shame when they've been practising all term. And it does of course affect the other children - especially when they have key parts and give almost no notice of their departure.

In general though, I don't think it's true that a child going on a term time holiday in the middle of a term is a problem. Parents who deny themselves a trip based on the fact that it's hard for the teacher to catch them up probably don't have much experience of a typical week in a classroom. We have: illness, lateness, peripatetic music and drama lessons, withdrawal for SEND lessons, sports fixtures taking half a class out, production rehearsals having casts off timetable for a day, children not listening, children not understanding, children being pulled out to resolve pastoral incidents and goodness knows what else. Catch up is par for the course and kids going on holiday are just another element of that.

I couldn’t agree more. Children in Africa can walk 10 miles a day to go to school and they are so happy to be able to do so. We need to value education more.

I'd hardly call 2 week-long package holiday to an all-inclusive tower block hotel somewhere like Spain or Turkey, or a chalet at Cleethorpes a 'once-in-a-lifetime' experience. Some parents may be doing something genuinely 'once-in-a-lifetime', most are not- they are doing things that are just a regular break not in school holiday time.

It makes no difference anyway. Schools are not the issue- government policy on this is.

Personally, I think parents should be able to take children out once, for a week, in term-time without a fine but that wouldn't suit most parents.

Senior school teachers have to. Also, if a child misses the introduction to a topic, they can take some time to catch up and gain confidence. No sympathy with term time holidays.

Mmmm but education isn’t just food, culture and so on, education is or can be swimming or walking or a different climate.
In that case why does it have to be done in the school years.
I didn't go abroad until I was 18. I've done plenty of walking in the Dolomites since then. I didn't need to expierence it when I was 10.

I suspect many of those who claim they're "my children, not the government's" are more than happy to accept the government's Child Benefit.

@TheWrongBus

• school attendance isn’t important - it is, but it's not the end of the world if they're not in.
• what you do and don’t learn at school doesn’t matter - it doesn't, and it isn't anything you can't learn elsewhere
• formal education generally isn’t that important - it's not, see the thousands of kids home educated who excel
• causing disruption to your fellow classmates and the teacher doesn’t matter - your enjoyment/convenience/budget is what counts - the purported disruption is non existent (in my experience as a TA)
• its fine to miss school if there is something more fun and interesting to do - a nice holiday, a family jolly, maybe just a day to the beach when the whether is nice? Or a duvet day with the iPad because you don’t fancy cross country in the rain? - Mental heath is important, and yes, duvet days should be a thing when kids are overwhelmed... and cross country is a waste of time, teaches nothing, and is almost universally hated by everyone.

Oh come on. With Ofsted and SATs and all the other assessments. Parents who take children out in term time are a pain.

Bullshit. My parents took me out for 2 weeks every summer of primary school because my mums family lived abroad and they couldn’t afford to send me there during school holidays.

I rarely missed a day of secondary school because attendance WAS important at that point and I have had no days off sick in the past 4 years of work (partly luck of course that I have been healthy but to prove I don’t take days off for the slightest of illness or duvet days). There was no disruption to classmates because it was the final 2 weeks before summer and we went back into next year in Sept and my academic outcomes did not suffer (nothing below an A at GCSE and A level plus first class degree).

My children do not take term time holidays but at least I recognise the privilege I have in being able to afford to take them away in actual holidays plus having flexible employment where we are not all scrambling for annual leave at same time.

The attitude we as parents demonstrate towards education as a whole over the year is far far more important than them being out of school for a few days for family time

You know kids learn to swim in this country. Your child cannot learn to swim within a week's holiday....

Schools are merely implementing national policy. You can thank Michael Gove for that one.

As a disclaimer, I value education. There is no way I'd take my DC out of school on an annual or even semi-frequent basis for a holiday. (My understanding is that parents are not fined for up to a five-day absence, anyway).

But I am the parent. On the very rare occasions I do deem my own family circumstances to be exceptional, then I am the one to make that judgement call; not the Nanny State. As an indicator, DC is now halfway through Year 6 and I've done this precisely once, for one-day only (entailing a 2pm finishing time at that).

Also, I'm well aware of how skewed a great deal of educational so-called 'theory' really is. Whilst there is evidence that regular attendance and results broadly correlate, the assumption that quantity of time spent in classroom equals quality of education is quite simply wrong. There's also a lot in the National Curriculum that simply kills any spontaniety and joy in learning, as could be gained from the less conventional methods sometimes used in teaching before its implementation. The English GCSE and A' Level syllabuses are a case in point. They are woefully out of date and putting kids off reading, because they are being taught in schools in such a dry, uninspiring manner. And the results show up all-too plainly when students arrive at university.

Educational standards are very definitely down. Rigid enforcement of attendance and uniform policy are apparently doing nothing to buck that trend - because this is the easy way of signalling to the public that something is actually being done about it.

It isn't. And incidentally, the fines are a nice little earner for them on top of this.

We used to have an amazing headteacher who approved time off as long as your child’s attendance was good. She once gave my boys a whole day off so we could go watch a rugby World Cup game when the RWC was being hosted in the UK. She said the experience would be more valuable and memorable than anything they would learn at school that day. She also gave us a full week off to take the kids on holiday because I’d just lost a baby and I just said we needed some time as a family. We had two weeks approved when my brother was getting married overseas. The kids were given nearly a week off when my gran was in hospice and we wanted to take them to say goodbye. They were so close to their GG. I’ll never forget how kind she was. The new headteacher is an arse and never approves term time leave, literally never. Not even when my sister was dying halfway across the world after something terrible happened to her while she was on holiday. They never got to say goodbye and I’ll never forgive him for that. She was like a second mum to them. My 4 year old in reception spent two weeks in hospital over Christmas with RSV and the flu. Two days after being discharged she got norovirus and ended up in A&E on fluids. The day she went back to school she was sent home with a letter warning us that her attendance had now dropped to an unacceptable level and they’d be informing the LA. Headteachers like him are the reason why people lie. Not a compassionate bone in his body.

They cannot learn to swim within two weeks' token effort in Year 4, either. That's merely a tick-box exercise to say it's been done.

However, I do view teaching children that essential skill as being the parents' job.

I blame Michael Gove for introducing this stupidity in the first place. But it's not his fault Labour have kept it.

OP, prices will always remain high in the Summer holidays. It is just supply and demand. Maybe as a nation we could stagger a few holidays. In France the February half term is staggered over 3 weeks. The country is split into 3 different zones. This is to protect the French ski industry.