To think 10 days off seems a lot in term time?

[winterwonder1]

Call for school term-time holiday fines to be cancelled | Weston Mercury

I don't agree with fines and I think it should be down to more discretion (from both parents and teachers), but I think the campaign might get more support if they'd said 5 days instead?

Clearly no one is taking their families abroad for just the weekend, as the price and hassle to get there isn’t worth then only being able to stay one or two nights.

Many, many families cannot take their children away in the holidays as the prices are at least double what they are during term time. When you are paying for 4, 5, 6 etc people rather than just one or two it becomes unaffordable. Also, some of the requests for absence will be to attend family or friends events (such as weddings or big birthday get togethers) which are often organised in term time due to cost.

If we take your example of a week in Lanzarote, then it could look like this:

• child experiences a plane ride
• child experiences local (often tastier and fresher) ingredients and dishes
• child swims every day in the pool and the sea
• child sees geography completely different to the UK. They see in real life a volcanic island which is also an UNESCO site
• Child may go on some day trips around the island and learn about a different culture
• child hears locals speaking in Spanish
• child eats all meals around a table with their family
• Child is prioritised over work, household chores and life admin by parents. They experience family time where the parents can relax and be fully present
• child sees a different environment that they may aspire to live in when they are older. They appreciate there are different jobs on offer around the world other than the ones they see every day in their home town.

etc etc

it is snobby to think that, just because you aren’t on an expensive far flung holiday, the children aren’t absorbing a lot

But life isn't fair, an annual holiday to the sun is only recently seen as a 'given' and even then only amongst a particular demographic. Holidays are a single type of cultural, family experience and do not need to be taken annually if your financial circumstances mean that is not possible. There are many more available to us on a much more local and accessible level. If you can't think of an enriching experience, with you capable of being a fully present parent, that you could do on a bog standard Saturday, you should expand your horizons.

We are a high income household with 2 full time working parents. We don't take a full holiday every year but we don't prioritise it or think it's the most valuable use of our family time. Our children know they just go to school each day and we don't undermine ourselves by telling them that it's occasionally optional.

Worth pointing out that, for all MNs love of discussing term time holidays through the prism of Spain, for some families a term time UK break is all they can afford. It should come as no great shock to anyone living in reality that some of them aren't persuaded that this means they should have no holiday at all.

This policy also stops people from seeing family in the uk, going to family weddings etc. It's not just holidays in the sun.

I don't agree with fines. I'd take passports off persistent offenders, though would require a court appearance so people have a chance to plead mitigating circumstances (real not just its cheaper).

One alternative would be for holiday companies to have no discounts for children in term time, though package holidays are not all those taken in term time.

realistically, how many days of school is a child going to miss because of close family members weddings?

Clearly we have different priorities as parents. Which is fine. The problem is that the government is only allowing your priority to be the option. Families who think the same way as mine have no option available to them.

It isn't fair, I agree, but life isn't fair. Lookong at the "nice middle class student" as an individual means that their circumstances mean they can take time off and still meet minimum attendance criteria and keep pace with the class. It's not fair, but refusing them the leave because someone else won't be allowed doesn't make it fair or improve the opportunities and outcomes for the other students. It's not robbing Peter to pay Paul, its robbing Peter for the sake of making sure he doesn't have more than Paul and that's not fair to Peter.

I disagree. Children should be in school. Parents should book holidays in term time. That's not robbing anyone to pay anyone.

Yes and the government and I prioritise education! And sorry to state the obvious but it's the primary way to ensure you can afford holidays out of term time!

What’s the point in being two “high earners” (as you say you and your partner are), yet not being bothered about spending at least one week a year away together as a family?? Sounds miserable to me, and like you have your priorities wrong

We spend loads of quality time together and have a lot of short breaks. I pay for things I feel benefit us as family unit for the long term. Spending thousands on a fortnight all inclusive ranks very low on my priorities list, despite the fact I could afford it whenever I fancied.

It's often hard to get leave from work in school holidays - so some years we won't have a holiday. I wish there was more flexibility.

Fine. And like I said in a previous post, that is your choice of how to do things. For those with three young children (like me), many short breaks throughout the year instead of one / two weeks away are not an option. Just the cost of getting us all somewhere, and the work of packing, only to come back two days later, then repeat every couple of months - no. So, we take the kids out of school for a week instead. They aren’t behind, they still hit 95%+ attendance each yr, and I cannot for one minute think it’s going to affect them so much that it will have an impact on their earning potential when they are older, as you seem to be insinuating above 😂

Unless of course 1 of those parents is in the military. The last week of shore leave (which, surprisingly the MoD don't centre around school holidays), was always spent on holiday as a family...term-time or not.

Fine, that's your choice. But it's a choice not the only option as you make out. I have young children too. Last year we did Norfolk, Scottish borders, Edinburgh, London and Paris.

I don't even contemplate taking them out of school as an option. It's more the message it sends to my children that puts me off then their attendance figure. I choose to let them know that I value their education above most things, respect their teachers and value their time. School is compulsory and we have to get up and go every day, even if we'd rather be doing other things. That's a valuable life lesson IMO and one that was pretty widely agreed upon until recently.

And in terms of earnings, studies pretty conclusively show that it's the educational level of achievement of the mother (not father) which determines outcomes.

As a teacher, I have seen teenagers with 100% attendance and high grades denied leave to attend grandparents’ funerals.

Not being allowed time for family funerals is terrible

Absolutely. Our experience is the opposite thankfully.

We’re allowed 10 days in a year here (Wales).

That's interesting. Does that include sickness?

As a teacher I'm not fussed about parents taking kids out for a holiday, especially if they are a family who I know might not get this experience otherwise/attendance is good/safeguarding concerns are non-existent.

What I despise is being asked to provide work for said child to complete over the time they are absent for them not to complete it. If you don't want them to miss the work, keep them in school!

I think the fact that this has risen to the need for formal policy reflects how skewed priorities are. I wouldn’t contemplate a term time holiday just for the sake of it - maybe if we had a terminally ill family member or something similarly one off? Education is far more important than trips abroad, even supposedly educational trips abroad, and you certainly don’t need to do that every year to have an impact. I absolutely agree with fines for those that skirt the rules. You can have lovely holidays and plenty of family time without leaving your house - a holiday abroad is not an entitlement.

i feel very differently about attendance rules in other circumstances, such as send- wanting a cheap sunny holiday is fundamentally different from children struggling to cope with school.

I’m so pleased someone said it! I don’t agree with the principle of fines either but 10 days, 2 weeks, is ridiculous. It will only cause disruption and a massive headache for already overworked and overstretched teachers. I’d much rather see more flexible approval system whereby a Head can look at a child and think “This child has never had an unauthorised day off they’re now in year 6 yes they can have 5 days to have a cheap family holiday” and the school isn’t penalised by Ofsted for it. A blanket 10 day legal right whereby parents book whichever days they feel like it’s some sort of annual leave is ludicrous.

I think the only real answer is for all of us to stop thinking that it's acceptable to have a holiday in term time. Funerals, weddings, other exceptional things, but not holidays.