Can School Extend Easter?

[EasterEvenLonger]

My kid’s school had published Easter holidays as:
Mon 7 April - Tuesday 22nd April

They have written today to extend it to:
Friday 4 April - Thursday 24 April
An additional 3 working/school days

I can’t list all the reasons this is a fucking nightmare for me. Can they just announce this without any consultation and just 3 weeks notice? They haven’t taken any subsequent days off to compensate. It’s an additional 3 days.

YABU - of course they can
YANBU - no they shouldn’t be able to do this

Nobody has personally insulted you.

This is nonsense, really.

Building work is never, ever carried out to that sort of timetable. It’s also not going to be possible for every school which needs work done to have it done in the holidays (all building projects are better planned in summer when it’s drier). Some projects will take longer than the available holiday time anyway. Overruns like this are way outside the school’s control so getting your knickers in a knot as you are is pointless and unreasonable.

As for the wedding, it’s the same for school staff. You can be denied leave outside of school holidays for weddings, funerals, anything. If it’s that important take the kids out anyway. Nobody gets fined (by the LA, not the school) for one day’s unauthorised absence so it’s just another way to try and promote this ridiculous narrative that schools and teachers sit around trying to avoid working at all costs and thinking up ways of making parents’ lives as hard as they can just for fun 🤦‍♀️

You can't knock down and rebuild a school in 6 weeks. When my DDs' primary school was knocked down and rebuilt the whole thing took 18 months.

FFS even a one room extension to a house takes longer than a school holiday. And try getting that done at the time that you want.

It's like the major gas main replacement work where I live, causing traffic problems. Everyone's going nuts on the local FB page and offering stupid suggestions that are logistically ridiculous. It has to be done, it can't be done without huge equipment and disruption, and if it wasn't done they'd be complaining too.

Basically they expect any public utilities and services work to be done by the fairies. As, presumably, does @Mumrun25

Oh. Stop. You're making yourself look silly🙃

That's a put down, no?

Did they miss 18mths of school? Is this school being rebuilt?

And? What's your point? I'm not saying the work doesn't need doing, nor is it not valuable. I'm saying it's unfair for a school to be able to close for 3 days, yet in the same breath say that parents can't request 3 days for a child to miss school for equally valuable, valid, needed reasons.

My point is not about the work - it's about the double standards.

Also calm down - no need to swear.

Saying someone is making themselves look silly because they lack any knowledge of a subject is not personally insulting them, no.

You still don’t seem to be able to understand. Schools cannot authorise absences unless they are from a small number of situations outlined by the government.

The school was rebuilt but they had 3 days added to the holidays at the start and end of the project so that the teachers could set up their classrooms and familiarise themselves with the temporary building (a building which had been replaced by a new school but which was retained as a decant for the other schools being rebuilt) and the new build.

So do the work over the summer holidays?

In my experience this is what usually happens. However contractors can't just start work on the first day of holidays when all the stuff is still in classrooms. Therefore the school might close a couple of days early to allow staff to remove everything.

Then if they finish on the last day of the holidays, they might have to remain closed for the first couple of days to allow everything to be unpacked.

But not all work can be done in the summer holidays. Whether it's summer, Christmas or Easter holidays there is always the chance that schools will have to do that.

Multiple posters have explained that there's no double standard. The school has had to put these extra days in place. The government dictates the response to children being out of school in term time, and the local authority issues the fine.

Heads frequently would like to be able to say yes to things like your niece's wedding, but between the LA and OFSTED, they can't. Many secretly hope that you'll go, and tell them your child is sick.

I'm saying it's unfair for a school to be able to close for 3 days, yet in the same breath say that parents can't request 3 days for a child to miss school for equally valuable, valid, needed reasons.

You don't seem to understand. There are no double standards.

Schools cannot authorise term-time leave-their hands are tied by government. Even if the head thought it was an amazing opportunity for you to take your kids trekking in Peru, to be a bridesmaid for aunty Sarah or to do to grandma's funeral-they can't. It's not like yesteryear where you'd just fill in a term-time absence form which would be approved-the government stopped this years ago.

If you say so..... the poll running in my office currently disagrees, but you do you.

What is funny is the amount of people taking time out of their day to try and explain how building work can run over and who are the ultimate decision makers - while spectacularly failing to see the underlying point.

Don't worry, I will expect another 10 replies telling me how carpet fitters can be delayed, and portacabins are costly.....

All ignoring or simply not grasping the fundamental point - which is - is missing 3 days of school a big deal? No it's not. We all know it's not and your digging down is proving the point. You can give your excuses and rationalise the need for the buidling work in much the same way parents can rationalise their need to pull their kid out for 3 days. That's why this cuts both ways.

But keep going. You're wasting more of your breath than mine.

A caveat my point that it's a big deal to working parents like the OP

But fundamentally it's the 'do as I say, not as I do' approach that really gets to me - whether that's government, school or LA.

Well @Mumrun25 if that's your whole point, then I think that it's not very interesting. The school aren't saying here that "3 days doesn't matter." They just need to get the school ready for teaching in, and need to take 3 days. There almost certainly isn't a sensible solution to the problem of having to move all of the contents of a school from one place to another.

There is one main difference between the two situations:

• Whole school closed for 3 days = 3 days less learning. But no one specific area will have been missed.
• One child off for 3 days = 3 days less learning, possibly missing a key area that has an impact for the next few days, or even longer.

I did really well at school, but I genuinely remember being baffled by one area of chemistry in Year 11. I never got answers right about this area in my mock exams. Why? I was off sick 2 days out of the week we had learnt it, and never really caught up.

I don't want to exaggerate this, so I will be honest and say it's not a massive difference really and, no, despite government adverts, your child won't be forever massively disadvantaged by 3 days off school. I don't believe there are many teachers who genuinely think that a few days off is the end of the world.

All of this.

it is clearly quite different to have an unavoidable closure for a few days and just moving the class on together a few days later and having each kid have a random week off throughout the year.

im still not sure what anyone wants the school to actually do when moving buildings besides take a few days to move? What other options are there? There are 900 children in my daughter’s high school - they can’t just show up and learn in the street outside?

when my kids’ school burned down they closed for a week and then had each year group bussed to different schools with random empty classrooms. It was a massive thing and they only set it up as the school was closed for months. They wouldn’t do that for a closure of 3 days.

You sure have a long reply for something not very interesting.

Of course because your situation was an actual emergency.

Plan the building work over the summer holiday would be the obvious alternative, no?

Plan the building work over the summer holiday would be the obvious alternative, no?

I, and other posters have answered this question already, no?

@Mumrun25 you've been told repeatedly that not every school can have builders in during the same six weeks..builders have kids too, who they want to go on holiday with when they can. There are a limited number of builders. Do you really honestly think that someone in the LA is sitting there thinking ways to fuck about with a school just to piss off parents? Do you really honestly think school governors / heads are too thick to realise that zero or minimal disruption would be preferable?

No you haven't.

You've given me long winded, repetitive replies as to why that's simply not possible and how instead it's fine for the school to push a return date back by 3 days instead to accommodate the building work.

Again though, entirely missing the point - that it's simply not justified to bark that education is important and shouldn't be missed/authorised for any reason..... except when it's double standards and the need is that of the school.

There has been some effort to address the topic from a, 'if all the kids miss school at the same time then it's not as bad as one' but have failed to address the fact that with a packed curriculum they would miss out on 18-20hrs of learning that other kids without the disruption wouldn't miss at other schools. Back to my argument - education is so important and has to be attended everyday or risk failure and being behind or it isn't.

You've thrown multiple 'emergency type situations' at me - which every time I've replied this is not an emergency - so doesn't apply.

And not a single person has put forward a valid argument for why school/government/LA have rights that are not awarded to parents - when 'life happens'.

I use the term 'you' collectively, not 'you' as an individual obviously.

I don't know - do you know the school and their governors to know what they're thinking?

'You've been told repeatedly' 😂you're pulling absolute ridiculous arguments out of thin air. You have NO idea what the reasons are for this school to choose that specific time to do the building work. You have no idea what alternatives were looked at. You are plucking stuff out of nowhere to support an argument that still doesn't address the point I've got issues with.

You're making outlandish assumptions about the mindset and beliefs of imaginary characters you've created in this scenario - while fundamentally ignoring that if a pupil in the UK cannot be allowed to have 3 planned days off school then a school should also be subject to the same rules and should not be permitted to close for 3 days during term time.

It's not about the building work! It's about the double standards.

@Mumrun25 my post of 13.11 explains this exactly. You choose to have your own interpretation