Surprised at how many school aged kids on holiday

[AleaEim]

We just returned with our toddler from Bella Italia eurocamp with our toddler and couldn’t believe how many school aged children were there this time of year. I’m talking hundreds of children well into mid- late primary school age. The majority of families were Irish at the camp( this surprised me also as i thought it would have people from all over) I’m Irish but have lived in the UK over 15 years, are Irish schools/ parents more relaxed than other cultures and are able to take children off during term time?

I’m not judging as I can see why parents do it and I may even do it myself in future if needed to get a cheaper holiday. I’m just curious really and wondered if these parents are honest with teachers about it. My parents did take me off once for a holiday in term time of secondary and when I told the teacher she called me out in front of a whole classroom about it as if it was my choice. I wouldn’t do that to my dd at that age.

Last week I flew to Barcelona and was shocked by the number of school age children. Definitely British. Seems particularly bad when term has just started.

Mine are always ill for about a week in the Easter term. Just as the weather is turning nice. I’ll have them tested for allergies to Cornwall.

Oh, and a day or two in December as well most years. It’s weird.

As a former teacher, I'd say it's up to parents of course, but don't expect any teacher to spend an extra minute of their time helping your absentee kids to catch up.

How would you ever get such good results with such short days, the teaching in Ireland must be world class!

👏👏

Might be the curriculum and the dedication of the teachers, combined with a laid back approach all round. Whatever it is it seems to work as the Irish education system is highly regarded and world renowned.

It is world class yes.

Major international study shows Irish students are first for reading, third for science and fourth for mathematics out of 27 EU countries

Maybe because of the shorter days or longer breaks? Less pressure, more enjoyment.

From what I know and I know little it seems of Irish education these dayss but there are no results really. There are no exams or anything in primary at all like there are here in UK. The first exam is junior cert, in third year of secondary school when children are around 14-15. Is it still the same? I’m out of touch. I wouldn’t say it’s world class teaching but wouldn’t say it’s bad either but then again I haven’t been in school in a long time.

We do standardised testing in primary schools and you get the STEN results so you know where your child is headed although primary is not exam focused.
Secondary school we have Junior certificate in 3rd year so 14-15 years old in line with your GCSE'S and then ours normally go on for a further 2-3 years if they choose to take up 4th year in between and in 6th year which is the standard year to finish secondary school we do the Leaving certificate which is in or around like A levels taken around age 18/19. Then after that college is applied for where applicable. Standard school in total in Ireland between 'reception' in primary and final leaving cert exams in secondary is 13 or 14 years.

Absolutely. Should be allowed to take them out for 2-3 days, as long as attendance is otherwise excellent. My daughter has 100% attendance since started school 5 years ago. We asked for 2 days to attend a family wedding abroad which was brought forward due to mother of groom not having long to live, and were refused this one off request.

The issues with attendance aren't the child with full attendance who has 1 family holiday/family occasion) every few years. They are the children who are repeatedly late, miss a day or 2 every week, are falling asleep in school (there is one who falls asleep a couple times a week in DD's class, the teacher lets him sleep as clearly exhausted)

I'm a teacher in Dublin . This is the first year that we seem to have MANY kids on holidays in September . June - always but September , very rarely until this year . They are obviously all off in Bella Italia !!
I took my own five out for a week every year for skiing - still do . We even went in the exam years . In fairness they all scored max points in the Leaving Cert so I might not had they been struggling .
That said, holidays in September are not great . There are new routines to learn and it's just pretty disruptive to the child really. Most will be fine though, no lomg term harm.

My bosses kids were off this week just gone. But she's Glasgow way.

It scores highly on reading scores both at primary and secondary level (this is based on tests taken by students across the world) , third level progression is extremely high….

So it does get very good results. But it’s difficult to understand why I think. Schools feel underfunded, schools don’t seem to do anything extraordinary.

England is 7th. Ireland 15th.

No, Irish schools don't drag you over the coals for taking your children on holiday during the school year.

The attitude tends to be that parents are in charge.

I take my children out in term time. 3 primary aged children. The fine is cheaper than what we’d paid to go in the school holidays! It’s ridiculous

I brought this up in response to a poster who said Ireland don’t have results. The PISA test in 2025 is standardised between countries, so we do have that. I wasn’t comparing tests scores between the countries either. I was talking about Ireland’s position generally, which is high. There really isn’t much between the England and Ireland’s test scores. Both countries are above average and up the top of the graphs.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgy6n0l4rdo

The third level progression rate is higher in Ireland but I’d argue this has more of a cultural thing than to do with the actual education system.

Bella Italia is called Bella D’Irlande by taxi drivers in Lake Garda apparently….so it’s always going to be full of Irish kids. It’s also ridiculously expensive in high season.

Interesting, I come from a working class Dublin area and did not know a single person going to third level education, even now my whole family extended and all are in trades or min wage jobs and their children seem to be following. Same with dh’s family. I wonder what the results of these international tests are when class or SES is accounted for.

Also a North Dub and all of my friends went on to college, all of their/our kids too.

Ireland has the highest rate of third level attainment in the EU so your experience is not common.

this is from the PISA 2025 report.

“Ireland has also continued to have substantially lower proportions
of low-performing students than the OECD and EU averages. Despite persistent
inequalities in Ireland, including performance gaps and a persistent relationship
between socio-economic background and achievement, Ireland has remained one of
the more inclusive (measured by the proportion of 15-year-olds achieving at least
baseline proficiency levels in one or more domains) and fairer (measured by the
proportion of variance in performance”

What’s really interesting I think is that we don’t have as many high performers as other countries. We score really low on that.

Not only do we have far lower costs for third level than the UK, with grants that can get down to zero cost for low income families.

You see this is probably because in school we more or less always focus on the child who is weaker . There is never any time for working with the extremely able children as it is more or less agreed that these children will be ok !I an a SET and all my caseload is kids under the 20th percentile in standardised tests .
Never any time put into the 99th percentile kids.

Yes. Live in East Anglia. Currently in Cornwall.