Would you take your 6 year old out of school for 7 days

[KirstyJ2025]

Hi all, we really want to do a once in a lifetime holiday to Disney Florida. We plan on booking 11 nights, some of the days go in to a half term break. We do however have to take our little one out of school for 7 days. She’s in year 1. We know we will go over the unauthorised 10 occasions and will be charge £80 per parent, but we will save over £1,500.00. We have been told to ring in sick for a few days to avoid the fine, but I don’t think schools a silly and they will just work it out haha, so we are thinking honestly is the best policy? Would you agree?

Only thing I’m worried about it that if you have any other unauthorised absences within a 3 year period, I believe we can be prosecuted. Tbh, we aren’t planning on doing it again. We also don’t want our school giving us a hard time over it. It’s actually our honeymoon trip too.

just wondering what others have done in this situation.

:-)

Wait for all the you knew the hours when you took the job comments

the teacher should be working with the lower ability kid rather than the TA all the time as otherwise they do nothing without adult support. I had a Y3 kid ask where the TA was as they’d been on the lower table for all of infants and didn’t even know how to find the next clean page! They were most put out they needed to work on an appropriate task independently.

teachers dumping all the lower kids on the TA is not good for anyone.

But it is. School is compulsory but there are also mechanisms to take your child out of school. Yes there’s a fine, but for many parents it’s better to be fined than to pay the extra ££££ for a holiday. Councils etc., know this is reasonable because they haven’t raised the fines to levels where they are completely unaffordable.

As an adult, knowing your annual leave entitlement is part of the job hunting process. You take a job knowing when you can/can’t take annual leave. It’s a poor argument to say “well teachers don’t get annual leave!” when actually, they do. They get 13 weeks of it a year. They’re just told when to take it.

Well it’s the way it was 🤷🏻‍♀️ It did mean that I knew that particular group of children very well. Overworked and underpaid!!!

I didn’t say I didn’t get annual leave.
It just pisses me off that people take their children out for a huge chunk of learning time, just for financial reasons instead of thinking about their child’s education and the repercussions of doing so.

The repercussions will not be long lasting. I would go on 3 holidays a year and miss 3-4 weeks up until age 14 and was consistently one of the highest achievers in my year. It pisses me off that teachers and TAs think they can dictate what parents do with THEIR children.

Teachers and TA’s don’t dictate what people can do with their children. What an odd comment! I can’t tell someone they absolutely can’t take their child out. The powers that be state that.
I am however, allowed an opinion on how disruptive it is when a child misses a large amount of learning time just because a holiday is cheaper.

We are pretty much taking her out for just over a week, so it’s not a huge amount of time. If it was a month I’d completely get it. I do however understand where you are coming from and I can imagine it can be frustrating for the teachers and TA’s. We will do our very best to do as much homework with her when and where we can, eg the plane and when we return for a few days before school starts again. At this age, we will continue to help her with writing, phonics (there’s a lot of online material for the phonics they do) and of course maths. She’s doing really well in school. If she was struggling and needed additional help on a regular basis, we wouldn’t take her out of school. We won’t take her out of school again, this is a one off. :-)

I totally appreciate where you’re coming from and it sounds as if you’ll make sure to carry on with phonics etc but honestly, a week out of learning is a long time. Apart from lunchtime and playtimes, they have approximately 4-5 hours of actual learning time (not including assemblies etc), so that’s a lot of work for the teacher and TA to try to cram in once they’re back, to the detriment of the rest of the class.
But I understand why parents do it. They just don’t see the repercussions of doing so. I hope you all have a lovely time and your daughter loves it!

Yes, do it.

Thank you, I do appreciate the time you have taken to highlight these points. They do make sense

Our eldest is 7 and she's never missed school except for illness. It doesn't occur to us to book holidays in term time, there is enough time at Easter and through the summer for long haul trips. She loves school and enjoys the fun social activities as well as the learning so we wouldn't want her to miss out. Also it's nice to just relax on holiday and take a complete break from schoolwork, so I wouldn't want to be trying to keep up with classwork.

AFAIK, schools and teachers have no obligation to provide lesson plans or other support in advance for children whom they know will be absent. Do they actually have an obligation to provide 1:1 support to catch them up after an unauthorized absence? Can they not simply give a list of topics and lesson sheets (if any) to the parents after they return and say: "It's on you now, guv. The rest of the class are moving on."?

My son's school were incredibly supportive, he's only been back from Disney for about a week and has already had a lot of time off due to medical reasons. It was the only date possible for a number of reasons, including financially but the headteacher fully supported it and it is down as an authorised absence.

Education is important, of course it is but other things such as once in a lifetime opportunities are important too.

Our school didn’t just hand over printouts to the parents once they’re were back. I don’t know if we were actually obliged to catch the children up but that’s what we did. Well, we tried!

I agree that other experiences are important too. I’m just putting the other side of the situation and explaining that it’s incredibly disruptive.
Im glad your child’s school have been supportive because mine wouldn’t have been 😬

I'm very glad that he goes to such a wonderful, supportive school. It was classed as an exceptional circumstance and honestly, I think any school knowing what he's been through and the fact it was now or never would've been heartless not to approve it.

Though I would've hopefully found some way to pay the fine, maybe appealed etc.

Yes definitely

what hotels are you looking at?

Orlando is the one place I always suggest DIY it

Look at It’s Orlando Time Facebook group

Fines shouldnt kick in till year 1 as nursery isnt a legal requirement.
From age 5 is when they have to legally access education

Missing 1 week of school at 6yrs old will have very little impact on the rest of her life. Going to Disney for 1 week will have a massive impact on her life she will cherish those memories forever.

@KirstyJ2025 maybe also start a different thread in holidays to get all the advice for how to do a Disney Holiday because I would say the second half of August has many advantages over May and I think planned probably could come in at less than the TUI May and solve all the issues!

Tickets are definitely cheaper, Halloween starts (including Mickeys Not So Scary Party) and it has low crowds due to US schools starting back mid August

In which case, wait a few years. There’s so much you won’t be able to do at this age.

I disagree I have taken mine since they were 3 and Disney definitely had a lot of things they have overgrown - the boutique where she became Cinderella, doing the Star Wars bits, meeting the characters (although DD 16 still gets excited)

i dont understand. My DS attended a private prep. Not once did the school bother about taking your child out of school for a holiday or event. No trouble at all. So why can absences be managed in private but not state?

The rules/guidance were tightened considerably in August 2024 for state schools. Presumably smaller class sizes means a smaller range of needs to cater for and easier to catch up a child that has missed a week.

Yep.

My son is 9 and he was very quickly over the characters because he knew they were just people dressed up, he would've lost his mind when he was younger if he thought he was meeting the real Spiderman (that's Universal, to be fair). He was a great age for the rides though and tried so many more than I expected him to including things like the tower of terror which obviously wouldn't have happened if he was younger.

He enjoyed the parades and shows more than I expected he would, he especially loved Lion King at Animal Kingdom.

I think there's positives and negatives to most ages. I'm glad he was at an age where he could really enjoy the bigger rides but at the same time, if he was younger, I think he would've ''leaned in'' to the magic more with characters etc.