Do you agree with the UK school attendance policy, of fining parents?

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If you are a teacher do you agree with the current UK school attendance policy, of fining parents? What are your thoughts about the focus on attendance, 'getting the child into the building at all costs', the policy of 'not supporting home learning'?
If you are a parent, what are your thoughts?

If you have a child with additional needs, do you feel discriminated against, when family holidays during busy school times, almost always mean your child is not able to be in those busy noisy environments; and the alternative is risking a fine?

The problem is we can’t have a rule for parents who will actually engage with their children and make the time off beneficial and those that don’t so it has to be the same rule for everyone.

In my experience it’s often, not always, the parents who take them on term time holidays that are the same ones not doing homework, bringing reading books in, are late etc. It’s just a general disregard for the education of their child.

And I’ve got to say that anyone who reduces reception to playing in a sandpit and colouring has no idea of the importance of the reception year, particularly the personal and social development of the children.

Who will teach them the material they miss during that week? In a week a whole new maths concept would be covered.

I agree that the personal and social aspect of reception is very important. I was talking about the type of learning they do. However, taking 1-2 weeks off school when a child’s attendance is otherwise good is not going to affect the personal and social benefits they get from school. Going on holiday is going to enhance and build on that. We always go to Italy on holiday, as that’s where DD’s GPs live, she gets to play with her cousins, spend time with her GPs, learn about her heritage, learn another language, and I still read with her every night (she loves reading and insists on reading to me every night). How can that be detrimental to her learning? The system is also unfair for kids with GPs who live in another country, because visiting them involves crazy expensive flights in term time that are just not affordable for many people. And it’s well-known that GPs are an incredibly important part of a child’s wellbeing and development

Who teaches it to them if they are off ill for a week?

If a child has good attendance otherwise, one week isn't going to make a difference.

I think teachers would disagree that missing a week can involve a whole learning module, more so the older the child.
Schools support children who are away sick in trying to catch up, whilst moving ahead with the next topic but have no obligation to do so for taking holiday in term time.

and I think the vast majority of parents who do take their child out during term time would accept the fact that it is a choice unlike illness so wouldn't expect teachers to give or teach any catch up work.

Missing a week when a child has good attendance, isn't already behind etc is hardly the end of the world and isn't going to have a significant impact.

I'm not a teacher. I think fining people for going on holiday is ridiculous. I do appreciate schools worry about kids being off for months and welfare and so on, but it does seem absolutely over the top.

I learnt very little at school - I could already read when i got there. It was mainly a huge waste of time. I go in the parents in school days sometimes and we just fanny about doing crafts. I homeschooled my nieces and nephews during the pandemic and we spent about an hour a day just hanging out and doing maths and reading books and running around and when they went back they were literally years ahead of the class, so not sure that going on holiday is really the limit on progress. Just take some books with you.

And yes yes not everyone is like that, but also teachers need to calm down a bit about this incredible education that cannot be interrupted. It isn't that great. It's a lot of sitting around making posters. Let's be honest.

You thought learning about literature, chemistry, history of the world, how to construct a sentence correctly, equations and ratios, reading text in other languages was a waste of time?

They didn't have fines in my day (80s) - if parents wanted to take their children out of school for a holiday, they did it; if the children were bunking off, eventually some kind of social work person would get involved. It would be interesting to compare absence statistics from before and after fines were introduced - obviously that wouldn't be the whole picture as society has changed immensely in the last 40 years but it would be interesting, nonetheless.

The problem is we can’t have a rule for parents who will actually engage with their children and make the time off beneficial and those that don’t so it has to be the same rule for everyone.

Exactly this.

would accept the fact that it is a choice unlike illness so wouldn't expect teachers to give or teach any catch up work.

Err, ok. But (oversimplification) if addition is taught in the week they are off, or the first stage of the life cycle of a plant, then the teacher can’t teach the next bit of maths/biology to the child until they have gone over the first bit.

We just didn't really do that to be honest. I did all that on my own time. I went to a normal inner city comprehensive in the 90s. People threw chairs at the teachers and we all took drugs in the toilets. Grammar was never taught at all. Chemistry was not available because the labs were burned down.

We would sit in a room and read a book out loud haltingly together for like a year and yet somehow never finish it. Basically we were warehoused.

I would hide in cupboards and read books secretly. If people saw you reading they would hit you.

@Fearlesssloth I don’t think your child would be affected by a week out of school & learning another language and culture. Not all children are taken out for that sort of experience. Many are taken to a hotel all inclusive & spend most of the week in the hotel pool eating the same food as they would at home.

I think people feel entitled to a holiday abroad all inclusive nowadays. We’re both teachers and can’t afford that in school hols. But we have had some great holidays camping, caravanning, hostelling & driving over to Eurocamp sites. I can’t fathom the need to fly to Turkey to spend the week at a hotel complex. If you can’t afford an all inclusive then just do a different sort of holiday.

However I don’t agree with the fines & I think people should be able to take a few days here & there at the discretion of the head. What about if family live miles away & you can’t visit Fri-Mon or there’s a family event like a wedding or graduation or even a big sports event which needs a few days off occasionally.

I think it has created a very unhealthy dislike for schools & parents seem to blame schools. The money doesn’t even go to schools.

As a teacher however it can be really difficult to catch students up on work they have missed & sometimes it’s the start of a topic which they then can’t follow.

Agree with @MayasJamas schools can’t very well say ‘oh well you’re spending a week in Poland learning the language & visiting some cultural events so that’s ok’ and then tell another parent ‘sorry a week in Dubai isn’t considered educational so we can’t authorise that’.

They can make some exceptions and I thought a family wedding might be included in that?

They authorised my son for a week out back in October because for various reasons, October was the only time it could happen.

If schools were like that now, they wouldn’t give a shit about attendance, and we wouldn’t be having this discussion.

Mumsnet is a real bubble sometimes, of people who seem to believe that most children have access to rich cultural and educational opportunities outside of school. Many, many, many children don’t. And if they aren’t taught eg science, geography, literature, art etc in school, those subjects, and the careers and experiences they can lead to, are closed to them. If we don’t value a broad academic and creative education in schools, we’re essentially saying that the privileged few who have cultural capital (google it) are those who should have access to the opportunities that a varied curriculum can (potentially) lead anyone to.

Well, I just don't really agree that schools are amazing and that missing a week is some massive disaster. I'm not saying nobody should go at all, just that these claims about how if you go to Malaga in the off season you'll never be able to add up or identify a stamen. It's just... not that finely balanced.

I missed years of school and it made little difference to my intellectual life, honestly. I'm not saying I'm a great intellectual now. I'm saying the schools I went to did not provide much opportunity to develop in this way. For me, I mainly read random shite from the 20p shelf in the charity shop to learn stuff. Or the first 99 pages on Google Books. 😂 I didn't learn much in school. I'm not saying abolish school, or anything, I'm saying let's stop pretending school is some hallowed centre of great learning where every second counts. There's a lot of filler. Some schools are great, most are sort of mid, quite a lot are hopeless. But luckily life goes on and there's more opportunities to learn than just that one particular twenty minutes in Miss Johnson's maths class.

I love this idea!

Headteacher created bonus week off for children to be able to go on cheaper holidays

Agreed - a brilliant idea (mind you, I bet it would generate mumsnet posts complaining about ‘yet another week off’ to sort childcare for, lazy teachers etc etc 😆)

If the UK valued the concept of a broad academic and creative education for all, all schools would be equal. The publicly funded schools would have the same facilities and student: teacher ratio that privately funded schools have. There would be after school clubs and supervised prep.

But the UK demonstrably does not value high quality education for all. If it did, the education budget would be at least ten times what it is now.

They use the money to pay for the prosecution of parents.

we got fined a few years ago for missing three days in December. The council sent out the notice during the national postal strike. First we knew about it was when we were told we were being NHS taken to court for not paying the fine.

at the end of that school year, her overall attendance was 98%.

School employee here. What I am seeing lately is more children leaving to be home educated. I am not sure if this is being driven by the schools encouraging poor attenders to leave so that the schools can get their attendance figures up, or whether the parents and their children are coming under such pressure to attend no matter what that they feel their only option is to move to home education. My jury is out currently.

It doesn't bother me per se as fines are low but the rules are bonkers. Why is it that in a two parent family both parents are fined, that really pisses me off. Why should two parent families be discriminated against?

The other thing that's mad is that 4 days doesn't incur a fine but 5 days does so if you take a week where there's an inset day or a bank holiday there's no fine.

I don’t know if that’s true or not but if it is that shouldn’t happen, every absence should be treated the same

Honestly my biggest issue is that I would imagine the FAR majority are just taking a day or two either side of half term when it’s just bloody films/games/class treat and they aren’t doing anything.

I agree that attendance is an issue. But any kid in KS1 or KS2 is a totally different kettle of fish to a kid in year 11.

if it were me, I would say “you can have a discretionary 3 days holiday, only in primary school or every other year”

I think the government should look at regulating holiday prices so all families can make use of the school holidays.

I think it’s up to the individual family to pick if they go somewhere busy or not to suit their own needs!

my daughter has dyslexia and often needs a day to ‘reset’ the overwhelm and overload in her brain. Most mornings she has anxiety about going into school but on some days she is so distressed about it, I feel there is little point in forcing her to go in when her nervous system is clearly not functioning- she won’t learn in that state and if she doesn’t have a ‘reset’ day it just makes the following days worse.

This might be 1 day every 2-3 weeks as an average so her attendance is below what the school would like, but it means she can participate well when she is there. To be honest she is behind even when she is in school from the lack of support and made to feel stupid by certain teachers (hence why she doesn’t want to go in) so I don’t feel like her missing days has made much more impact on her actual progress and attainment as they don’t do much to help her when she is in there. 😩