Can holidays over inset days be fined??

[Tomatoaddictanonymous]

Hi fellow parents of school-aged children. So I’ve been looking at holidays over the summer break or first half term of the autumn term and the price difference to term-time is shocking. We know you get fined for taking your children out of school for 10 sessions or 5 days in a 10 week period but there is a handy inset day we could work around late November, however I’ve been told that rules are changing and inset training days are school days and can be included in the 5 or more consecutive days where there was intent to be absent for term time leave. I can’t find anything about this online, does anyone know if this is true?

How would the school possibly know you're away? You can't be absent of the school isn't open to children

From the info we recently got yes it includes inset days .. so if you booked a week and were away 3 and there were then 2 inset days yes you'd get fined!! It's shocking!!

How would they know?

I think the only way you'd be affected is if you took them out term time and over the inset days and the total days including the inset days hit the trigger.

If they were away during a school holiday and the inset days and attended on all the days the school was open for them to attend then it would not be fineable because who would know.

I read that as well. Its mad because like you say, how would they know? Its not like the school is open for the kids to attend - in fact if they did, they would be turned away

Have worked in my school for over 20 years. Not heard of this un-enforceable change in the rule, but INSET is outside of the 190-day term-time, so holiday time for students. You can do what you wish with it.

How would school know? If school isn’t open to children and they’ve not done a registration then they are not absent.
The only way this would be even noticed was if the inset was in the middle of a week, of possibly the middle of a term??

Thanks for the replies, we were thinking of taking say 4 days around the inset so it would be obvious that we were away for it. I also believed that inset days were not countable for term time but it seems they’re really cracking down on this, but this year is the first I’ve heard of this new rule.