Term-time holidays to be banned, with fines.....

[LilyBolero]

Discuss

Right. Someone like me, who has two dc with disabilities, but neither of them are 'severe' enough for DLA another thread on it's own, that is. can't afford a holiday AT ALL.

We go to a particular charity, the Family Fund, and they pay for our family to have either a long weekend (Fri morning-Mon afternoon), or a week, in a caravan park. It will be the only holiday this family gets.

HOWEVER. The charity cannot afford to pay for school holiday prices. So if the parent os going to get fined £££ - they can't accept the holiday that will be their ONLY form of break AT ALL.

So, they just NEVER get to go on holiday or away.

AND mostly, they only get this holiday paid for ONCE through the Family Fund - for the whole childhood of their DC with a disability. Because most people only ask once.

So their family may have NEVER been on holiday since that child was born with a disability - and now they will NEVER get to go. Full stop.

OH - and even shelf-stackers can't take their holidays in school holiday time 99% of the time. Because that's when the store is at it's busiest. So even a lot of NMW workers, who in NO way will be able to afford to pay this fine, will now be totally unable to have a family holiday for the entirety of their DC's schooling. Which is .

I myself have only been on ONE long weekend in the 8 years since I was diagnosed with epilepsy. Two years ago, the Family Fund paid for me and my dc to have a long weekend in Yarmouth. I had to take the dc out of school for the Friday, but the Monday was a 'holiday' day. So for the sake of ONE DAY in 10 years (Can't do term-time now as DD has started one of her GCSE's in Y9), my dc would have missed out on their ONLY holiday for their entire childhoods, in DS1 and DS2's case! Because there is NO WAY ON EARTH I could have found the money to cover the fine, and that was the only weekend that they had left to offer.

Gove is a twatbag of the highest order. That is all.

Its just a ridiculous to take the power away from Heads who know families personally and therefore know of their personal circumstances or if the child frequently misses a lot of school and hand it to people to whom it will just be a list of names!
I thought we lived in a free country and therefore if I can prove that my child is in no way suffering from missing school then providing it does not exceed the 10 days it should be a problem.

Holidaywoe - all the things you describe sound lovely and are, of course, educational. They are things that should be done in holiday time though.

They were done in a holiday it just so happened that the holiday was happening in 3 days of school time but it doesnt mean that my children werent learning. You yourself have just said they are educational. The 3 days they missed at the end of term werent half as educational believe me.

If they do bring this in then they should think about staggering the school holidays across the country as they do in other countries so that not all the schools are off at the same time.

If they bring in the proposed holiday changes in my area my hols will be different to the kids anyway!

I'm wondering how far this will all go..... Will travel agents refuse to complete bookings in term time for children? Maybe it will be 'against the law' for holiday companies to take children during these times.

I suspect that more than a few travel companies would go bust if that happened Lilac!!

This was David Cameron talking in 2010....
""What would strengthen families and make it easier to bring up kids - and how can we support that? It's by asking those questions that you arrive at our family-friendly reform agenda.

"Not laissez-faire, just leaving families to get on with it in a hostile world. Not nanny-state, some bureaucratic system telling parents what to do.

"Just thoughtful, sensible, practical and modern support to help families with the issues they face."""

Link here

It is depressing how little parents in the uk value school - in most countries in the world for most of time people have been/are desperate to get schooling for their children ( schooling, ie teaching by qualified teachers). The lesson teh kids will learn by parents wilfully ignoring school rules is that school rules are not to be respected. If tyou sing up for something you have a compact to follow the rules, or try to change them, not just those that are convenient. Ironic that half the threads on the education sub forum is about parents desperate to get their kids into the 'best' local school, then blithely undermine the schoo by devaluing its teaching in the eyes of theor kids once they are in

I suppose it costs the government a massive amount to provide the education in the first place..... Whatever it amounts to per child per day should be the 'fine'

Will there be exemptions for e.g. the children of terminally ill parents?

The Christmas holidays were so arranged that there was one day to get home after New Year break (term started on 3rd Jan) so impossible to get cheap flights from my parents' in Eire. I just accepted this, but felt mildly peeved that THEN other parents who found it equally badly timed took the whole week off to go ski-ing, with the permission of the head - on the basis that ski-ing was so educational, and soo difficult to fit in a week ski-ing over Christmas break otherwise (NY of course v expensive time to go ski-ing). It was the highly motivated parents, whose children had excellent grades, excellent attendance btw who the head so readily granted extra authorised hols to.
I don't think it should be done on that basis. Either we all should be allowed extra days hols or none of us. I don't think it should be a reward for good behaviour

Also my kids have been ill a lot with cough and cold viruses this term. And off for a week each at varying times. I wonder whether they might have better spent the time on holiday getting some fresh air away from germ laden classrooms.

The article (both the one linked here and the Guardian one) both say that DofE has refused to comment on this, on the grounds that it is a leak.

I suppose anyone who really knows the answer would be unlikely to leak further on a public site like MN.

But does anyone know what the proposals actually say? Nothing has been leaked about bereavement absences etc. Nor do we know if this has emerged from the politicians or the bureaucrats.

I really like the parents I'm being mean about btw I just feel cross that some of us take the holiday dates so literally and others of us just cut through the cr**p and think So, this holiday in Cyprus will be educational for my children, it's the only time I can take it, so I'm just GOING TO BRAVE IT OUT. I'm jealous that other people can see more clearly what's important and some of us just get bullied into submission by rules and regulations.

This is one thing they should leave up to head teachers, who know their school and their children best. There are a lot of good reasons for kids to be absent in term time, and a lot of bad ones, and you just can't legislate for all that. So leave it to those who can judge individual situations and provide the necessary flexibility.

PS FWIW if people want to take kids out of school for a bit, it is perfectly legal to de-register them from school for a fortnight and then re-register them when they get back. The Government keeps that pretty quiet as administratively it's a nightmare for the Local Authority.

PPS BTW I wouldn't recommend that course of action as you may lose your child's preferred school place. But it is, as I say, perfectly legal.

Ooh boffinmum..... How interesting!!

Shit, hope I haven't started a trend there.

All this bullsh&t about how educational and important these holidays are for your children.

Well, they are not. maybe in the spoiled, entitled culture of Britain they are, maybe in your mind.

For kids putting up a tent in a garden of a relative or a friend, or going for a sleepover are fun adventures. No need to trek to Croatia, Maldives, whatever. Yes, that is fun, but it is a luxury and in no way essential to anyone, less a "right".

I don't see how a supposedly "educational" trip to a skiing resort or a hot country is any different from keeping your kids at home for a week and watching Jeremy Kyle.

Both show an equal lack of respect for the school and the teachers.

People never respect what they get for free (ie education in the UK), and this lack of respect shows in the attitudes on this thread.

I think that the school should have the possibility to let kids get out of school for a day or more in case of restrictive disability in the family (like poster upthread), funeral, sickness.

Someone else posted that in Belgium you lose your school place if you take them out for no reason. Sounds reasonable I think.

We are taking dd out for a week in april, she is 6, has had no time off and has never been late. We are going to Australia to visit her grandfather, who is dying of cancer, to say goodbye as dd is unlikely to see him again. We will also be celebrating her great grandmothers 90th birthday, she is also not in the best of health and this may be the last time we see her too. The school has given me no end of crap about taking her. As a parent i think it should be up to me to decide what is best for my child.

Chandon have you read the thread?

People aren't talking about trips to the Maldives,for many it's a week in a tent or caravan most of the time.Camping in the UK is extortionate in Aug.Who wants to camp in Feb?You need ££££ to kit yourself out anyway.Even camping isn't a cheap holiday anymore.With the cost of petrol daytrips aren't that affordable or cost effective.

Some kids don't have gardens.Some kids never leave the city they live in.That is not ok.Kids need aspirations.Life is different to what it was years ago,the world is on everybody's doorstep.Children who experience the wider world(wether it be the other end of their own country or abroad) are going to have advantages.But Gove and the Tories don't care about that as their kids won't be affected in fact it will suit families like theirs with kids privately educated as their holiday costs will go down and there will be fewer people cluttering everywhere up.

I travelled a lot as a child,my kids have never even been on a plane and sorry re experience I can see first hand what they're missing out on.I show them books etc but it's not the same as experiencing first hand travel.We've done France twice(paid for by grandparents) and the education they got from that alone has been priceless.Many families won't have grandparents to fund life experience for them.

Holidays in school holidays will rocket(holiday companies already struggling will have to to compensate for the lost income out of school holiday)so even more kids are going to be priced out of going on holiday.It will literally be only the rich kids who experience life away from home.

Can see both sides tbh, but really, what is the point of £100 fine when you're saving about five times that by going in term time?

The thing is, I'm probably in the 'no holidays in term time' camp. I never have taken the kids out, I don't think I ever would, we don't do expensive August holidays.

But I totally resent Michael Gove blaming truancy on parents who, with the school's permission, take their kids out for a planned week. That isn't the cause of the problem of truancy ffs. It should be up to the school and the head teacher. Michael Gove is imo a maniac, who has some sort of weird idea of what school should be, and is trying to impose it on everyone. Like his stupid E-Bacc, which doesn't include subjects like RE, Music or Art . Or his ridiculous ideas on shortening the school holidays, or making everyone study maths to age 18.

So, my view is - keep it as it is, let the heads decide whether it's a reasonable request or not, and then regulate the holiday companies so that there isn't a massive incentive to go away in term time.