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

[LilyBolero]

Discuss

"But being absent without authorisation from school is truancy" - yes but the stupidity is removing the power from HTs to give authorisation.

As well as my friend's primary age kid who is in asia right now at a cultural festival, when i was in my final year at school i already had all my grades (scotland) and unconditional offers for university so i went away with the girlguides to work in a mexican slum and it CHANGED MY LIFE... i could not have gone in summer due to the weather (and i worked all summer to save up for uni anyway). My HT sent me on my way with his blessing. Something he wouldn't be able to do now

my kids Junior school closed early one day so that the staff could get home in time for the world cup England kickoff.
Those of us parents who were working that day were V V V pissed off
I reported the head to the LEA
but they had gone home too

pot kettle black

jubilee and royal wedding holidays clearly have NO impact on learning after all

Talkinpeace, although closing early to watch football is undoubtly wrong. The whole school being closed is very different to a child missing lessons. When schools are closed for holidays and bank holidays children aren't missing out as there is nothing to miss out on.

If teaching is so important why rent inset days all during the holidays rather than school time ....

Absence does affect the ofsted - even authorised absence. When everyone is getting satisfactory ofsted reports Gove can force us to become academies which is his primary aim.

MNHQ - you really do need to get him on for a Q&A so we can rip him to shreds offer him biscuits.

Why rent? Why ARENT!!!

Maybenow From what I read that type of 'experience' would still be allowed its the 2 weeks away every year type thing they are trying to stop which I can fully understand.

I have mixed feelings about this. As a teacher I do not get to go on holiday in term time anyway, but I do understand the cost implications. We just don't go abroad and often don't go away at all.

On the other hand I do find that my classes are massively disrupted by holidays during term time. I teach early years too - but we have plans, assessments, school productions, accountability where coverage is concerned. Random children missing great chunks of time disrupt this process and cause a great deal of extra work and fitting of stuff into what is, already, a very tight timetable.

As for those claiming that this is solely to attack those of lesser income and vindictively designed to ensure that those poor people never get a holiday I would imagine that Gove is trying to make sure that all children get an education. You may disagree with what he is doing (as I say I can see both sides, but probably only because I am a teacher ) but I think this is going too far.

sirzy
they only decided at lunchtime - those of us at work arrived at normal time to find bored and upset kids in a nearly empty school

if the kids are taken out of school and learn and experience and do positive things I still think that it should be the teachers discretion

like when I took mine to the US for a week for a family funeral / one off huge reunion - no regrets, the school should NEVER be penalised for allowing me that.

oh GOD the training days chestnut.

Training days are taken from the holidays, your children still get their mandatory amount of educational days a year.

Also the amount of time my 3 have wasted time with supply or assistants teaching due to staff on courses,PPA time and illness let alone sponsored this and that afternoons makes it laughable that 5 days away experiencing new things as a family and having a lot of much needed one to one time(often very educational)is frowned upon.

Cook - they are in the 'holidays'. They were taken from teachers holiday entitlement; the children don't lose any taught time.

We are taking DS2 out of school. DS1 is Home educated.

I find it very strange that people agree the school has a right to impose 100% attendance. The education act states that a parent must ensure a child has a full time and efficient educations suited to their needs and level of learning.

It doesn't say that school is compulsory so therefore I can't see any legal justification for this nonsense.

Plenty of children learn whilst on holiday. We are off to Wookey Hole, Cheddar gorge and Bristol to look at rocks and fossils. I'm quite certain both children will benefit just as much from this as they would from spending half the day in the playground, a quarter of it sitting on a mat and the other quarter lined up in a corridor

Cookclean, technically the professional development days are in fact part of the official holidays for the children, who are only supposed to be in school 190 days a year. So the five training days are on top of the usual term time working period for teachers. It just feels like the children are being short changed because it's usually pretty disruptive for the parents.

How dare those naughty teachers bother to keep there skills up to date hey MrsMeffley - anyone would think they did it to make sure the children got the best possible education!

Supply teachers are given exact work to cover with the children. Most schools use familiar supply when possible and the teachers are expected to continue with the work that the class teacher had already planned.

It isn't like the old days when a supply teacher meant you played heads down, thumbs up for hours on end...

They do need those five days to keep up with things like changes to exam regs, changes to government policy, updating knowledge on arrangements for special needs, making sure they are not duplicating projects across different year groups, making sure the children's academic progression is properly planned for and so on. It's pretty crucial stuff.

Sirzy - it is great for them to keep their skills up to date - but they should be made to publish - and stick to the dates of these inset days in advance - we were given 1 terms notice of our school moving 3 of these days AFTER we (and many others) booked holidays and then were told to APPLY FOR AUTHORISATION for our "holiday in term time"

Nothing will stop people taking their children out of schools for holidays.
It has always happened and it always will.

And tbh, if not in GCSE/A Level years, then a week or two once a year really will not harm a child's education.

I have been a teacher and I still work in schools, and I can assure you that for the vast majority of children a term time holiday really doesn't have that big an effect on their overall education.

I always had term time holidays when growing up. My dad only got shut down holidays and they were never in school holidays. We never went abroad but we did spend valuable time together as a family for a week or two once a year. And yet all three of us siblings went on to university, got good degrees, got decent jobs and live good lives.

Education is very important but education does not only occur in the classroom with 30 other children and a teacher. And sometimes spending time together as a family, away from the day to day rigours of life, can be just as equally important too.

Mine are a mix of reception, primary and gcse. So nobody gets a holiday

Inset days are given out at the end of the summer term for the whole of the next year in my school. Chopping and changing is only going to alienate the parents.

It's ok for teachers though isn't it, because they actually get the summer holidays off, and all the half terms.

What about us that can't get leave during the school hols?

I would have no issue taking my children out of school for a week. They are at primary school. It really will have no impact whatsoever on their future.
In fact, my children do a bit of extra work that is not set by school fairly regularly. They also read books that are in addition to those they get from school.

Dh is a contractor and doesn't take holidays in the middle of a contract. Usually the best time for a holiday is at the end of a contract which doesn't always coincide with a school holiday.

I hate being dictated like this.

If my children were playing truant, causing trouble, not up to the level they should be due to missing school then fine, but if not, then go away and let me have some say in my childs upbringing.

My dds reception class all received 100% attendance certificates last term. The certificate actually credited this to the fact that the whole class had put in 100% attendance and therefore everyone got a certificate.

So the fact that several kids were off vomiting at home and at least three of them had been taken off for the parents to jaunt off for shooting weekends in Scotland didn't count then?

If the rules are flouted, who is actually going to care? Who is ever likely to actually get fined for this? What a load of scaremongering. Typical DM.

It's not the teachers proposing this. Why has it turned into teacher bashing?

Its not even teachers that set inset days. Some cases it's not even the head.

Now can we all get back to Gove/Gov bashing?