Holidays in school time

[nutcracker]

Did anyone know that if you take your child on holiday in school time then you can now be fined ???????????? Personally i think it's ridiculous, I have only ever taken dd1 out of school for holiday once but i asked for books and worksheets for her to do. What do you think ????

hmb, "One of the biggest problems that we have in the lower half of the school is that parents will not support us when we put in place punishments like after school detentions for repeated misbehaviour." Does that mean the parents tell the kids they don't need to do the detention? After having signed the home-school agreement? (I seem to remember having a discussion like this on here once before!) It's no wonder so many parents think it's OK to take the kids away in termtime.

Is zebra still around? I was wondering how this kind of thing works in the US. Do schools there give detentions? Do parents support the schools' attempts at discipline?

We (Essex) are having "6 terms" introduced from 2005. Summer holidays will be cut to 4 weeks and 2 week Easter break will be a fixed time.

As for the original posting - never taken mine out of school (only Year 1 and 3). Have a friend who does it EVERY year 2/3 times a year and then moans because the teachers send home the work to catch up on. Soon shuts up when I ask her why should my children be made to re-do stuff when hers at sitting on the beach

I think teachers do a fab job - and I completely understand why you feel disheartened sometimes by the parents - I feel exactly the same when us nursery workers get knocked!

Oh jangh you wouldnt believe the crap parents believe from kids.

awwwh- slinky!!

i think this thread could be 'closed'.........
what do you all think?

I shall do my sign,

clooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosed

Most of the parents do support us, but there are a small group who do not. And guess which kids cause us the most problems? I teach a child who has done no homework at all this school year. Her mother will not let her come to ASDT. She thinks that we are 'picking on' her child. And the kid just doesn't come to break or lunchtime DTs. And yes, she signed the home school agreement.

There is a very small group of parents who, I think, delight in thumbing their noses (or rather flicking the Vs ) at the school. Often they hated their own school time, and may well have had a hard time with corporal punishment. They now know that there is almost nothing that we can do to dicipline their kids without their permission, and delight in the chaos their kids can carry out! I hasten to add these are in the smallest of minorities.

Other parents will simply not believe that their kids could ever do wrong! Some go as far as to say 'My kid doesn't lie'. Well, I love my kids, but I know that they can tell the odd porkey. So do I for that matter!

Soz, that was after you called time!

Sorry - can I just hijack thread again??

Talking of fab teachers.....

my DD1 and DS1 (now Year 3 and 1) both had the same Reception who was the most fantastic person. I used to help in the classroom and she used to reduce me to tears in the way she treated her class - every one was an individual etc.

Sadly, she left in July to take up a 2year contact in Bangkok - very sad day for us

Can you imagine how my kids felt when on Christmas Eve they received a letter from her in Bangkok wishing them a Happy Christmas etc - talking about her life in Thailand. They were over the moon and thrilled and said letter is a treasured possession.

After chatting with some other parents in DS1 Reception class last year - she had sent a little letter to every child!!

SLinky - I am glad that you and your kids have had such a positive experience.
I still remember a really inspirational teacher that i had when I was 10 years old....they really make a difference, don;t they?

Aren't there any school admin staff here with an opinion as surely they're going to be the ones dealing with all the paperwork etc. I can see quite a few headteachers passing the responsibility of the fines onto the already overworked admin staff. I don't work in a school, but have daily contact with school admin staff and all of them say that there aren't enough hours in the day to do all the work that is expected of them. A new government initiative for this, and one for that usually means more admin as well as the work that has to be done by teachers.

Ailsa - that isn't always the case...
OUr admin staff deal with dinner money, photcopying (some anyway), letters etc
our teachers still do paperwork....oooh the unions would go crazy!!!

Well, Coddy, I could read and write before I went to school. It's just a fact. I hated beyond words those smug bumper stickers that some teachers had 'if you can read this, thank a teacher'....er, not in my case, mate. So no, I didn't learn to read and write at primary school. Lots of other countries only start formal education at seven, so I fail to see what is so urgent to learn at four (FFS), five or six that can be more important than seeing another culture, being with your family and maybe even learning to swim, which I also learned on a family holiday and not at school. Or indeed why it is so much more vital to English kids than to, say, German or Swiss kids. Are they behind? I think not. Some teachers sometimes seem awfully sensitive to any suggestion that it is possible to learn anything at all without their help. As for children of seven doing 'badly' in tests...well, I very strongly disapprove of testing children at that age, full stop. Playing is learning and children can do that better on holiday than at school IMO. I think this is controlling, stupid and ridiculous. As I said before, if school isn't compulsory, how the hell can you fine parents for taking a bit of holiday in school time? As I said, as a matter of courtesy, schools should be informed if children will be on holiday, and that it is different to take a child about to sit exams on holiday for weeks on end, but all this fuss about taking a child of five or six on holiday???? Of course it cannot possibly harm them long term.

I have to admit, I loathed every second of my own education. Thought it was all crap, stupid, patronising and pointless. Compulsory PE??? What fresh hell is THAT? I hated my teachers, felt utter comtempt for idiotic rules, hideous scratchy uniforms and the whole package. I never felt happy until I was at work which was so rewarding by contrast. It does colour my feelings, I know that. Personally, I would have learned much more and been much happier on holiday, reading my head off, than stuck in geography. But maybe that's just me. I'm not anti learning - not at all, I learn every day of my life - I just hated school with a passion. Still do, I suspect. So no rules about forcing your kids into school and being fined for showing them the pyramids insteas will ever get my vote. I'm sure all you teachers are fantastic people who work miracles all day, every day, but I still stick very much by my points about under sevens at the very least.

ALoha - everyone is allowed their opinion! It is very clear that your bad experiences of the education system have totally coloured your views. That is understandable and I respect the issues that you have raised. However, my point was that the comments that were made earlier implied that people who taught children of this age were, at the very least, wasting their time. I don't think I am being over-sensitive in this reaction either. I don't know - maybe the 'tone; of posts have got mixed up here - it is very easy to do!
I am sorry that you have had such a bad experience and hope that which ever way you have chosen to educate your kids is a more positive experience than yours. You sound as though you were one of the lucky ones who did very well without school input.

In response to your last comment - 'I'm sure all you teachers are fantastic people who work miracles all day, every day'.
We are human, we try our best and if we didn't give a s**t we would run a mile from this job, believe me.

hm, aloha - agree about taking under-7s out of school for a short time not being the end of the world. We took a total of 3 weeks - with half-term in the middle - when dd1 was 8 and dd2 was 5. (MInd you dd2 then spent 2 years (Y1 and Y2) with a teacher on tranquillisers, and as a result was way behind other children the same age who had different teachers, and missed out some things altogether...)

Even 7-11s can maybe miss a few days without falling irrevocably behind, though I wonder if Germans and Swiss take their children out of school for holidays after 7?

11-16 is different and I would never take mine out of school on a whim, let alone 2 or 3 whims as mentioned by hmb.

I also agree that it is not the end of the world.....

Beginning to wish i'd never posted the thread now
Oh and as i only started coming on mn about a week ago i didn't know that there had been a previous thread on this SORRY
Has put me off a bit to be honest

I actually got all worried and said to my dh last night, 'What if ds feels the same about school as I did?" And he just grunted and said, "It's three years away...stop worrying' and went to sleep!
He might love it, I suppose. He liked school, but I'm a lot like my mum, who couldn't stick it either and left at 16 despite being intelligent enough to go to grammar school and eventually getting a degree in her 30s. I sincerely hope the school-hating 'gene' hasn't been passed on to a third generation A friend of mine with similar experiences to me is now home educating her four (yikes!) children - the mere idea of which makes my blood run cold. (Oh, that's not an anti home ed comment BTW, just a personal sick horror!)

Sort of dragging the thread back to it's origins. I found a message on another newsgroup about this. In Holland the same rule is very strictly applied. Children can only have an additional 2 weeks with the signed approval of the Head Teacher. This is only done if it can be shown that the parents' employer couldn't give them leave at any other time. Additional days are given for a death in the family, with a limit on the days give based on the closeness of the relationsip to the child. And additional day is given if the funeral is out of the local district. The rules are very strictly applied and the courts become involved.

Does anyone have any experience of this in Holland? And if so what do they do about the cost/ poverty issue?

Jan H,
In Switzerland you'd really struggle to to get permission to take your kids out of formal school at all during term times. Kindergarten is, as far as I can tell, a little more flexible. Different towns stagger the holidays so if you happen to have kids in different areas/systems (which is far less common than in UK) there can be problems of timing. As far as I can tell the situation with prices of flights and holidays in peak times is just as bad even though the weeks differ to UK.

Nutcracker - please don't be put off!!! Mumsnet just sometimes has some discussions about things.....it is bound to since there are so many different people on here with different opinions. We all agree to disagree = please don't but put off, Nutcracker - I will feel dreadful if you don't come back

nutcracker, if you mean my post, I was talking about a previous thread on home-school agreements (side-track), not holidays - and anyway we often get more than one thread on the same thing - please don't feel bad, it's a good thread!