School fines ?

[travelloverx]

Hi all

My little boy starts school in September when he's just turned 4, he won't be 5 until the summer

We have a family wedding in Asia in January and would be taking him out of school for 2.5 weeks

Am I right in thinking there won't be any fines/repercussions because he's not at compulsory school age yet? Or can they still fine for a 4 year old?

Could we lose our school place if we take him away for over 2 weeks unauthorised? I'm just worried but this is a very important event otherwise we'd usually stick to/around school hols

You’ll be fine legally, fines only kick in the start of the term after the child turns 5. School may not like it, but some are quite good - we’ve taken older kids out of school for family weddings overseas and our school were fine. Most LEAs don’t have capacity to process all the fines so focus on repeated incidences anyway.

I would just speak to the school. They may very well list it as an excused absence. I took my then 5 year old to the US for an important family event in term time during her reception year.

It was a once in a lifetime sort of thing. Both dh and I had to attend and we had no one who she could stay with, as we don't have any close family who could provide childcare. Plus she is half American, so I explained that it was important for her to have some connection to her nationality and her overseas family. Because of the length of the flight (11 hours), it was not possible to make the trip shorter than 2 weeks to give her time to adjust to the time difference.

They were absolutely fine with it. I can't remember if it was officially classed as an unauthorised absence or not, but nothing happened. They wished her a lovely trip and that was it. No fines, no letters, nothing.

I took my eldest (summer born so still 4yo) out of reception for a holiday (not an important family occasion, just a week in the sun). It went down as an unauthorised absence but no fine.

He won’t lose his school place for that, if you let the school know that he’ll be away and the date that he’ll be returning then there will be no issues.