Have you taken your kids out of school for holiday to save money

[NC2125]

Good morning everyone

Just need some perspective here please.

I’m looking at holidays for October and we can save £500-1000 if we leave 3 days before the half term starts. Is it acceptable to take a child in reception out for 3 days to save quite a lot of money, money which we need elsewhere. Is it something that people do or is it a no go? Thank you in advance.

Not to save money but because I work in a school, my son is in primary and my daughter secondary.

we have slightly different holidays that would make it impossible to get more than a 7 day holiday. So I’ve taken my daughter out of high school for 3 days to give us more time on holiday and making now to while going.

travelling on day 1 and 7 means paying through the nose in school holidays for the sake of only 5 days.

my daughter has 100% attendance outside of this, I don’t see any issue with it.

Make it worthwhile going *

So it tends to be AI / package holiday type trips where the costs are significantly cheaper. As another poster has said, those claiming the children benefitted more educationally from the holiday than they did being in school are talking rubbish - children don’t learn much from a week at an AI resort! There are other benefits of course, such as spending time together as a family, but let’s not pretend that little Johnny is coming home from a week in the pool and mini disco with a new interest in Spanish culture and history.

(@Jellybunny98 this is not aimed at you - I appreciate you are just pointing out cost differences and have not made any claims about the educational benefits of term-time
holidays 😊)

That's not how learning works, though. You can make the curriculum as crowded as you like, but it doesn't mean that kids will take it in, especially if they are tired.

Kids learn by repitition, so nothing is taught just once. If the kid in question is struggling and needs lots of repititions, then don't take them out. If they learn fast, then by all means take them out.

As pp stated schools are under pressure to keep attendance levels high. The same rules apply to all pupils but their bnhbiggest concern/focus in our LA area is with low attendance & pupils on free schools. Its those children that often 'miss out' on education. Primary children will be fine.

legally you can take your child out of school - compulsory school age is the term after their fifth birthday. So even if they are born in september they aren’t legally needed to be in school until the following term (jan). if you have summer children you have until the following september

I know that, but those that make the curriculum are seemingly unaware and therefore there is little time for pizza and films nowadays.

I’ve taught a lot of reception. A lot of people underestimate how important this year is given it’s literally the foundation year of the literacy and maths curriculum. By October we are teaching a new sound every single day, and children who miss them (for whatever reason) can struggle to catch up because funnily enough no, we don’t have spare 20 minute time slots we hadn’t planned on doing anything else 🙄 if a member of staff is catching up on lost learning because you took your child on holiday, that is time they will no longer be spending working with other children simply keeping up with the curriculum.

However, if they’re four and it’s only three days you won’t get in trouble. I would make sure you find out what phonics and maths they’ve missed and make sure you’ve caught them up with this yourself. This would actually also apply to any time period they are off sick too.

Reception age, ok. After that, never.

Haha … 100%

Iv done it for a week every year! Did get fined £80 per parent per child we have. Saves our family around £2000-3000 going in term time! 3 primary school children, wouldn’t do it during their GCSES but for primary iv felt it was worth it

Only once, when ds was 4 and we were offered a week's free skiing.

Four days, the fifth being a bank holiday. The school refused to approve it but the head mistress told us to have a lovely time 😊

Yes we did it every year until the exam years.

We are in Scotland so no fines and different attitudes to this. We often met English people on holiday who have just factored in the fines to the price of the holiday.

No, but only because now x husband is a teacher so we still wouldn’t have been able to go on family holidays. I would have done in primary. By the time they get to secondary they quite like being around for the crappy last week in school,

DS is about to start Year 2. We haven't taken him out for a holiday as of yet.

I think for a couple of days before a half term I might do it, but I wouldn't do it either end of a "big" break like Christmas or summer because I wouldn't want him to miss some of the nicer bits of being at school.

I also wouldn't take him out for any longer or right in the middle/start of a term. One because I wouldn't want him to miss that much (both learning and social sides) and two because we'd still have to cover the actual school holidays after and it just wouldn't be feasible.

I always thought "oh we'll just go in school time, like we did as kids" but things are different now. It's more pressure, you get fines, we both work so have to cover the holidays with AL etc.

Also, ds is autistic and the routine and structure of school really helps, so I wouldn't want to disrupt that or stress him out. He also can't do holiday clubs, so we need all our AL for the actual school holidays!

I do it every year. My kids deserve holidays, family time and memories - life is for living. That's it, basically.

I’m a teacher and I think it’s acceptable providing they have good attendance otherwise and are working towards their predicted targets/grades etc.

Plenty of people have family members or access to clubs in the holidays. Not everyone can take AL in the holidays anyway. I’m sure they have that covered.

I haven't but I know plenty that have. especially in reception. Some for two whole weeks! If child is not 5 yet then they do not compulsorily have to be in school which means you cant get fined i beleive (dont quote me though). I dont judge at all and I think neither will the school though be prepared for the standard snarly letter that school will be obliged to send .

My DH is dead against and is a school governor though which is why we havent done this. My son is just finishing y6 and has told me that basically no work has been done since they finished Sats! I would literally have saved hundreds on summer hols if we could have left last week. That really grates me.

at high school, it's less the done thing but I still dont think it's a big deal to miss say a day or two.

2 weeks in a year 10/11 no

3 days any age any time absolutely yes

But it doesn't matter for a kid who is doing fine with reading anyway. Not all kids need fine drilling in phonics.

I’m in Scotland and DC are now adults. We took our DC out of school for 2 weeks to go to Florida when they were 10 and 7 yrs old. DC1’s teacher said they would get more out of a holiday like that than they would being 2 weeks in the classroom.DC2’s teacher told them to keep a diary. We did the Everglades ,Kennedy Space centre as well as a couple of days at Disney.We saw alligators,raccoons and armadillos.
Neither DC’s education suffered. They both got top grades in all their exams and graduated with 1st class honour degrees. I would never have taken them out of school for a holiday once they were at high school.

We did that Florida stuff too, but in the Easter holidays.

@Chewbecca that’s one of the busiest times to go though, wouldn’t be my preference, and summer holidays is actually cheaper for Disney, but weather is challenging. DH is military so we have to work around his deployments, not everyone is able to go term time even if they want to (thankfully school understood that and we were never fined).

We did sometimes when DS was primary school age. That was mainly because my job didn't allow for me to take annual leave to fit school holidays.
Now I have a lot more flexibility and DS is at secondary school, he doesn't miss school to go on holiday.

Missing 3 days at reception age isn't going to impact your child's education.