To ask if you agree with term time holidays to please sign this petition...

[TermTimeHolidays]

here

It needs 100,000 signatures before it can be discussed in parliament.

SDT are you seriously saying that one week off a year in term time will close doors ?? Massive over reaction. Another sweeping statement .

DD1 passed all her exams with flying colours.

And qualifications DO matter to employers. If you have 50 people applying for one job, you have to filter them somehow, and qualifications is the main way this happens. I have sat on interview panels, and have been involved in going through the application forms to decide who got an interview, and qualifications were key.

My dh is in senior management, and he says exactly the same.

But you don't have to believe this. You can let your children get a substandard education because you chose to prioritise fun and 'colour', and let them be less than they could be. Your choice, but they will bear the consequences.

Acer - where did I say missing a week would close doors?

I said having poor qualifications closes doors, and education is how you get the best qualifications you are capable of - and if you miss chunks of the curriculum, these cannot be replaced by the life lessons you learn on holiday.

Missing chunks of curriculum will negatively impact your results - I don't see how anyone can say they don't..

Jesus, some kid wasn't allowed time off to attend his parents wedding!
They had 5+ years to do it in before he started school

Mostly popp

We have become such an entitled nation though;we bang about our rights and have huge expectations as to what we should be allowed to have as a 'basic human right'
Most of it is rubbish. The middle classes are the worst IMO ( and I am one).
My eldest is just 15 and my youngest in year 2, the others are spread in between ( as you might expect). I have very little money.

In the 13 years my children have been attending school(s) the only time I have ever taken them out in term time was for a an annual 1 day trip to the museums in London, simply to avoid the holiday crush ( and so that they could actually see the exhibits) and it was with the school's blessing.

I have never done term time holidays, it wouldn't occur to me. To all those people here talking about holiday being educational I would say that they offer an experience that isn't school, but life itself is educational and a holiday is just another experience in life.
If you think a skiing holiday is important then why do you have to do it in term time?
If you can't afford it then bloody well do something else like most people do.

What mummy has said. Some of us have jobs that don't allow time off in school holidays, still wanting a holiday together as a family does not make us entitled.

As for correcting my spelling that was just pathetic, I use a tablet with bizarre autocorrect/predictive text and was busy dealing with a potty training toddler. I got a's in English literature and language for all it matters.

"Who the fuck gets to make that decision for your child?!"

That'd be that child's parents, when they choose to get married abroad in term time.

Yanbu I have signed my husband is self-employed in the leisure industry and most of his work is in all school holidays. Why should he work sometimes 7 days a week 16 hours or more and then not be able to get a holiday at the end of it.

We have managed two holidays this year in term time BUT last year I took my 2 children out of school for a week so my step dd could come on holiday with us (different county's and different half terms) ..... Was this wrong? Does DSD not deserve a holiday with her dad and step brother and sister?

I live in leicestershire which tends to have earlier holidays so am lucky really that its cheap for me. I agree with the idea of staggered breaks and shorter summer.
TMI AlERT

What's even more annoying for me though is ds age 13 and with asd told his teacher he had diarrhoea on Tuesday! He didn't , he actually didn't clean up properly hence marks in his pants BUT he hasn't been allowed to go to school for 48 hours. There is nothing wrong with him. The teachers took his word for it and so he is home watching DVDs in his room whilst I work from home. Needless time off!

I am in Scotland, mummymeister, so no need for your sympathy. My school does, and says, very little when pupils jet off during term time. Hence my frustration!

Do exactly as you wish with your child. Let them retake exams. Allow them time off for "vital" holidays. Just don't blame the teachers when their results don't meet your expectations.

I totally get that some employers won't grant leave during term time. With the exception of the armed forces and teaching staff where it would be strategically impossible I imagine, why are people bleating for parents' right to limit their children's access to their full quota of schooling? Where are the calls for employees' rights to annual leave out of term time?

Seems to me that adults rights as employers or as (ffs) brides and grooms who fancy a foreign wedding on the cheap, or skiers, or what have you trump children's rights to participate as fully as possible in laying the foundations for their own futures.

Good point Jenai. I am sure most workplaces could enforce some sort of rota system whereby parents of school age children got a weeks holiday in one of the spring/summer school holidays every 2/3 years which isn't ideal but its better than having to take children out of school.

Of course not everywhere will be able to do that but I am sure there is room for a bit more flexibility if workplaces wanted to try.

Acer - when you said "...Life is for living, not sitting in a class room obeying grey rules and regulations and learning about fictional characters....", I got the clear impression that school didn't matter to you at all, not that you were arguing for a few days off in term time. Hence my posts about the importance of education and qualifications.

All that said, I do have a lot of sympathy for people who cannot ever get holiday in the school holidays, and I can completely understand the frustration that must come from never being able to timetable a family holiday during school holidays.

I still don't see how a fortnight in Magaluf (or Cornwall, or wherever) can replace all the curriculum elements a child will miss - especially if they are in senior school.

I do wonder whether, if everyone boycotted the holiday companies/holiday destinations for the whole of the peak season one year, that would make the holiday companies rethink their pricing policies.

Or perhaps different areas of the country could have their summer holidays at different times - but make the areas big enough that the chances of a family having children under two different holiday schedules was close to nil. Scotland already does this - we break up at the end of June and went back to school in early August - and I think it would work just fine if the rest of the UK were split up into, say, four or five areas, which staggered their holidays.

I've signed! I agree with snow mummy, wouldn't (probably) take them out of school either when around exam time, during secondary or if they were struggling across the board academically but generally speaking during primary I don't really see the problem with it. I certainly wouldn't past age 15 when they're in GCSES.

Life experiences are priceless and life is too short to miss out on things. I love camping- go every year and will continue to do so hopefully indefinitely but anyone pretending that its the same as a week spent around a pool and beach in sunshine is wrong- but that's another argument.

Allowing limited term time off would enable more children to experience more things and that- within reason should never be a bad thing providing the parents have the best Interests of the children at heart. A parent active in their child's education should know what they're working on at any given time and strive to supplement school learning with life learning at the same time, this can be enhanced by real life examples like volcanoes, mountains, pyramids etc. Amongst other things.

"I don't normally pick up on mistakes but, when I am reading a post listing a long and illustrious education, boasting about how time off school made no difference to said education, and it contains such howlers I am afraid my inner pedant kicks in."

Oh the irony.

Almost as hilarious as Debs' 5 holidays in a century claim.

Well, I am off to have a go at the people moaning about bedroom tax. I LIVE IN A CARDBOARD BOX UNDER A BRIDGE AND I MANAGE JUST FINE.

You have a cardboard box? Well of course you manage just fine if you live in such luxury!!

What edendance said.

YABU

Echo a lot of comments here:

• time together is essential, but expensive holidays away are not. True, kids like them as much as parents, but would also have a good time camping (if you have to go abroad, France is fab for this) or just doing day trips to places in the UK. The prices for that don't change much during the year
• head teacher can allow flexibility where it really is needed - eg comment on petition about Armed Forces. I'd buy that, but probably they would get it even if I don't sign. Also for family events, eg weddings abroad, as long as it didn't cost more than a day or two from the start of term, as this can be an issue too.
• why shouldn't travel companies make some money in the school holidays? Yes, staggering them a bit might help in the short run, but if they can't make decent profits when demand is high, there will be redundancies ere long. Nobody wins there.
• sure, holidays can be educational. How many really are? We're culture vultures, but most I've seen just spend most of the time on the beach or by the pool. DD deserves a better future than that will set her up for

Anyway, when did everything start becoming a "human right"? Even education doesn't rank high alongside decent food, clean water and reasonable housing. My parents always treated holidays as a luxury and this usually meant we just visited my grandma, since she lived by the coast so we were lucky there. Sure, I envied other people's trips away, but even then I never regarded them as essential and still don't. A "holiday" is anything pleasant that's out of the norm, so day trips are fine and mean you can have a holiday every weekend, so what's the big deal about robbing school time for them?

"...and qualifications were key.

My dh is in senior management, and he says exactly the same."

Bizarrely, my husband is in very senior management too, running his own business, and just last night he said exactly the opposite! He has lots of people applying for a senior job he is interviewing for atm, but although they have all the right bits of paper, they are just lacking a certain something.

The problem with a national education system is that because it has to cover the whole country, it goes for a 'one size fits all' approach. Some people thrive on it, others don't. My brother left school with no qualifications, has had a fabulous life so far, and earns a proper lot of money. I went to a very poor school, eventually went to university, but ended up in a profession which does not require any qualifications that can be obtained through state-funded education. It also happens to be one of the highest paid professions in the UK.

So seeing where life can lead you, I believe that the most important aspect of a childhood is not the education, but the childhood itself. My DD's school is always going on about how an education is a once in a lifetime opportunity, well they are wrong. A childhood is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Plenty of people feel their education was somehow not right the first time round and go for another one as an adult, (me included.) But no matter how much you try to recreate it, you will never get back that sense of wonder you had as a child. I take my kids out of school because I believe I can help that sense of wonder, show them things they might not otherwise see and take them places they might not otherwise go. So shoot me.

Well I spoke to our ht today who has given us his blessing and says have a good holiday and we won't be fined, he understands our circumstances are difficult and tho he is not allowed to official authorise the holiday he says go and have a good time. Plus the esp works in conjunction with him when looking at attendence and we with get flagged up as long as they stay above 95% which is ten days, we are going for five. So a bit of leaway still for illness but if need be he will vouch for us and argue our case with the lea. Interestingly he said it's not just attendance that triggers a fine they look at other stuff such as lateness (we are never late) and for patterns in attendance etc so he doesn't think we will have a problem as he knows the ewo and they look at each case individually. He also said they normally try other strategies before fines such as arranging a meeting with ewo to see what can be done to help a family etc.

So thankfully in my local authority there still seems to be a common sense approach, but it does seem to depend on your ht and your local authority.

SDTG

Of course you need to follow a curriculum to pass tests, but education isn't just about taking tests.
Considering a GCSE can be studied and taken in a year shows how much time at school is wasted. I doubt if a week out of school is going to make somebody fail their exams.
I do agree it is the responsibility of the parent and student to make sure the student obtains the class notes for what they will have missed and study this in their own time though.

Tin

I think you take a very narrow view, maybe some employers want qualifications over experience but that certainly has never been my experience, in fact the reverse.
There are so many jobs where quals aren't important at all past the usual GCSE in Maths/English.

a lot of the posters on this thread keeping talking about "expensive foreign holidays" "holidays being a luxury" and that they didn't go away when they were kids. those of us who cannot take time off in school holidays cannot take time off in school holidays end of. what has changed is that in families now both parents mainly work. kids go into child care you see a lot less of them and when you do you are tired out through working. perhaps it was different when dad worked and mum stayed at home but the pressure of it all means you need to get away from work and have real time off with your family. if having time off isn't seen as important then why do school kids get so many holidays. why aren't there 4 or 6 weeks off only a year. I get the idea about flexibility across the country but this wouldn't really help. if my local schools took say June and July off then I wouldn't be able to go away then so what would this gain. I do accept that it might help some professions though and might make it cheaper but it isn't the cost. still waiting for Gove to reply to my letter.