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.

Nope - re-read and still can't bring myself to sign. I'd sign if it just said to leave it to HT to consider individual cases on merit, but not a blanket thing about how good attendance is overall. That's something they ought to take into account, but there will be those parents who are simply doing it to avoid cost, which I don't personally think is enough reason. There have been way, way better ones shared on this thread already

Hmm, if all you parents who think this is a good idea start being able to take holidays in term time then prices of term time holidays will increase and prices of shool holiday holidays will reduce...

Yay!

Sounds like a good plan afterall.

Planning on taking my 3yr old our of nursery for a week for holiday. I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the effects of this (positive or negative) on her education and experience at nursery.

I've signed it. I am sick of being dictated to. I have never taken my children out of school but should I ever need to then there should be some flexibility in place.

We are on what many would consider a good income and even we can't afford to go abroad in school hols. So I kind of ask myself...who can? If we now can't go in term time either then lots of people must be in the same boat, and surely the family travel sector is royally screwed? Does the same law apply to independent schools and home schoolers?

I have a solution. All teacher training days should be put in the same week and then we can ALL have a week off in term time. Sorry teachers cause obvs you will still have to take your holiday in school holiday time....but most of you don't seem to mind anyway so it's a win-win

If all teacher training days were put in the same week (which wouldn't work because training needs to happen throughout the school year for various reasons) then wouldn't that week simply become another school holiday with associated price increases?

Celesse nursery is childcare not formal education so a bit different to school.

YABU. DHs boss took his DCs away last week, they were fined £120. That still makes it a lot cheaper than an August holiday! Prices would just go up all year round anyway, I'd rather they didn't because we home educate and look forward to our cheaper holidays and nice quiet September days on the beach when everyone else is at school :o

This year I've noticed that our school has double-banked teacher training days. I think this is a good thing as at least we can now get in a couple of long weekends

So it does go to show that with a bit of forward planning, anything is possible. And I don't think travel pricing is sensitive enough to pick up on fluctuations in a single week. Not all schools would have their TTD's in the one same week?

I'll sign, Feel sad my DC's have never flown. Yes, they enjoy camping, but I would love to take them to Egypt or Mexico (they are both on the spectrum and are obsessed by countries that conjure up strong visual images) Feel sad they don't get the same experiences as their school friends. This rule discriminates against the poor and those with special needs, who can't work because they are caring for disabled children

I believe it should be absolutely at the discretion of the school's senior management team in consultation with the child's class teacher.
My children are in very different education systems and often their holidays don't coincide. I have never had a holiday request refused after I have written in stating my case.
Actually, the only authorised absence request I have had turned down was for dd on the day of her grandfather's funeral - she was too young to attend but I wanted her to stay at home with a close relative whilst the service was conducted. Permission refused.

Jugglingfromheretothere - do you mind if I ask how old your children are? Because I can see a certain justification to the belief that a fortnight's holiday during termtime, when a child is in primary school, doesn't cause any problems educationally for the child, I don't think this is true when you get to secondary school - particularly when you get to years 10 onwards.

In those years, the children are learning the curriculum upon which they will be tested in their GCSEs, AS levels and A levels - and a child who is away for a week or a fortnight might, as a teacher upthread said, miss the only lesson in which a particular element of the subject is taught.

I know that they can copy up notes, and catch up that way, but they will still have missed all the discussion in the classroom, that is just as much a part of the teaching as the notes are. After all, if just copying up the notes was as good a way to learn these subjects, why do we bother with teachers at all? Why not just sit kids in classrooms, with someone to make them keep quiet and work, and just give them notes to copy up?

Yes, Everhopeful, educating your children is compulsory, but sending them to school isn't. That's my point. Where's the logic in fining people for taking their children out of school for a few days, when they could remove them altogether, if they so wished?. But then they would be off the school register, of course, and OFSTED would have no interest. It's all about box-ticking for OFSTED, not the well-being of the children IMO.

With the double training days, one is probably disaggregated so that the training is actually happening at other times in twilight sessions.

One inset needs to be at the start of the school year. We have one at moderation time. Another needs to be whenever the school can book a speaker. All in one week just isn't going to happen.

As a teacher I would say no.
Parents asking for work to take with them, children saying they spent the whole time at kids' clubs, missed work ( especially maths) and I think some children get a confused message about school. Just no.
However, the parent in me says its your choice. I personally would never do it but, if you have to, then a long weekend is probably better than a solid week or more.

Kids club and work errrr massive generalisation.

Given that during the last 2 weeks of term my 3 just watched DVDs and others performing doubt I'd have had much to take away if I asked(which I wouldn't).

My 3 read masses of books in France,wrote postcards,a journal,handled money,experienced a culture and learnt more French in 10 days than they've learnt during their entire primary career.They cycled through the forests,meadows on village near by and swam every day,bought bread every morning themselves from the shop,dd practically lived in the stables she has no access to at home.They went to the fab Canvas club once where they mingled with kids from various countries and had to work in groups deciding how to protect eggs they dropped from great heights.

Not exactly seeing what she would have missed in school during the last 2 weeks of term every kid in private wouldn't be in school experiencing as they'd long since broken up.

I have this issue from 2 angles...1, my husband is a secondary school teacher ( and his head doesn't issue time off for teachers out of term, so always been expensive for us to go away, even before kids !), I am disabled and cannot currently work, so not quite as cut and dry as all the ''non teachers'' out there think !, every family is different ! who just think teachers get lots of holidays !
I have 2 children, 12 and 15, I wouldn't dream of taking the eldest child out at all as the last 2 years are vitally important to her education. That said, I have a friend whose children go to PRIVATE SCHOOL, the holidays are DIFFERENT DATES, they finish 2 weeks earlier in the summer and they can go away half the price of what it would cost me !!
Yet we are the ones living on a teacher's salary, abiding my the state education terms for our holidays ( because we have to ! due to husband ), and he earns a LOT less.
Please can someone tell me how I am meant to be able to afford to go somewhere warm abroad in the summer holidays ?
And before anyone wonders, no I am not a scrounger, I worked 60 hrs a week for 15 years after Uni, until suffering spinal damage. So camping isn't really suitable in my case !
If only someone could talk to the travel industry to make this whole affair more balanced, that might be a step forward.

Perhaps you could have a holiday once every two years, Holly, so you could save up enough to afford the holiday you want? It is still more than the zero holidays dh and I are going to get over the 6 years that we are funding the boys through university - not that I am begrudging that AT ALL - it will be worth every penny - but still, dh is beating himself up about the fact that, despite earning a good wage, he can't afford a holiday for the family.

Holly doubt you could afford camping in August anyway.A decent waterproof/ wind proof tent costs ££££££,ditto decent sleeping bags and all the other kit you need etc.

For a family of 5 the fees we were quoted were laughable for a patch of field.Then there is the petrol and the ££££££ you spend when it pours down with rain which it will do.

No one will be able to influence the travel industry, it's a commercial industry that will charge what it can get away with, just like any other business. Do you think the psychopaths people at the top give a damn they are ripping people off?

Retro- private schools generally do longer hours and some also have Saturday school so the hours do add up.
By missing work I meant that, for example when a new maths topic is introduced I would plan a week of work so that children could build up a sound understanding using practical methods before moving on to abstract work and problem solving. A child who missed the first part will need to go through that stage so that later on they don't flounder.
Yes, great, go abroad, immerse the children in the culture and do brilliant things. It's your choice.
My school would never allow weeks of DVD watching, end of term was taken up with trips, a play, sports day, leavers' service. I think those things are important.

ive already signed it,i think they need to spend more time working out why children play truant,and what they can do about it,rather than worrying about a couple of weeks off per year,its silly.

noblegiraffe I am confused. If training is a whole school activity and not something based on the individual development needs of individual teachers then I see no reason why staff training could not be carried out over 1 week. DP works in Psych where a specific number of staff of very particular grades and exp must at all times be available. They run several one week courses throughout the year and the staff attend mon-fri, they have outside speakers and they manage

I have known teachers to go off on training courses in the middle of the term. A replacement teacher was brought in. Also in many primary schools TAs are childminding classes so that teachers can complete paperwork and plan. So, again teachers are quite able to and often do leave the class in the care of a proxy.

Some of the reasons teachers and putting forward make no sense. It just smacks of professional protectionism.

I'm a teacher and I have signed it. I would rather the kids in my class had a cheap holiday before the end of term (assuming they avoid exam times) than go without a holiday and spend the last week helping people tidy up and playing games in the hall.

IME if parents avoid exam / assessment periods and stick to the end of the summer term most teachers don't care. What our teachers really hate is when people take kids out during or just before exams or at the start of September. It relies on parents displaying a grain of common sense.

why does it concern other parents if there are some that take there children out during term time? I don't give a flying fig if two or three children are off from school whether sick or taking holiday or visiting sick grandma the other side of the country.

The teachers don't do catch up work if the pupils are out of school on school business let alone of sick or on holiday dd has to get work from her class mates as if homework isn't completed then she gets into detention regardless of whether of sick or for sport.

One pupil has had many weeks of competing in sport and at training camps - these events are mostly at the end of term as the sports know this is the best time to miss school, caught up with any missed work from class mates.

mini, it's nothing to do with protectionism. I've looked at my diary for last year. We had inset on the first day of term - necessary for disseminating exam results and preparing for the year ahed. We had inset in April for moderation. This has to happen in April. We had inset tied to our Open Evening so needed to happen close to Open Evening. We booked an external speaker to come in, that had to happen whenever the speaker was available. And the last inset day was set for the last day of summer but actually happened as twilight sessions throughout the autumn and spring terms. Parents quite like breaking up earlier for summer, though that day could be put at any point in the year.

There is no way those insets could all have happened in the same week.