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.

Time at home is different because you have all the usual demands on you, from a ringing phone to needing to clean the loo/sweep the floor/do the washing etc. You just don't get that same feeling of freedom and watching your family dynamics change and develop that you do when you go to different surroundings and do things that are completely outside of the norm.

And I have Home Edded and am fairly high on the lentil - weaver scale but it was a choice we made to suit our children at the time and I took a major salary hit to facilitate it - if you want freedom Home ed or pay for private - too much middle class privilege going on in all this for my taste.

Is it OK to take children out for up to 10 days if you are not going away?

That's a good point! Maybe I'll just use my entitlement to ten days when we fancy a duvet day. Or maybe when ds hasn't done his homework and wants an extra day to do it.

After all, why should I be discriminated against because I would rather go on a family holiday out of term time. I want my ten free days too!

I also love the skiiing analogy - 2,5 weeks in south of france in May - £400

1 week in south of france in july/august £800

yabu.

I'm not signing that. Attendance is absolutely key to achievement in school, and yes they will miss a lot in two weeks.

What's next? A petition to demand that some children can attend school from 10-5 so it will fit in with parents working hours?
When you choose (and choose is the operative word, no one has a gun at your head) to be a parent you have to accept sacrifices will have to be made.
You may not be able to have a foreign holiday every year as you did pre-kids.

panzee obviously you won't get August holiday prices dropping to June price levels but I think you would get some flattening off of prices.

Tbh except the odd Ryanair flight to say with family we haven't booked a holiday since 2010 so I don't claim to be an expert on holiday prices.

that would be wonderful idea school hours that accommodate working parents, rather than loads of money being spent in tax credits

Wallison, I agree. Spending time away from the usual pressures, responsibilities and routines is great because you can really be "present" in the moment and enjoy connecting with everyone. Its the one time when all of us actually focus on each other without clock watching or distractions. Both of mine talk more fondly about holidays than they do about special events at school, which are largely just endured. Just as most of us work to live, so children do too.

YABU. I will definitely not be signing. Holidays abroad are not a human right and not an entitlement. If you can't afford to go in summer, do something else instead, young children won't care of its the south of France or south Devon.

Oh, so if the reason is to allow foreign holidays, will teachers also get a 10-day allowance as people seem to forget that it also costs teachers/teaching assistants triple the price to holiday abroad in school holidays. No, I didn't think so somehow.....

Not respecting a schools' policies and rules! What a great example to set our children so early in life; that they can take time out at a whim. Fast foward and I imagine it will be the same parents wondering why their little darlings cant hold down a job.

Awful idea. Won't be signing.

hahahahahahahahah at respecting school policies and procedures, given some of the things the LEA has "advised" me to do.

They do not care about the children they care about their places in the OFSTED ranking

I agree that it's not worded very well but I'm going to sign it anyway. Not everyone can go camping (you need a car)
No you don't

or caravanning (only makes sense if there are six of you; useless for smaller families and again you generally need a car)

There are static caravans you can get to by train/bus and you do not need 6

and certainly not everyone can afford to holiday in school holidays. Holidays may not be a right but they are the stuff that childhood memories are made of and an important part of the glue that binds families together.

Are you serious?

YABU

And you clearly know it, otherwise why the name change for something you claim to feel so strongly about?

MiniTheMinx, I think that "present" is a good way to describe it. It's lovely being able to just focus on my son without the constant background mundane brain-noise that I get when I'm at home.

FreckleyGirlAbroad, that's all very well but even holidays in the UK are very costly during holiday season. I certainly couldn't afford to go to South Devon in August!

Signed. It should remain at the discretion of the HT.

We have a lot of Service Families around here and they look forward to a holiday with daddy when he comes back from tour.

Skiing is not bloody essential to an education - middle-class privileged!!

Is it not amusing that skiing is being picked up on when around here nearly every school runs a school term skiing holiday - the last skiing holiday the local comp went to took in a night in New York.

The same privileged children went on all the foreign trips, if there is no educational benefit to froeign travel why do schools run then??

If teachers get to go away too for 10 days each the education system is FUCKED.

And of course they could because they could easily swop it with the current holiday time.... oh wait

Or are you suggesting that we discriminate against everyone (and their children) who work in education who also abide by the rules?

Like dinner ladies? tA's? School caretakers?

Not many of those can afford expensive holidays.

But this isn't really about the lower waged or you'd want it to apply to dinner ladies.

It's really about the squeezed middle who can no longer afford foreign holidays.

Sashh, yes I'm perfectly serious. Holidays are important. Re not needing a car, how can I carry, on a train, not only clothes and toiletries for us for a week along with a tent, cooking stove, food, duvets, airbeds, pump for airbeds etc. And even if I did manage that, how do I walk with all that lot from the train station to the campsite? And how, once I have magically levitated with all my stuff to the campsite do I get from there to the beach etc? Most of them are not in the centre of town. Honestly, I have looked into it and if you are camping then you need a car. And I've yet to find a static caravan that is marketed at less than four people; and for most of them, you are paying for six.

You're right about the prices, Wallison, but as I said, a holiday is not an entitlement. If you can't afford to go, do other things instead that get you out of the house and away from the daily chores/phone/TV etc. Where does it say anywhere that everyone has to go away on holiday???? I always thought that when times are hard, a holiday is one of the first things that gets the chop. Times are hard for lots of people these days so holidays become something for those who can afford it... Simple as.

actually there is no reason at all the education authority cannot have a bank of staff who could be used to provide holiday cover for things like the lunchtime staff.

I've just been on a static caravan break with my husband, and we got a discount for it just being the two of us, although you could have slept 6 in the caravan.

I think it's easy to say that a holiday is not an entitlement if you have the kind of income where you think going to South Devon is cheap.