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.

Actually, maybe skiing is essential. If not skiing, then a foreign holiday of some kind must be.

38degrees should campaign for the government to start paying us all holiday vouchers. It's educational, and they are supposed to defend the right to family life. I mean, holidays are the glue that binds family life so you must be dysfunctional if you don't get a holiday.

I cant speak for your LEA Med, but mine is supposedly one of the worst in the country for education and my DS will go to school for every day of this term and every other term (health permitting). I don't care about Ofsted rankings either. This is about parents teaching their kids that you can't just rock up to school/ work / or wherever when you fancy it. I say this as a working class person, not a well off MC that can afford 2 weeks in Tuscany every August.

So if you have a kid who has a health issue and doesn't come up to their idea of good attendance then they don't get to go on holiday??

People need to cut their cloth to go on holidays they can afford rather than take their kids out of school.

So you think that those saying it's not an entitlement are saying it because they can afford holidays? I grew up without holidays (only dad worked, and we couldn't afford it), never even got a honeymoon. I'm well aware how nice a holiday can be, and the advantages, but it's not a necessity.

wallison hear hear hear

Last year we also went to Holland on Tesco vouchers, it just cost us petrol.

Couldn't do it in term time the vouchers wouldnt have covered it.

I love the fact that according to mumsnet only the middle classes would want to take their children on holiday - is the assumption the working masses have had aspirations beaten out of them already

I still don't really get why staggering holidays is completely impossible. If all the schools in Cumbria are on holiday from 1st to 7th and all the schools in Lancashire are on holiday 8th to 14th the vast vast majority of kids will be going to schools in the same county as their siblings.

The main people I imagine this would cause issues for is teachers who could well work in one county by have kids in the school closest to home which is a different county.

Spent most of my holidays in Clacton in a caravan when I was small - hasn't adversely affected me in any way as far as I am aware and DH went camping with his folks until he could afford to pay for his own holiday.

Why can people not do that these days?

YABU

I don't agree with it.

what a load of crap. Holidays should be taken in the holidays.

I would prefer the decision to have remained in the hands of the HT as they would be able to check attendance, make sure the child wouldn't be missing anything truly vital like tests etc. I also think it would be better if the prices didn't increase so dramatically during school holidays. However, like others have said, holidays are not actually a right.

I'm not signing purely from a selfish point of view sorry, I work with holiday lets and the summer holidays are packed! We end up too busy to be honest but rather that than dead...

Prices are what they are because there is only limited spaces the more people fighting for the same space the higher the price goes its simple supply and demand.

You could always go in with some family members to buy a holiday let? Share it out in the summer holidays and rent it the rest of the year?

Although we own a holiday let we will only be away for one week in the summer holidays, we cannot afford two weeks of lost rental on it the fee's are huge!!!

Also to those staying in the uk a lot of holiday lets offer a discount if you have booked by October this year, I know we are running an offer that you can lock in this years prices, you get your holiday same price yet we get bigger bills win for those holidaying

If you were asking for a petition to force holiday companies not to rip people off during the school holidays i'd be signing, but as it stands, no - sorry. I have taken DD out of school for a holiday, a week at the end of year 2. But wont be doing it now shes getting older

We just had five days in a caravan (4 of us) a very basic one yes, on a 'Park' for £250. We ignored the Park resorts type nonsense, spent our days down at a beach that no-one else had spotted or driving to other places, ate out a couple of times and had a lovely break. This was bank holiday week. I would much rather go on the lovely foreign holidays we used to, but we are suffering financially as many people are, so do what we can.

My children go to schools in two different LEAs, and I work in another. The two schools that are furthest apart are about a 15-20 minute drive apart.

Staggered holidays would be hell on earth for me!

I wondered if schools could stagger things like half term and other holidays? So there wasn't such a focus on certain weeks, could that work?

Bloody hell.

There are a lot of lemon-lipped swots on this thread.

I have signed it (despite grinding my teeth into a fine dust at the terrible wording). I WILL be eating chips on the beach in Shagaluf next June, come hell or high water.

oops crossed posts there broken :) Yes, that would be rubbish - it wouldn't work, you are right

My parents couldn't afford overseas holidays when we were little (my first was when I was 16 and someone gave us of an apartment in Spain for a week. We went camping instead sometimes for a night or 2 sometimes longer depending on what they could afford.

Yes it's a pain that prices rise so much in holiday times (although at the same time understandable from a supply and demand POV) but that's isn't an excuse to take children out of school for a holiday. You just have to adjust your plans to suit your budget.

IsabellaPasta, it won't be parents who take the holiday and pay the fines that will complain that their little darling can't hold down a job though. Middle class parents who can afford to pay the fine are probably the same parents who can pay for extra tuition or whatever that will benefit their children. Working class children simply won't have a holiday full stop.

Fines are a terribly arbitrary way of ensuring that all children take as little time off as possible. If it is left to the HT and parents didn't know what the consequences might be if they take unauthorised holiday then MC parents would think twice. If its just a matter a paying a fine, some will just cough up and carry on. It might be better to leave it with the HT and allow for schools to threaten removal of the school place if they really feel the parents are taking the piss. MC "privileged" parents would think twice if they thought their child's place might be offered to another child, especially when these parents place such high regard on getting into the right school.

Maybe stating south Devon was ill-chosen. Replace with south Yorkshire or south Norfolk or any where really... (I've never been to south Devon so no idea on price really). All I'm trying to say is that most kids don't care where they go on holiday, or even if they go at all.... Unless they are used to going abroad every year and see it as an expectation. How much of it really is that parents want to go away, and use the kids as an excuse to justify it?

You realise if this goes any where, holiday prices will just be high year round, right?

It's called supply and demand.

Why the hell should the LEA have to have expensive bank staff and probably pay mileage etc so people can have cheaper holidays. Why should teacher have to play catch up all the time and why therefore should other children have their education disrupted for the convenience of a few?

"Prices are what they are because there is only limited spaces the more people fighting for the same space the higher the price goes its simple supply and demand."

That is bollocks.

Holiday companies charge more because they can. Peak time = peak prices. You will still get, say, 6 families fighting for the same space whether your let is £300 a week or £600. It is all to do with timing. More people take holidays in those weeks due to schools being off. They charge more and there are people desperate enough to pay it.