Petition - Allow 10 days term time leave without punishment

[Natbat87]

Please sign & share the petition 🙏https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700047

This is to oppose the current punitive legislation around term time leave. Families need leave for a variety of reasons. Please join us on the FB group - Protest to fight school fines & on tiktok.

Well make it specifically about children with SEND then.

And teachers do not have to play catch up, most parents are perfectly capable of filling in the gaps...not all parents are stupid!
The narrow mindedness of people is shocking!

Oh, the irony

Yes it is. I am measured on the progression of my students. All the data is frequently analysed. It's on a graph. Why is Daisy below the line? What have you done about this?

Exactly.

My children were "SEND children" as you put it. I still don't agree with it.

"Daisy is below the line because her family chose to take her out of school for a fortnight to go "swimming in bioluminescence."
What have I done about it? Reported the absence to the office and continued my lessons with the rest of the class.

This.

Im with you too. We received £240 fine for taking 2 kids off school earlier this July to visit my ill grandma and spend time with my parents who live in another continent. Its a very long way including two flights (one being 12 hrs), multiple bus/taxi trips each way and several days to recovery from jet lag. We can not go every year and my parents are too old to take such a long jounery to see us. My kids were doing amazingly at school and the teachers agreed that they would learn more on such a holiday than they could in the class, ie language, culture, history etc. The school kept their work every year as examples and told us they were role models for other kids. My son even got 118 out 120 on average in his SATS just before we left. We didnt take them out of school for financial reasons, it was to spend more time with my family. We have never taken them out during term time otherwise. We just paid the fines though, not worth fighting it. I have seen families on benefits being authorised for term time holidays to disneyland, the reasons is otherwise they cant afford to go. I have no problem with that but It does feel rather unfair.

The office know that she's absent because it shows up on the system. It's not the class teacher's job.
My GCSE class have targets. Below target - there has to be an intervention.

And in my school we are not measured on the progress of children and especially not those with (avoidable) high levels of absence. That would be grossly unfair on staff.

All students are measured on progression. None are left out of this process because they went to Dubai for 2 weeks or a cousin's wedding in Somalia for 4 weeks. These students still count, and will appear on school data and outcomes.

I mean obviously if it’s Mexico or Cuba 😂!

Guess when the interventions are? After school on Thursdays. So I do an extra unpaid hour after work to improve outcomes.

I don't know why you're leaving out Dubai! That's very popular in our neck of the woods 😂

No thanks.

The problem is the kids who are more out than in at secondary school, particularly from Yr 9 onwards, not kids having the odd bit of time off here or there at primary

Everybody's got to start somewhere.

When I'm collating the evidence for further measures, the kids who are out more than they're in have sizeable absences on their electronic attendance records every year prior to that (with primary files showing the letters to confirm they've been on unauthorised holidays). It's remarkable how looking at attendance over 3-4 years shows how they alone manage to catch chest infections and/or severe D&V lasting an entire week around every holiday, often before and for 4-5 days after school returns, whilst the absences systematically increased in number - usually by multiples of five - every year from infants'.

No but she went on a POSH holiday, its very different

😂

I have family overseas but we visit them during the school holiday. We should respect the education system of the UK. We couldn't attend several weddings and funerals that were held where I am from during the term time. But we chose to move to England so this is our responsibility.

I can see it working brilliantly if teachers can also take 10 days off during term time. I mean, fair’s fair 🤣

Signed. We have family on the Continent and ageing parents. Primary is really good with us but secondary will be different. Mind you we've only took one of our 4 out once in 22 years of schooling this summer. Wish they would bother Johnson and his cabal of incompetents about causing 115,000 kids to have Long Covid.

Of course it is grossly unfair, but that is the reality for the vast majority of teachers.

Sorry what was I thinking. I think we can also make exceptions for the Seychelles and the Maldives. They are after all just off the coast….

I don't agree with OP, but this argument is just silly. Fairly obviously teachers and students don't have the same conditions, and rightly so - it makes no sense to suggest that something applied to one group gets given to the other. You want to wear the uniform too?

There are plenty of very good arguments against OP's petition. Pointing out that it would be ridiculous to give it to teachers as if that therefore makes it ridiculous to give it to students isn't one of them.

No. As a teacher I can tell you that ten days’ absence has a massive impact on a child’s progress, whether it be taken as a whole fortnight, two separate weeks or in dribs and drabs. But I‘m in the same boat as you of course, so would be happy to sign a petition about the holiday industry’s ramping up of prices during school holidays.