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.

Dress codes are a thing for school staff.

Blazers must be worn in some schools, then there's the no sleeveless tops, no cleavage, no georgette/slightly transparent fabrics, types of shoes, skirt length in some, men having to wear shirt and tie, particular colours, no slogans, particular cuts, piercings, hair colour, make up, types of heels, no sandals, no visible tattoos, only tailored trousers, not too tight or too wide or light coloured...

So basically allow every child an additional two weeks off, to be taken at random? In a primary school class of 30 children that would be up to 60 additional weeks of absence, spread across 39 weeks. You would never have the whole class in at the same time, even before accounting for sickness etc.

I won't be signing.

This!!

Natbat87 · Today 19:07

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!

Of course teachers have to pay catch up. It is now pretty much embedded in to the secondary school system.

And the worst parents for this type of shit are the ones that ask for a work pack that will never be done.

I am deeply saddened to see the number of people here who are putting ‘teacher disruption’ as a priority ahead of a CHILD’S ACTUAL NEEDS. Along with citing the seemingly ample school holidays which is oversimplified.

How many parents get access to all that time off? How many people work evenings or weekends just to support the roof over their heads and food on the table? How many parents run a business with no one to hand work over to, creating significant reductions in their ability to take time off? How many parents have family overseas, who may have no opportunity to feature in and enrich a child’s life….unless they die!! Then you can visit them. To see them dead. Nice! How many parents also have to balance caring roles for older relatives such as their own vulnerable parents or grandparents? How many parents work in teams with many other parents who effectively have to compete for time off? How many parents face needing to accommodate more complex needs for their children when they access time together such as quieter off-peak times for those with SEND or mental health challenges? What about parents whose income is dependent on peak holiday periods making it almost impossible or highly impactful on finances to take the school holidays off? What about shift workers who get mandated holiday slots weeks or months in advance - and it doesn’t correlate with the school holiday calendar? What about blended families, battling some of these challenges AND needing to share time with their child? What about single parents who work hard, do their very best to access opportunities to enrich their child’s life but might need to do that when it’s more affordable? All of which can create equity for our children and support more of them to reach their potential!

And many folks say time together in the form of a break, at home or away, is optional. What about parental mental health and accessing quality family time so that we can be better parents, better partners to each other? What about the proven links to social mobility, community improvement and brain development? What about the fact that the Government’s own modern definition of ‘poverty’ includes families that can’t afford to access a week away from home??

For these children, and many more examples besides, saying no to term time leave is ALSO saying no to quality family time - full stop. Are we all ok with that? As a society, do we believe that tranches of children DON’T deserve family time because of a bit of hassle or effort? Hassle and effort that MANY parents, if not the majority, are supportive of and want to actively ameliorate when the conditions allow for a partnership between schools and parents - rather than the toxicity of being pitched against each other.

If none of that resonates with you, how stonkingly LUCKY you are.

But that is the reality faced by many children as their parents have to choose between no quality family time - or risking an actual criminal record for it. It’s absolutely shoddy policy-making where the unintended consequences have not been fully considered or understood.

Right now, our schools are being forced to value attendance statistics over the genuine welfare and outcomes of our children.

And if that’s not enough, three sets of independent analysis (by Dr Beccy Smith, Prof Alan Barr and a longitudinal study by Dundee University in 2022) all EVIDENCED that holiday absence does not cause detriment to grades. Moreover the DfEs OWN REPORT from 2016 said ‘family holiday absence has no statistically significant effect’.

So I urge you not to blindsided by Government ideology and misrepresented data as we desperately try to regain a basic parental right to make decisions in the best interests of our children. And that starts here. It’s a small start given the scale of this disgraceful problem - but it’s a vital tool in the box for now.

Massive thanks if you got this far!

There are threads on here from mums who cannot get proof of repeated illness because the children didn't need a GP appointment each time etc so have been fined.

100% this. We’ve seen one mum who had her child’s S&D bug challenged weeks later! What do you do in that instance? It’s just your word that you kept your child home after a night of throwing up, that maybe only called for Calpol and sipping water - not a GP.

Saying that, while that’s foul in my view, it’s also part of the bigger debate around the militant approach to attendance at all costs - where schools are under immense pressure by the DfE to prioritise arbitrary stats, not welfare 😢 So this petition is just the start to give parents some genuine, fair and pragmatic control over being able to access time with their children when they face genuine limitations on doing so (I’ve posted here separately in something of an accidental rant!).

Absence marked unauthorised in error when its down to illness needs to be pursued as a formal complaint to school leadership, CCing in Governors and local MPs to highlight the growth of this issue. Registers are a legal document so it’s wise to remind them of that too.

CurryNRedWine

This really isn't about the "CHILD’S ACTUAL NEEDS"
This is about PARENTS WANTING A CHEAP HOLIDAY.

If it were about the "CHILD’S ACTUAL NEEDS" it would be about getting more support in schools, and making sure that illnesses are being registered properly. That children with SEND have the proper funding and support.

As for putting ‘teacher disruption’ first, do you have any idea about teacher workload? or the issues with teacher mental health and burn out? or even how so many schools are having difficulty putting a qualified teacher in front of the class? because each of these actually affects "CHILD’S ACTUAL NEEDS".

I would say a childs needs would include teachers who are not burnt out by a variety of things, including trying to teach a class of 29 at the same time as trying to catch up a child who missed 2 weeks of school to swim in bioluminescence!.
Teachers needs and childrens needs are tied very closely together.

@CurryNRedWine none of your ranting justifies term time holidays. Of course all families deserve quality family time. You've given no reason why this can't happen during school holidays.

My PiL live in the US. We managed to see them regularly but always in school holidays. Yes the tickets cost a fortune but we went without a lot of things in order to prioritise getting to the States to see them.

Teachers do an amazing job. They really shouldn't have to be working additional hours/time to support children whose parents dont value education to catch up.

"The office know that she's absent because it shows up on the system. It's not the class teacher's job."

Not necessarily. We had a case last week where a child told her teacher all about her trip to Lapland, showing souvenirs. She had been marked down as ill by the office. The Head followed it up with the parent, I believe. Not sure of the outcome.

I think first and foremost, the school and the education system have a responsibility to meet the child's need for, and right to, an education. All of the research shows that attendance makes a huge impact on outcomes. Schools can't teach children who aren't there. I can't get annoyed about parents being fined for disrupting the effort to deliver that education, often for frivolous and unnecessary reasons. So no I won't be signing that petition.

I think you might have missed the point…after all, many teachers are parents. So, surely they can also have time off in term to take their children away as well…?

Given that I personally have experience of this situation (I don’t care a jot about cost, within reason!) and have seen countless stories of a similar nature from other parents on our support group, I can assure it’s very much about a child’s needs! Of course not all parents - I accept some do make ‘poor choices’ and the impact of that on children and teachers is not ok. But this policy has no nuance which is wrong.

As someone that works with children (I assume, please correct me if I’m wrong), what would you say, in your professional opinion, is the likely impact of children not having proper quality time with their parents for a year or two - or more? Because that’s what’s happening.

And we wonder why youth mental health is deteriorating? We wonder why youth suicide is the leading cause of death of 10-19 year olds? We wonder why teachers have to deal with some pretty appalling student behaviour in school? All while hardworking parents do their best in what amounts to pitiful instalments of parenting.

Two working parents - each facing their own employment/self-enployment limitations - trying to find time off together, can be a nightmare. So the reality is that many families can’t access that vital time together. They just juggle - and all the potential benefits of holiday and family time go unrealised.

No law or policy is going to ‘support’ me to not need time with my daughters. So in the face of legitimate restriction, I face the prospect of a criminal record instead. Unfathomable and disgraceful in equal measure.

I fully respect the role of teachers. Wonderful, compassionate teachers changed my life. I fully empathise with the challenges faced in such a role. But it should never be a case of ‘your problems discount my problems’. They both need tackling - and none of that should come at price paid for by our children.

I quite literally just gave you a very long list of reasons why parents face significant challenges with getting time off. Good grief! If the time available to them cannot fall over a school holiday, should those children have no time with parents at all? Do you advocate children missing out when their parents cannot access a window of time during a school holiday?

So it was a holiday, not a once in a lifetime mercy dash to visit a relative who was dying within a few days or weeks.

CurryNRedWine

I fully empathise with the challenges faced in such a role. But it should never be a case of ‘your problems discount my problems’. They both need tackling - and none of that should come at price paid for by our children.

And I empathise with the parents but the cost should not be that of teachers health either.

Why is only time on holiday "quality time"?
You can have lots of quality time as a family without getting on a plane

Just so I’m clear, are you saying that you advocate for children missing out on quality time with their parents - full stop? Because THAT is the reality of this policy that applies blanket criminalisation on parents.

That’s why I shared a very long (and yet not exhaustive) list of reasons by parents access to time off might not correlate with the school holidays.

Learning can be caught up on. We can create MANY solutions to support the vital role of teaching to safeguard quality of work and of course their mental health - as we must. But a childhood without quality time with parents is lost. Forever.

I repeat again, Quality Time is not dependent on getting on a plane

At what point did I mention aircraft?!?

By way of my working example, the sentiment of which is readily portable - this year, we could not have accessed a proper break together almost all year, even if we’d wanted to. Regardless of whether we wanted time to be spent at Butlins or Barbados.

I became the primary carer for Nan with Alzheimer’s. The diagnosis process began at the very beginning of the year after an especially traumatic incident. By the end of January we had a diagnosis from the memory team….then it took until mid-October for everything else to be finalised as we navigated the various NHS and local authority teams for care to be in place that she would accept.

if I wasn’t readily available to support her, she was at great risk on many fronts that I’ll not bore you with.

Then we overlay the fact that my husband is a solo self-employed chartered accountant who can never take off the last or first weeks of each month due to legal HMRC deadlines. So the Oct half term, which always falls on the last week of term, was out of reach to us.

So here we are. A family that had managed to achieve just four days in a row together all year.

My daughter’s deserve our time. My daughter’s deserve time together. My daughter’s deserve to benefit from time with their Daddy.

Sound like a piss-take to you?? Does it sound like I care where we spend that time? Have I mentioned cost or exotic destinations? Heck, do I even care if it’s ‘educational’ as has been so sarcastically scoffed in this thread? Nope. None of the above. It was purely the importance of us all accessing time together that would not have been possible during a school holiday.

And here’s the crux of it. My eldest daughter’s school supported us. They used some flex in the system to allow us to have a well-deserved and much-needed break together. But because of the inconsistency of how the punitive policy is applied, MANY headteachers fail to do this. So I was ok. Great. Hardly a ‘win’ though is it?

Seeing as the poor mum whose cancer diagnosis and subsequent chemo wiped out most of her year DID get fined. That’s why we campaign. Because that’s not a lottery I’m comfortable with.

The irony of this is many schools won’t allow families to travel if someone is ‘only dying’. They have to have died!!

Or we see instances where the school will allow travel to see the dying person, but then swiftly follow that with ‘but any subsequent absence will incur a fine’. So that rules travel for the actual funeral out. Wow. Make it make sense!

Both myself and DH are SE, I have cared for elderly relatives.
Your circumstances are not unusual or special except to you. The choice is not 10 days of kids missing lessons OR no quality time with parents (whatever that actually means), your kids can go to school and still manage time with you as a family.
For full disclosure I HAVE taken my DC out of school for an odd day here or there but it was only to save money on holidays, I never pretended it was life and death or necessary to us as a family - it was just to have some additional fun. IF I had been fined I would have paid it without argument.

Who are you to define what quality time is?
What about those children that have never been away on holiday with their parents are you saying that they have had no quality time?
Or are we once again making excuses for some parents that 'just can't get away from work'?

I’m referring to a reasonably restorative length of time that amounts to more than rushed mornings (if parents are available), snatched evenings (if parents are available) and weekends (if parents are available).

Regardless of HOW time is spent, back garden or Benidorm,
is irrelevant, this is recognising and respecting the diversity of family needs because many do not have access to TIME that correlates with the school calendar.

I never had a holiday away with my mum as a child. Ever. In fact the first holiday I ever had with my her, I was 26 and had to pay for us both. So poignant was this occasion, there were tears!

BUT she was available for the school holidays so at least I benefited from time with her. Sadly, many kids cannot say the same.

if you don’t have difficulties getting time off, if you don’t run your own business with accompanying pressures, if you don’t have mandated holidays - good for YOU.