Unathorised Absence

[MrsFruitcake]

I know this is a thorny topic on MN and I'm liable to be flamed but I genuinely need some real advice.

I work frontline NHS and have had problems getting time off work during the school summer holidays this year. DH has his own business which isn't doing great and we managed to find a great deal on a holiday to France - basically, it's £600 less to go end of June than 1st week of school hols in July. We foolishly booked it, I filled in a form at DDs school asking permission to take her out for 5 days and thought no more of it.

On Thursday, a letter came home with her stating that as she's had 9 days leave in September 2010 (also for a family holiday), permission would not be granted.

Called travel company and they want £700 extra, which we don't have. We paid £400 for 9 days (4 of which are weekend days). School made no mention of SATs in the letter and attendance was the only thing they got pulled up on at their last 'Outstanding' ofsted report.

My question is - what will likely happen if we take her anyway - the letter makes it clear that this will be unauthorised absence and we could be liable to prosecution.

I think we'll probably have to cancel, and we'll lose the money paid.

Any advice? If you got this far, then thanks.

Holidays in term time is something I would never do and have never done. My dd had to have allot of time of last year in her reception year (before she was was legal school age mostly) due to having allot of hospital appointments (we had to travel quite a way for them so meant full days off), having to have surgery and also having speech therapy out of school missing a half day every week for blocks of 10 weeks at a time twice over the school year. This really did have a negative effect on her education, she missed a great deal. Her teacher tried to help best she could, telling us what the topic work was and what books they were looking at so we could do some of the activities at home post surgery. Having seen the impacts of time off in term time it just reinforced my feelings on holidays in school time being a bad idea for all.

Yesterday I had to deal with dd finding out her good friend would be missing school this week as she is going on holiday, the child in question is YrR and my dd is Yr1, dd wanted to know why her friend didn't have to go to school. We are very close friends with this family, I know why the parent is taking a term time holiday and I also know this is the only year it will happen but that doesn't make it any easier trying to explain things to my dd who won't be 6 until later this month. It is not just your own children you effect when you take holidays in term time it effects all the children in the class and also at times (like us) the wider school community.

We have been trying to plan a holiday for this year, we can't afford summer holiday prices (and this is looking at a week in a static caravan in Cornwall, nothing flash) but we are unwilling to have ds miss a week of pre-school let alone have dd miss a week of school so we are going to go in the October half term, it still isn't as cheep as term time and we wont be spending days playing on the beech but this is the way life is, I value my children's education, I respect my children's school and teachers and I respect the needs of the other children in her class and school a whole lot more then a weeks holiday.

I find this idea that holidays are the be all and end all of life and families can't possibly be expected not to go on holiday away from home at least once a year absolutely baffling. It seems that there is a sense of entitlement when it comes to holidays in the country that fails to see either the impact on people around them and the long term picture, how can a weeks holiday possibly be more important then a consistent education?

Saying I was trying to catch her out sounds like I was trying to trick her. I wasn't trying to catch her out, but I did want her to know that I knew she had lied to us, otherwise it can become a habit and then other parents do the same.