Leave declined for wedding....

[eleanorrubysmummy]

Oh dear! My husbands brother is getting married in Feb (on a Friday), been planned 2 years, hub is best man & DD is bridesmaid. just moved up to year3 at a new school so did the right thing & applied for authorized day off......declined & also intimated that an application to fine us will be made if we go!! I'm so stuck......can anyone help/advise/guide us for this pls???

[rabbitstew]

"Educational activity" also appears to mean, "something which parents are not capable of doing."

[shebird]

And they have a vested interest rabbitstew as these events usually cost money to enter! So time off can be authorised if someone is charging a fee! It just gets even more ludicrous. If attendance is so critical why not put pressure on these bodies to hold exams at weekends or after school?

[Llareggub]

My DCs were taken out of school to wave at a visiting royal. They missed a day of school, along with the rest of the schools in the area, to wave a Union Jack. How come that's allowed? What are the educational benefits?

[fatmumjane]

Our ds was taken out of school for one day last year to go to the Paralympics, we wrote to the head and said we believed it was a once in a lifetime experience. Quite honestly though in your case I'd go for a bad headache day or sickness bug. If the head questions you, point out that your dd will miss no more education than when teachers go on strike for the day...

[PastSellByDate]

Hi eleanorrubysmummy:

This happened at our school - Scottish family having to go to scotland for Uncle's wedding - and they were declined.

Their solution (which I found fantastic) was to ring the LEA and request that they provide 24hr childcare for them whilst they were in Scotland as they were absolutely brand new to this city and didn't feel they could impose on neighbours/ friends who they've only known for 3 weeks and didn't want to pay a fine/ get in trouble with the law.

LEA rang school.

School wrote that they reviewed the application and that indeed due to childcare issues 1 days absence for a family event was an excused absence as long as the child did some make-up work for the class work missed on the day.

HTH

[prh47bridge]

To get away from rabbitstew's flights of fantasy, the regulations define an approved educational activity as one which:

• is approved by a person authorised by the proprietor of the school (which normally means it is approved by the head teacher)
• is of an educational nature (which includes work experience and sporting activities)
• is supervised by someone authorised by the proprietor or head teacher

This part of the regulations has not changed at all. If it was an approved educational activity last year it should still be an approved educational activity this year. On other threads rabbitstew has said she wants a return to the pre-September regulations but here she appears to be complaining about an aspect of the pre-September regulations.

I know rabbitstew seems to object to the head teacher having discretion in these matters but I am not sure who else she thinks should decide. If we give discretion to parents we will see a rash of children having days off for educational activities involving a games console and the whole system of trying to ensure children attend school would fall apart. If we give discretion to the LA they are likely to say no to pretty much everything and will certainly be making decisions without being fully aware of the circumstances of each case. If the government (or anyone else) were to lay down a defined list of what is allowed it would give no room for discretion, so a deserving case in a situation that hadn't been considered would miss out. The head teacher is in the right position to be able to make an informed judgement. That doesn't mean they will get it right but I can't see any alternative that would be an improvement.

[Llareggub]

Now that is the clearest argument I have heard yet for the current set of regs! Good analysis.

[rabbitstew]

Yes, thanks to your clear analysis, prh47bridge, I can see that the situation actually always has been farcical, largely because HTs in the state sector no longer seem to feel they have much real discretion - actions are taken on the basis of ticking Ofsted boxes and meeting arbitrary targets, not dealing with individual human beings. Same problem in the NHS - bloody stupid.

[rabbitstew]

You don't make an incompetent headteacher competent by telling them which boxes to tick, unfortunately. Instead, you end up in a situation where you keep having to change the focus every few years, because you've forced everyone to focus on one or two things at a time and not let them have a view of the bigger picture, because you don't trust them to be able to cope with the bigger picture (because the incompetent ones can't).

[rabbitstew]

And the present incumbent of the DfE has a really weird habit of cutting everyone loose at the same time as being hugely bossy, bullying and prescriptive, which is just another way of ensuring nothing sensible ever gets done, because nobody knows what bizarre plan he'll come up with next or if he has any idea of where he is heading, or if he just wants to recreate the Wild West.

[TheIncidentalGoat]

What would you have as an alternative here rabbitstew?

Do you think the previous legislation was ok or do you think that parents should have the final decision in whether or not they should send their child to school?

How would that work? In the school my children attended it would probably be ok, maybe not too many would take advantage. In the school I work in where I'm already on the brink of sending penalty warnings 5 weeks in, it would be a bloody disaster.

[rabbitstew]

From the perspective of the school my children are at, there was nothing wrong with the rules as they used to be, so I would leave everything as was. HT used her discretion quite happily and didn't feel there was a problem. The recent change, however, has resulted in all the schools in the area suddenly clamping down on something that didn't appear to be a problem in the first place and putting pressure on the other schools in the area to do the same so that they don't get grief from their parents. Yet NONE of the schools in the area had an attendance problem in the first place. Given that prh47bridge has made it quite clear that HTs under the old rules were entitled to use their discretion to say no to holidays and other absences, I really find it irritating that they were all so weak willed that they felt they could only say no if ALL schools had pressure put on them to say no. It just seems a little bit... cowardly... on the part of HTs that they didn't feel able to use their discretion and instead preferred the blanket-ban or free-for-all options.

[rabbitstew]

Frankly, it just feels like whole-nation punishment for a few persistent offenders.

[teacherwith2kids]

If it were genuinely a few, rabbit, then the punishment for habitual offenders - which remains as it has been prosecution and fines / imprisonement (and yes, the school I worked in did take a case that far) - would be sufficient.

When it gets to more than half the class taking term-time holidays, with every week plans needing to be made to catch up each of those children so that they can continue to make progress despite absence, then the situation is different.

It really isn't just a few, believe me.

[rabbitstew]

Doesn't that just go to show that the majority of HTs don't actually use their discretion? Tbh, if the problem with absence is the effect on attainment, then I don't see why a HT shouldn't look at prior attendance and attainment to help them make a decision. Why can they hardly do that? If the absence in question is not actually going to be detrimental to the child in question's education and is going to be of value as a life experience, then why stop it? Why on earth would you want to treat a 6-year old high achiever with a 100% attendance record to date in the same way as a 10-year old persistent truant with low progress and achievement? Just because you'll be given a hard time over the less clear-cut cases??? As I said, that's just punishing everyone for problems that don't exist everywhere.

[teacherwith2kids]

Hmm. It also cuts the other way, though. The 10 year old you mention might have low progress and attainment because she is also a young carer. If her disabled mum is given the chance to take the children away on holiday but can ONLY afford it during term time, is that a more or less deserving case than when a nice MC child asks to go on a 'special holiday' because it's cheaper in term time, even though they could afford it at full price??

[rabbitstew]

teacherwith2kids - yes, it is more of a deserving case (and if I were a HT I would therefore allow it), but you can't have it all ways. If the problem HTs have with constant absence is the effect on teaching, progress and attainment, then they shouldn't stop children going out of school if they will be relatively unaffected, should they?.... Isn't that just punishing them for being middle class?

[rabbitstew]

It's not deserving and undeserving, though, is it? It's affected by absence and unaffected. I spend a lot of my time telling my ds1 that he may find physiotherapy painful and other children don't have to do it, but in his case he has to. Ds2 in the meantime can skip about happily without having to suffer. Should I force my ds2 to do physio or something else unpleasant, to make it feel better for ds1? What kind of family dynamic would that create?

[shebird]

The problem with the new regulations tiggytape is that some HTs view 'exceptional circumstances' as a grey area and so they are just saying no to everything. Our HT is saying no to funerals and weddings in all cases just like the OPs. This is grossly unfair if HTs in other schools are saying yes to similar requests.

[rabbitstew]

Ironically, I do disapprove of holidays in term time, but would want to know that if a genuine once-in-a-lifetime opportunity came up and my children were young enough that educationally they would be unlikely to suffer in the long term, that I would be allowed to take that opportunity with the headteacher's blessing, rather than with a sneer and a fine. And I would certainly resent being told I wasn't allowed to take my children out of school for an afternoon, for example, in order to go to something of great importance to my family. One afternoon of a child's life is not a long time, particularly not if it's the only time that child has had out of school in several years.

[shebird]

Can't schools give parents some credit? I mean how many parents would really take their DCs out of school every year for a two week holiday if they were really struggling and behind. Maybe I just live in lala land.

[rabbitstew]

Frankly, how dare a headteacher say no to a child going to a funeral when the only reason for doing so is that they say no to everything.

[shebird]

Me too rabbitstew. All my family live abroad and these regulations make me anxious that if something happened or if I wanted to attend an important family occasion needed to travel I would be penalised for doing so.