Time off school for sports training - allowed or not?

[whojamaflip]

Hi trying to gauge if school is being unreasonable or not tbh.

Dd is working at a high level in her chosen sport and is aiming for nationals next year. She has been invited to a training camp by the county which is over 4 days meaning she would miss a Friday and Monday in school.

I spoke to the school office to ask for a holiday authorisation form to ask for the time off and was told that more than likely permission would be denied!

Surely sports training at this level should count as enrichment? Her attendance is good and she is making her targets in class.

Also if they do say no and I take her anyway what is likely to happen?

It's too good an opportunity for her to miss btw

Girl at our local comp is about to be in the commonwealth games. Of course school allow her to be off, she goes round the world competing. It looks good for the school, she is not from a wealthy family.

Tom Daley was not from a wealthy family either. He was given a place at an expensive school either just before or after the Beijing Olympics.

Tiggy G&T courses cost us £30 or £50 a pop.They are free for fsm but nobody else.As many couldn't afford this they are clearly enrichment and not necessary.

Frogs sorry those sums are way above what a lot of family could afford even with Sports Direct kit on top.

Yes my axe is the double standards re wealthy families being able to disrupt with their in school music lessons,exams and sporting events whilst the less wealthy and to a certain degree the less able aren't.

I speak as a parent whose kids do enjoy music lessons(out of school),courses,holidays during the school holidays etc.I can see that the less able and wealthy who can't even afford holidays during holiday time are going to see a wider gap re opportunities and experiences that the wealthier kids get.

It isn't fair and it is worrying.

If wealthier kids can sod off for the equivalent of a week doing what ever under the guise of enrichment then sorry I don't see the argument against the less wealthy having a week by the sea.

Lots of private schools give scholarships to truely gifted athletes. Don't you think its likely that many of the olympicans who went to private schools had scholarships?

I would like the UK to have state specialist sports and music schools which are selective. Surely there must be a way of nuturing talent without sacrificing a basic education.

Lots of people have talent for sport and music, but very few make it. Often injuries put an end to olympic ambitions. Even ex athletes have to find a way to earn their living once their career is over.

And yes the vast maj of kids doing a County sport or music exams are never,ever going to make any money from it.

My distinction music exam boy will never in a million years be a concert pianist.It's nice he has the opportunity to but seriously him having time off for a music exam is no more worthy that his poorer mate doing something to enrich his life in school time.

Our uni organises the whole area not just our county.When your child is able in more than one area it is expensive.That said I can see they're lovely but not crucial.

There is a limit to how much time he should have off imvho. He could have 3 days off a term in courses alone,then there are music exams and sport comps.....

But we begrudge little Johny his first time on a plane.

There would need to be a radical change to schedule music exams for the holidays or weekends or after school. I am not sure whether it would be possible to offer all candidiates appointments out of school time. Perhaps priority fot out of school appointmens should be given to children in year 11 and year 13.

Children lose the occassional day with a cold. Generally only a morning is lost when a child sits an exam.

Do you think state school children should be allowed time off to sit private school entrance exams?

ReallyTired

There are specialist music and dance schools, I'm not sure about sport.
They are highly selective and apart from the conservatoire jd's that operate at weekends, they offer an education too.
However, not everybody lives close to one of these and not everybody wants to wave goodbye to their dc so they can go to the ones that board.

Retro

How do you know your ds won't make a concert pianist and even then he may decide to do something else that involves music.

There are hardly any STATE specialist music or dance or acting schools. All the specialist schools I have heard of like the the Purcell, Tring Arts, Royal Ballet School are private schools with hefty fees. Often children have to board as these schools are not near their homes. Often the costs are prohibitive. It is hard to differentiate the truely gifted from the pushed at an early age if there is going to be help with fees. Even then how many top musicans/ athletes does a country need?

I would like to have network of truely specialist comprehensives that select a proportion of kids on music or sporting ablity and have enchanced facilities. There is no point in a school having a specialism if the school cannot select children with a definate talent in that area.

My son is talented at singing and its been great for him to be at a school with a strong music department. Even then there are not many boys who at the age of twelve can sing grade 5 music. Often boys are seriously outnumbered in choirs. In some schools boys who sing get heavily teased.

My son auditioned for the selective choir and his music teacher really didn't know whether to put him in the selective girls choir or the much older male voice choir. My son was put in the male voice choir and was asked to sing tenor. He hated singing tenor so dropped out. He didn't want to be the only boy in the selective girls choir either. The main non selective choir does not challenge him.

Retro - yes, obviously there are families for whom those amounts would be prohibitive. Those are also the families who wouldn't be able to afford non-sporting enrichment. There are also families who are too chaotic to support their child's education in any form.

None of this is fair, obviously. But your argument is that sport is the preserve of the wealthy, which is nonsense. The fact that some families are too poor or chaotic to participate in any form of social or educational extra-curricular events does not mean that all those who do are plutocrats. You are putting the two extremes together to make a false dichotomy.

Time off for high-level performers, whether sport or music, is not about wealthy families disrupting the running of the school, it is about acknowledging that the huge commitment of time and effort those children are making at their discipline requires that they will occasionally need allowances to be made for them in terms of timing and attendance. Otherwise most of those children would drop out of school altogether (post 16) or have to be home-educated, or move to specialist schools (which does involve huge amounts of money). Obviously there will be training schedules where the child has to take so much time off that it is incompatible with normal school attendance, and then you would have to make some kind of alternative arrangements.

But for dc who are fitting in 20+ hours' training a week on top of normal school commitments (and most of these kids are not rich, go to any inner-city swimming or athletics club if you don't believe me) a bit of flexibility on the part of the school makes all the difference between a schedule that just about works, and the wheels coming off completely.

Luckily schools appreciate this, so in practice it isn't generally a problem. You seem determined to create an argument out of nothing. There is a discussion to be had about the value of out-of-school enrichment in general, but it is a completely separate issue to the needs of children with national- and international-level sporting commitments.

Sport being the preserve of the wealthy at international level is true. 50% come from private schools which only 7% of the population attend- go figure.

It is a concern widely reported that is being looked at.

Also attending music lessons doesn't make you a high level performer sorry.One of my dc had guitar lessons in school time- he was shite. Having sat through music concerts I'd say he wasn't alone.

A lot of these children are doing these activities as enrichment,lovely but it's still enrichment none the less and there does seem an element of unfairness when it's only the wealthy and in a few cases the able who are allowed time off to experience enrichment in school time these days.

But schools do give time off for enrichment if it has obvious educational value. My other dc have been given time off for non-elite sports events, choir performances, theatre-related events and trips abroad, all of which were enriching but not high-level . Assuming you're not constantly asking for large amounts of time off for activities which you could equally well do in the holidays, most schools will be sensible about it.

I really can't see what the issue is here, or why you're trying to imply there's some kind of wealth divide over taking time off. I don't think most private schools would be significantly laxer about authorising time off, tbh. Possibly even less so, because of the longer holidays.

Name more than 10 premiership footballers who were privately educated retro.......

So the BBC made up the figures then.

Haven't got a clue whether they did or not. But in any case I'd bet money the vast majority of top British footballers were undoubtedly state educated.

As I said earlier, private schools tend to have better facilities and do more sport and a wider variety of it, so it's not that surprising there is a greater proportion of elite sports people who were privately educated.

There are a shed load of other sports aside from football.

Clearly facilities,clubs,kits,accessibility,travelling provision have an impact then whether they be provided by private schools or the wealthier parents who use state education.

Clearly having the above,have an impact.

The fact is only those kids whose parents shell out from an early age will be be at competing level within schools.Many have more important things to shell out for such as the gas bill.

So what's your alternative then? Let average Billy have a couple of days offa term to do tennis to even things out a bit (might screw up his learning but hey ho at least he'll have the same sporting opportunities as the posh kids!)

I have a child who has represented GB in a sport and tbh these intensive camps are great but it is perfectly possible to survive without them.

I think it depends what part of the country you are in, certainly no schools around here offer choirs, orchestras, high level selective activities. They don't do anything other than the necessary. One PE lesson and maybe after school footy or netball. Whole class music lesson with the odd peri coming to see 1 or 2 children.
Most of the extra curricular stuff is organised by the LEA and takes place at centres/ designated high schools throughout the week during the evening.

Retro cricket round here for primary age children: Mixed boys & girls, played in state primaries (there a little league). If you join DS's club it's 2 per week for 1.5 hours training, no annual sub, no match fees, club will loan bats, hats, pads and there is a finite season from Easter to Aug. Hard to call that 'for posh kids only".

There may be some who can't stretch to 2 in which case I bet a polite request would get it waived if the child was keen.

Cycling is £5 a week here and you need a good bike and gloves.

£20 a month is way over budget for many before you think about a bike.

Swimming lessons were a lot more than £2 and neatly crippled us when we did it x3. Dd has a friend who still can't swim as her mum could never afford lessons,school lessons just aren't as good as they cater for 30 not 6.I had to stop my 3 at level 6 of whatever it was,friends of mine have stopped before due to cost.Dd would have loved to go on longer- no chance,once she could swim lessons stopped.

I know other clubs for other things that are similar as I have friends who have stopped to save money.

The majority of GB athletes in the Olympics might have been privately educated, but I had a look at the 2012 gold medal winners, and of the ones I had heard of only Chris Hoy went to an independent school. Bradley Wiggins, Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah, Victoria Pendleton, Laura Trott, Jade Jones and Nicola Adams all went to ordinary state schools and several of them came from background very far from privilege indeed

Parallel class to mine has got 4 kids out this week on holiday. Unauthorised, but no fines to be issued.
I wouldn't worry about it.

There are state schools which select 10% on sports and have enhanced facilities.

My local one is very selective and most of those 10% are competing internationally. Quite a few if them will be at the Brazil Olympics.

And they certainly do allow those kids time off to compete internationally etc.

BucksKid Perhaps we need more schools like you describe. It must be amazing to have lots of athletically gifted children in a school together.

In my area specialist school status is a joke. I feel that specialist schools should not recieve extra funding UNLESS they are prepared to select 10% of children on their specialism. Otherwise there is little point in them having extra swanky facilites if more able children can't take advantage.