depressing holiday fines story...

[satinpillowcase]

www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jul/05/couple-faces-court-children-term-time-absence-school-sick-grandfather

It is depressing and makes me angry.

The fact is that there are some feckless parents who don't care about their childrens education, and this is whom this policy is directed at. But all it is doing really is putting parents in impossible situations. It is also grossly unfair because lots of schools are still taking a much more reasonable and sensible approach.

Our daughter was unwell with severe eczema flares, and we took her out three days before the Christmas break. The head at the Nottingham Girls High school immediately reported us to the social services. The case against us was dropped by the SS on the same day, after contacting us on the phone. The problem is that a few heads tend to abuse their powers.

How loNg were the children off?
Why didn't they just pay th fine then they wouldn't be in court?

agree with previous posters about headteachers.

The buck stops with their HT, who knows them and to whom they could explain in person. HT still declined to authorise, even though in law they can.

It doesn't say how long they took the DC out for, but there is an unpaid fine of £480, and you can be imprisoned for non-payment (thanks to Mr Blair's govt for introducing it for this).

Sunflower,
Ask for your post to be deleted as you are likely to out yourself and your daughter by mentioning her school.

I feel that should be a better appeals procedure when absence is not authorised. I feel so sorry for the Indian family who have to go through this at a time of grief. Clearly the head teacher and lea are devoid of basic compassion.

I feel that the authorities should clamp down on parents who take their children shopping during school hours.

there should be an outside school body who is responsible for deciding if an absence is justified or not that way the school can keep their relationship with the parents rather than a situation where people are blaming the headteachers and saying they have too much power it breeds mistrust in the system and leads to an us against them scenario where the children's education could be disrupted if the parents get hugely offended and remove them from the school

Oh dear. I don't like the idea of an outside body one little bit. The school, who knows the family, is much more likely to make the right call.

Yes, it requires HTs with integrity, but that's a quality I hope they would have anyhow.

We have no idea how long this Family took off, it could have been weeks. I wonder why if they went in December they couldn't have gone in Xmas holidays?

Hmmm I think what is unfair is that because it is at the head teachers discretion still then there is an inconsistency as to who is fined and who isn't. I know at our school term time holidays are not authorised but no one has been fined. Seems unfair that whether or not you will get fined is pot luck depending on where you go to school.

When we realised that there could be a fine, after the phone call from the SS, we contacted the Nottinghamshire County Council, and they advised us in order to abide the law, we had to send the HT a letter that we took our daughter out early for home education. We did that, and there was no drama afterwards.

ReallyTired, we withdrew our daughter from that horrible school shortly afterwards, because they didn't care about our DC's medical needs.

At my school, the HT gets dozens of (literally) identical requests for leave for a trip back to India to see an elderly sick relative.

The HT has absolutely no way of knowing which cases are genuine and which aren't. So he has to turn them all down, unless he has very good reason to think they're genuine.

Our Educational Welfare Officer, is the one who tends to make the final decision, in cases like that. There have been a few times when our HT has authorised holiday and she has said he's been too lenient.

As BrilliantDay says - at our school we get loads of requests for absences for families to go home to India to see a very sick relative every year. It is very difficult to tell which are genuine. I'm very suspicious about the ones that request the time off several months in advance.

That's interesting tiggytape but I still think there is an inconsistency that is not fair. We took more than five days and have not been fined - lucky for us but unfair to others who have received the fine.

Fair point tiggy