Denied leave to visit grandparent who is terminally ill

[divvin88]

Hi all,

Wanted to find out what are my options in a tricky situation that we are facing.

My father in law was diagnosed with cancer 2 years back. Recently he had a massive haemorrhage due to cancer complications and was in a critical condition for over two weeks. He is based in India. So our family had to rush to India in that situation not knowing if he will survive. We applied for absence from school for my 6 year old daughter. Last week we got a letter from the school saying the leave has not been authorised and that we will be fined. To top it, we also received a letter stating that my daughter does not meet attendance etc. Now, I want to understand if a kids grandfather is in critical condition and if the kid has to travel along with the family to be with him in his last days is that not an exceptional circumstance. If this does not qualify as exceptional what does? The school head teachers lack of humanity has really shocked us and we want to take this matter legally as we think we have been fined unfairly. So wanted to know if anyone has been in a similar situation and if so what can be done to right this injustice.

Why was attendance low before this leave? I think you will find this is key to it all.

I’m a teacher (in Australia so different rules) but understand Student A who has great attendance taking a few weeks off to visit family we don’t bat an eyelid… Student B who miraculously is always sick on a Monday or Friday taking a few weeks off raises questions and eyebrows 🤔

The head was nice and apologised about the fine and wishes us a great time; said she would have loved to authorise it but local authority rules didn't allow it

The law specifies that it it the HT's discretion. The LA in law has no role in deciding what is authorised. A HT can of course voluntarily decide to limit the scope they have in law. But that is also their choice.

But for some heads (particularly weaker ones) it's easier to use the LA as bogeyman

You said the head didn't ask for justification, does that mean you didn't tell them why before you went?

Their hands are fairly tied so it does sound like they are just going through the motions.

But FWIW, it does sound like quite a long (unnecessarily long?) time off.

It's potentially £60 per parent per day, so quite a lot more than that.

Seriously?

Have we genuinely got to the point of zero compassion that we expect just the immediate child of a dying relative to attend?

No grandchildren or sons and daughters in law?

OP - I would email the school and say that before you lay any fines you want copies of the policy that defines what is an exceptional circumstance as you attended India to visit a relative you were informed was dying.

I always find asking someone to send him what they abused their decision on rather than why they made the decision works better. Especially because if they can't actually point to anything other than a personal choice you know then you have more of a point to argue.

And for those saying it's only £60. That's £120 in total and a) is a lot and b) is a lot of extra cost on top of emergency cost of fights to India for something that wasn't a holiday. I think we are becoming a worrying society of parents have to pay fines to take their grandchildren to visit what is believed to be a dying relative.

No it isn't.

It is £60 per parent per absence. There can be a greater fine if the attendance is already poor but that is not in relation to holidays

2 weeks is a reasonable time off considering the age of the child. Some kids aren’t even at school at 6 in other countries. I guess you could pay the fine but write to MP and local newspaper. Personally I think it’s crazy and one of the reasons we home Ed - unfortunately we did end up having to go abroad for this reason.

I agree @itsgettingweird and the child is SIX.

It’s not the law. Headteachers do have the ability to authorise absence for holidays so it’s ridiculous to suggest that it’s against the law to authorise absence in a situation like this:

childlawadvice.org.uk/information-pages/school-attendance-and-absence/

I used to work in a setting where if a student's absence was below x% (over 90 but can't remember exact threshold) I had to send quite a severe sounding letter about how low attendance could affect child's achievement etc. I had to send the letter regardless of whether I knew there were extremely genuine reasons for absence (eg child had been hospitalized/very unwell for an extended period). Was very frustrating sometimes... So don't take the tone of any letters as indicating lack of care by the individual staff members.

Is there a backstory here? Why was her attendance poor prior to this time off? That's the key to this, as a PP said. If it is because of illness that's one thing, but if you regularly take your daughter out during school time it's quite another.

Call it whatever you like. It’s against the rules then. No, headteachers can’t authorise it if ofsted is likely in the next 2-3 years. If they have been ofsted fed more recently they are more likely to get away with it. But it’s an issue they could lose their career over, which counts as “the law” in my book

This.
You said yourself that your daughters attendance was below what it should be even before this.
You FIL is ill so you all went out there. He has recovered from the crisis. Are you are all going to rush over there for the next one and the one after that ? Having family so far away is very difficult, but that does not put you outside the laws of the country you live in. It would apply to anyone,regardless of skin colour.

While I understand that your FIL was unwell, I don't understand why you all had to drop everything and travel abroad.

Surely your husband could have gone alone and you could have stayed here and kept DD in school, or taken her over half term and flown back early so she didn't miss the first day back?

I have family overseas so I get it's hard, but you can't just expect to take your child out of school for long periods of time without facing any consequences.

I do think the key thing here is her attendance throughout the year. We took our DS out for a week’s holiday in term time and school just
told us they couldn’t authorise but no further action would be taken, and I’m assuming this is in part because he has 100% attendance aside from those five days.

www.gov.uk/school-attendance-absence

Government guidelines.

So basically the HT has made the decision a dying relative is not an exceptional circumstance to have a leave of absence.

So when you e,ail and ask for the copy of the policy they'll have to admit they made the decision and they made it personally as there is no defined exceptional circumstance.

Rubbish!

I had paid leave to visit my dying mum in hospital and then when she was on end of care a week later after being discharged. I've also just had a few days off for her funeral.

For longer term they may not pay but decent HT do not deny their staff time off for dying relatives. You may need to get signed off though and I was told I could do this if I needed more time.

I'm horrified by the number of people who genuinely don't think a child and DIL should have visited a dying relative because it meant a 6yo missed school.

Education is a marathon - not a sprint. Education will always be there. A dying relative won't.

I was in the same circumstances, and the HT had no issues. I emailed and told him what was happening though, ,no way would I ask for permission to take me child to see a dying grandparent, so there must be ways round it as PP's have said.

I am pleased that you went. It's incredibly important, especially when families are not local.

Whilst the decision is often not the teachers to make, I would only encourage my students families and support them as best as I could in similar situations.

How long was the child out of school for and how much is the fine?

The school didn’t stop you going. But you were gone along time and attendance is already poor.

Would you have done the same if your DC were in the middle of GCSEs?

@MrsPelligrinoPetrichor did your DC have poor attendance levels beforehand?

Not per day.

No, which probably made the difference.