Heya, so this is a term-time holiday thread. Trying to get caught up on legislation and saw that there’s now something in place that means if there are two unauthorised absences in 3 years (as in holiday type absences) that the fine doubles in cost per parent - our last fined absence was for my stepdaughter. We overlapped slightly with an end of term/half term but still got fined (was miffed as all they were doing was watching films in class as primary schools do, she didn’t miss anything really as end of year 6 and all exams done) but happily paid it and covered other parent’s fine too. All good.
We were hoping to go back to the same place this year, as we have friends that live there. However, as we went in June 2023, would we be subject to the price of fines doubling if we travelled in June 2025? Would travel in the 6 weeks but unfortunately the prices are prohibitively expensive and the friends we would be staying with wouldn’t be able to accommodate us either.
This would be very tight financially as a trip for us, but after a couple of years with a new baby (we last visited Iceland while I was 6 months pregnant) we really would like to visit our friends again and my stepdaughter loved it and genuinely learnt a lot on the last trip (not that I’m trying to justify it to myself!). A massive pair of fines would probably tip it into unmanageable if I’m being realistic, especially if it works out at around £300.
Not sure if because the new legislation only came in 2024 that the 2023 visit would count?
It’s just a lot to think about. Stepdaughter is in year 8, and very much ahead in her education and works extremely hard- I don’t want to deprive her of an adventure that would do her good and have education aspects when it’s not often we can go away on trips, but also don’t want to cause issues by taking her out of school for a couple of weeks.
Any advice would be very much appreciated, as I’m so conflicted as she really wants to come and wouldn’t want to go without her! What would you do in this situation? And any info on this fine doubling thing would be appreciated!