Term Time Holiday

[ChristinaL]

Can someone please clarify, I have booked a holiday during term time for my 2 x DS 13 &15 for a week. I got the dates wrong and booked the wrong week. Will I be charged £120 each day for the two of them or £120 for the whole holidays? The school wont be happy with us as attendance has been poor this year due to illnesses, but we have never been abroad as a family and I am not cancelling it. Any advice please?

£60 per child per parent- so £240

Not per day , but per 'holiday'

Can you not just change the holiday? 15 is a bad time to be missing a lot of school.

Unfortunately I cant change the date of the holiday, if I do the price increases and I'm just not in a position to pay more, if I cancel I loose 2/3rds of the price! I'm so mad I got the dates wrong. I'm aware of the time taken for my 15 year old to be taken out isn't good, but TBH he will gain a lot from the holiday due to new experiences, languages, culture etc as we have never been abroad before and this is the first time we have ever had a holiday which wasn't going to see family. £240 is a lot of money though and I don't have anything to pay that with. Would they accept instalments to the fine? The only alternative would be to lie to the school and call in sick again, but because we all were genuinely sick several times this year 2021/22, they are already on my back about the time lost then. In total they have lost around 23 days each over the course of this year.

I wouldn’t lie to the school as the chances are you’ll be found out. One of your DSes friends will say something and/or it’s obvious when they come back and you could be facing the fine anyway. With the fine and paying in installments, only your council can tell you that but as the fine doubles if you don’t pay within 21 days then I doubt it. You could ask your council hypothetically. I’d look at either credit card or loan and if you can’t do that postpone until after your DSes GCSEs next year and save up for the extra costs.

Is your child is y10 or y11? I assume the former as any holiday for a child from this point on in Y11 is going to to be totally unacceptable for the school.

I doubt they’ll allow instalments. They’ll be of the mind if you can afford a holiday you’ve to pay the fine. Where are you going?

Please don’t try to justify it to the school as an educational experience where you and you children will be immersed in a new language, a new culture etc, they will have heard it all before, even when the holiday is an all inclusive where they never leave the complex! I have never seen a child culturally transformed by a week abroad, it takes at least two. 🙂

If they’ve had 23 days off they must have a pretty low attendance? 80/85%? Do you have the attendance officer on the case? if they have a really low background attendance you could get sent to court. There’s no instalments, the fine increases if you don’t pay the entire amount within something like 3 weeks

You need to be aware that, if the school are already seeking to improve attendance, a further absence for a holiday may tip them into making an Order or prosecuting you. There’s some information about this on gov.uk

23 days is an awful lot of time off, especially considering we are only 2/3 of the way through the school year. Is your 15 year old keeping on top of their GCSE work as that's already a lot that they've had to make up? Will they be missing anything more essential like school exams or coursework etc during the week you are off (have you checked?) I would seriously consider moving the holiday into the future (to allow you time to save for any increase in price). And I would suspect the school may well not believe you if you take the week off "sick" before half term (I'm assuming).

It's not the school who administer the Fixed Penalty Notice it's your Local Education Authority (the only input from the school is recording the absence as unauthorised). How long is the holiday? It's over 5 days unauthorised per term before my LEA will look to issue a fine. I do think varies so best to check direct with your LEA. The fine is £60 per parent, and per child.

(Note: this isn't in support of you taking a 13 and 15 year old out of school by any means - and I get the date booking error so thats not a dig at you either. Just some factual information)

Be honest & ask for their mercy, take your holiday, the fine would be annoying but not end of world. I've taken 2dry age away a few times in term time. I gave my reasons & although there was some grumpy response (also some enthusiasm), and it was always unauthorised, never been fined.

You're in a weaker position bec they have missed so many days. I had one willful truant in the group but it was yr9, not GCSE yr at his school, and he wasn't that bad about shunning school (yet) at that point.

I just don’t buy the ‘booked the wrong week’ , surely you look at the kids term dates and then book the holiday , the only way that could be a reasonable excuse is if they are in different schools and one is off that week and the other not IYSWIM .