Gove planning stricter sanctions for parents of children that don't attend school.

[cornsilkteamdixon]

here
lots of flapping about family holidays on the main board. I'm more worried about the consequences for parents of children who struggle to attend school.

So? Pull up an SEN Parent before a judge and she'll list the support she's been asking for for YEARS to help her child at school. The judge will ask why it's not in place.

Kids go through a number of stages and are allowed to fall through a lot of glaringly obvious gaps before they get to the "school refusal" stage, starting with the crappy early years identification of very obvious SEN's. For some kids it will speed up the years on the treadmill their Mums spend fighting & appealing and reapplying and being fobbed off to get a statement in the first place.

This may actually have the unintended consequence of highlighting just how inadequate the support is for many children and how many YEARS they wait to receve it in a different forum to the snail's paced biased Tribunal system or the utterly corrupt LGO.

Academies don't want our kids, despite all the rhetoric, so it'll highlight the failures in wider policies too.

I was threatened with court and fines at one stage, and my response was "Bring it on! I'd LOVE the opportunity to explain to a judge just how badly you are letting my child down!".

Court appearances should help short circuit the usual professionals "kicking the can down the road" approach, that's become standard policy in too many areas.

When DS was at primary school, we took him out for a week in term time each year, as it was the only time we could get 9 night's respite for DD to enable us to go away for 7 days. Since he has been at secondary school, we have had to restrict our holiday to May half term but this is not always convenient - for the last 2 years we have only had a 5 day holiday - probably much less than Mr Gove! So families like mine who rely on taking children out of school just to have a much needed break will no longer be able to have one.
It has always riled me when LA's spout this rubbish about not taking children out of school in term-times and the school then organises a ski-ing trip in term time, or closes to children a few days short of school holidays as they will be doing building work in the holidays and need to move the furniture from the classrooms beforehand. This has happened at both the schools my DC attend.

my ds age 11 not been to school from 9 november. he is crying a lot and getting extremely stressed. after xmas break i did try sending him back however each day only lasted an hour before school called me to collect him. for now school happy he's not there until we get to bottom of problem. let mr gove send me a fine no chance will i pay it and furthermore would complain... im assuming this is all to do with truancy and holidays etc and not to do with special needs children who refuse, cant cope in school.

I dont go on holiday so thats not a big issue for me.

But what did get my goat was getting a stinking letter when my DD was off for 3 weeks with chicken pox so bad inside and out her body that were constantly erupting, telling me the importance of child attendance and showing her % was down!! she had awards for full term attendance up till then!

Also it is ok to close the WHOLE school down for the day so that your child stays home until there appointment time is due to go an and look at her books! And teacher training days are always added on beginning or end of holidays. Add all them up and I bet they exceed 10 days of no education I know mine does.

I agree bochead - but before you get to court you have to go through all the crap with the EWO who (in my case) made threats about the police/legal action, because they don't understand why your child can't attend school. It's bloody stressful. My child was signed off by the GP and I was still told (by an LEA home tutor) that I would most definitely be fined/taken to court. Even though I knew that they were talking shit it's still horrible to have to hear it.