Children holidaying during term time.

Sounds just like me, when I'm "going on".

I’m an old fart too MissA. I don’t buy holidays being an education. They simply broaden horizons. Being in the classroom, taught by professional teachers, gives you the education you need to pass exams. All the ‘life experiences’ in the world won’t count when you have to list your qualifications on a cv.

I think if people want to take their children out of school fair enough. But there’s no way that teachers should be expected to help them catch up on their return. Teachers are already overworked and underpaid so it’s tough luck if the children miss important education. If parents don’t prioritise their children’s education then that’s their (questionable) prerogative. Especially with secondary school aged kids (why would you do that when they’re already under enough pressure with exams and coursework).

How amazing that my son is a partner in a big City law firm, and has had many wonderful holidays abroad since leaving school, without ever having missed a day’s education for a holiday. Family time doesn’t only happen on holiday, no matter how busy the parents.

I'm a bit of an old fart when it comes to "rules", I think.

I was bought up that way and it's hard to change.

I have yearly turned down 3 or 4 offers of holidays for my boy, because they're in term time.
"The other side" just say not to worry, they'll pay any fines, but it's not about the fine, for me.
It's the rules!!

Germanshepherdsmum

Lord knows I had problems getting away from work but it didn’t occur to me to take my child out of school for a holiday. We couldn’t afford holidays abroad then, anyway - self catering in England or days out. Of course those would have been cheaper during term time but his education was, to me, far more important. It seems some can’t manage without a holiday abroad.

I will gladly wear that hat.

My mother, step-father and sister were living abroad, they could only visit us once a year, we visited them often.

If you were to ask our AC they do not feel that their education suffered, in fact the total opposite their horizons were broadened and it gave them the impetus to achieve.

They wanted to succeed and get well paying jobs and nice homes, along with continuing their wander lust which started from travelling with us from babies.

Lord knows I had problems getting away from work but it didn’t occur to me to take my child out of school for a holiday. We couldn’t afford holidays abroad then, anyway - self catering in England or days out. Of course those would have been cheaper during term time but his education was, to me, far more important. It seems some can’t manage without a holiday abroad.

MissAdventure

I also think, for a child, Bognor Regis or Bangkok makes no difference.
If we are talking from the practical point of view about missing school, and potentially holding back other pupils, then it makes absolutely no difference where a child was taken.

Totally agree, the destination is irrelevant.

Some families have no choice as to when to take their annual leave.

In my opinion family time is extremely important especially now that it’s the norm for both parents to work. When it comes to the weekend the children might have various clubs, homework and frazzled parents are catching up on household chores, shopping etc.

A holiday at anytime is important for all.

Relating all this back retrospectively, I'm trying to remember what was going on at the time, some of it was work related, when windows of opportunity presented. My husband had his own business and there was a certain amount of fitting in with partners and whatever was coming down the pipeline

I also think, for a child, Bognor Regis or Bangkok makes no difference.
If we are talking from the practical point of view about missing school, and potentially holding back other pupils, then it makes absolutely no difference where a child was taken.

So, it seems that anyone who "only" took their children out is the problem.

Not our own children.

Two day absences here and there?
No problem if its us doing it.
A week from someone else?
That's terrible!!

Private school also have longer holidays, so wealthier parents benefit from this 'perk' too.
In my experience, parents paying over £20k a year for school fees aren't desperately looking for perks when it comes to booking holidays.

A lot of interesting perspectives here.
It would be great if the cost of family holidays were the same in July and August as they are in term time, but things don't work like that. It's all down to demand. We charged 3 times as much for our properties in the school holidays because we could have filled them 20 times over in those weeks. Those who came in term time, and paid far less, didn't get an inferior holiday, but some of the local attractions weren't open. I'm guessing the lady on Sago's cruise thought she was getting the best possible value for money in terms of an identical family holiday.

Mollygo we were and are fortunate that we have easily afforded to raise our five children.

It was our business commitments that governed when DH and I could both be away from our desks at the same time, which was rarely in the six weeks summer or May half term holidays.

Christmas was our best opportunity which is why we went further afield and for longer, or added on an extra week either side of the Easter holiday.

Schools suffer whichever way you do it.
OFSTED judge on attendances and on achievement.
They don’t blame the parents who enable the truancy and contribute to the poor attendance figures. They don’t tackle the parents whose children’s lower achievement is due to truancy because they’ve missed essential teaching of new concepts or activities.
They hold the school responsible for absences and the teachers responsible for the lower achievement of children who deliberately miss teaching.
A parent governor with 5 children said at a meeting, that we had no idea how expensive holidays during school holiday periods were.
We staff governors were astounded by the fact that she thought we didn’t know.
I was astounded that she didn’t think 5 children were a contributory fact to the cost.

Of our five children, two have degrees, two left after A levels and one hated every single second of school, but have their own successful business employing many people.

My first holiday abroad was when I was 11 (the day after my birthday) apart from the Covid year and with one pregnancy I have been abroad every year since then. Even now we sometimes travel with AC and GC.

My family home was in mainland Europe for many years and I flew with various children of various ages between there and our home here multiple times a year, one was at nursery there and here in U.K.

We have travelled to Australia numerous times, twice for two months with children they learnt a lot on these trips.

If I had my time over again I would still remove them from school as and when.

TerriBull

We took ours out of school to some fairly far flung places, usually around the half terms, we did always write for permission. Some of the pupils where our children went to school came from from overseas, for example when my children were at infants/juniors there were a number of children from Japan and there didn't seem to be such a strict protocol as to travelling in term time, I know it's frowned upon now. A teacher friend of ours is of the opinion that time away with the family on holiday is a great learning curve for children anyway, I echo Granny Gravy's thoughts, time spent with the family is very important. Quite often when our kids visit us now they head for certain cupboards and drawers where they know the photos are and wistfully reminisce about those experiences whilst flicking through our albums. In retrospect, places they've visited directed their desires to learn more about the history, politics and culture as they got older. I think now they absorbed quite a bit subliminally as children even if it didn't seem so at the time. I know of at least two families who actually took their children out of school to literally travel the world. I seem to remember there was an awful lot of time spent winding down at the end of term, particularly the one that preceded the long six week break.

Does time with the family have to be spent during term time? Do places have to be visited during term time?

DS is taking DGS out of school for a few weeks next month. The family live in NZ and are travelling to Japan and to Europe.
I think he will benefit. He always writes a blog/ a journal of his travels. He is still at primary school - just.
I don't think they will take him out of High school

Jaxjacky

Since when did a holiday, particularly abroad, become a necessity?
I know plenty of people who don’t have a ‘holiday’, but days out, often free or costing little, that’s people of all age groups, with or without children.

I admit to being quite shocked by this thread.

Growing up I never went on holday between the ages of five to fifteen. Yes, days out even weekends here and there but a holiday? Not affordable by my hard working parents.
Some here would feel sorry for me for 'missing out' on these experiences but I never felt that I missed out on anything.

When my kids were at school in the 80s and 90s despite what some claim here- we still didn't take them on holiday unless in classic 'shut-down weeks' when their dad had two weeks off.

Later we couldn't take tem-term holidays when I was teaching either- we paid the same as everyone else in peak season.

No one has mentioned why holidays cost so much less in term-time? This surely has to be mentioned as travel companies could reduce their peak season tariffs?

Private school also have longer holidays, so wealthier parents benefit from this 'perk' too.

In some ways I shouldn't be surprised that education is valued so little that it is seen ok, even advisable, for children to miss out on their education.

It's just another symptom of why this country is going rapidly down the drain.

We took ours out of school to some fairly far flung places, usually around the half terms, we did always write for permission. Some of the pupils where our children went to school came from from overseas, for example when my children were at infants/juniors there were a number of children from Japan and there didn't seem to be such a strict protocol as to travelling in term time, I know it's frowned upon now. A teacher friend of ours is of the opinion that time away with the family on holiday is a great learning curve for children anyway, I echo Granny Gravy's thoughts, time spent with the family is very important. Quite often when our kids visit us now they head for certain cupboards and drawers where they know the photos are and wistfully reminisce about those experiences whilst flicking through our albums. In retrospect, places they've visited directed their desires to learn more about the history, politics and culture as they got older. I think now they absorbed quite a bit subliminally as children even if it didn't seem so at the time. I know of at least two families who actually took their children out of school to literally travel the world. I seem to remember there was an awful lot of time spent winding down at the end of term, particularly the one that preceded the long six week break.

I think we only took our children out of school once during term time, and that was only for a couple of days when they were both at primary school. Generally speaking, I think children should be at school during term time. However, I do think it's a tough choice for some families though - in some jobs/careers, it can be very difficult to always get time off during the holidays, so what are they supposed to do?

I don’t agree with taking a child out of school order to take a holiday. Nor do I agree that life experiences should be gained at the expense of formal education. I wonder what enriching life experiences the kids on Sago’s cruise had, which will be of any use to them? None by the sound of it.

How do you know or how can you judge what adverse effects removal from school has on the individual child?

We twice took our DD out of school. Once in p5 for a trip to visit her brother in NZ . Mostly Easter holidays but a bit of termtime. It was all good. I think we told the school rather than asked because the policy was to refuse permission.

The following year we sent her to stay with her DGP in France for a term. The Scottish school were not pleased and told us she would miss out on a lot.
She was given school work particularly maths and English.
Since DGF was an engineer and DGM a retired English teacher, DD excelled and she spoke beautiful French as she attended the village school.
She looks back on that time as magical.

Her brothers never had those opportunities. We took DS1 in P1 out for a day at the seaside when some friends were visiting. Unfortunately for us, he wrote all about it in his "news" and we got a telling.

I do see that it makes difficulties for the class teachers but occasional arrranged absences when in primary school, I don't think are too bad.

First flew …typo

I think two weeks out of the school year were not questioned by schools in the 70s/80s. There was never a problem.
We usually added a week onto the whitsun holidays.

We travelled throughout Europe by train so needed two weeks to make it worth while as train travel was a lot longer than flying, my two first view when they were 16 and 14.
What they learned from their travels made up for what they may have missed in the one week we took them out of school, but we stopped when they started studying for their exams. Both went to grammar school.

My dh holiday was allocated to him and he never got July or August but frankly that suited us as the increased summer holiday Costs meant we woukdnt have been able to go away at all. We took school work with us and they had to keep a diary.

My dd won’t take her child ren out of school, not even for a day.