holidays

When my children were small my husband had his holidays allocated by his employer so we often went on holiday in term time. Schools did not mind back then. One of my sons still has an employer like this and, if he had children, would not be able to have a family holiday. There seems to be no allowance for this issue.

Eleothan you are quite right, another point is that it is much easier to deal with the parents who want to take their child on holiday than to tackle the families with consistent absentees. The former want to stick to the rules and will change their behaviour accordingly, the latter don't care and will find ways around anything.

nina, DD took Maths and additional maths, English Language. English literature, French, German, Latin, Russian, Chemistry, Physics, Biology and music. She had an hour travelling to school and hour home again plus a few hours homework and she was studying for her Grade 8 piano too. We didn't see an awful lot of her and I have often asked her if she thought it was too much but she says she would do it again in a heartbeat. It did help that she loved the school and made friends that she keeps in touch with even though they are all over the world.
She got all A grades and went on to get five A levels at A grade . She got a double first honours degree in applied chemistry.
At home she is just DD who loves to play classical music on the piano and played keyboards in rock bands.
When people say missing school a few weeks every year is not important on the scale of things, I get quite cross. Education is everything and you only have one chance at getting it right.

I stand by my original comment that children who fail at school usually do so for reasons other than being taken out of school to go on holiday. Obviously, if children are regularly missing days or whole whole weeks off school for reasons other than illness this to me indicates a family with problems and that would need to be addressed in a different way.

There are significant numbers of children who have never had a holiday - even a day out to the seaside - who are probably more likely to fail at school for hundreds of other reasons.

I am amazed how some people appear to jump to the conclusion that a child being taken out of school for a few days a year means that they have irresponsible parents who want a cheap holiday where they can laze on the beach or around a pool. My grandson was 5 years old when he was taken to America with his other grandparents . He returned to school just before the class started a project about space and the planets and my (usually very quiet) grandson went to school in a full space suit his nana had bought him at the Kennedy space centre. This was then tried on by every other child in his class and the photos (together with some blown up photos my son had taken of an Apollo rocket) were given pride of place in the school hall with the paintings the children had done . Not sure how this could not be seen as educational?

There was no way this whole trip could have taken place during the regulated school holidays as the other 10 people on the trip had to organize their (4 weeks per year) holidays accordingly. As it happened it overlapped by 5 days. Who in their right mind could say that this was not educationally valuable ?

We took our children out of school for a fortnight each June. We often went to France and had daily diary sessions where our activities were written up - and not just a paragraph or two, either. Our daily activities included visiting historical monuments, churches, museums and long walks where we looked at natural formations, plants etc and the odd beach, too. Our children always did very well at school and there was never a problem, wither with the school or their level of attainment.
DD1 is not allowed to take her children out of their school for even one day. It has been made very clear that if such an event should happen, a fine will be applied.
DD2's school is more than happy for children to have holidays in school time with no sanctions at all. Consequently, DD2 is able to use a few days here and there to ensure that they do not travel in the peak times of term time. Such a difference in policy!
DD1's first child is now at a senior independent school with longer holidays but she still can't take her younger child out of school or wrath from above will descend.
I realise our children were bright with supportive parents (and the loss of ten days of schooling did not show in their end of term exam results) and that this might not always be the case but as trisher says, the whole are being punished for the few irresponsible parents.

I have never seen a problem with children being taken on holiday in primary schools and I was a teacher. The regulations were brought in to try and improve attendance figures, so effectively those parents wanting to take their children on holiday are being punished because some parents have little respect for schools and keep their children at home for all sorts of dubious reasons which they usually excuse as 'illnesses'. A week away or even a fortnight will do very little harm in the long term. Teachers plan well in advance and if there is something crucial being taught in that time information can be given to parents as homework. On the aspect of paying, it is clearly discriminatory, but I wonder about the legal basis. It would seem to me to be quite OK to say you will pay it, take the child on holiday and just never cough up the cash.

On another note. Independent schools have terms five weeks shorter than state schools and they get better results. There's a reason for that!

Firstly, Elegran, what a brilliant analogy! The cupcakes comparison very succinctly reveals how a system which is set up to educate children simultaneously, is, by parents seceding from group education, forcing educationalists to provide private, individual tuition without contributing the resources to do so.

There are arguments to be had on both sides of the case, on the one hand children benefit from family time and often learn a lot on some sorts of holidays and on the other hand children might well miss essential schooling by being taken away in term time.

As a former teacher I have seen both extremes. One middle class couple took their children away on a yacht for a year and the children wrote up their experiences in a diary supervised by the well informed parents who were natural educators. Another child went on a week's break in the important run-up to the SATs and came back not even knowing the country she had been to as she'd spent a week by a pool in a hotel. And there are countless gradations in between.

What I can say without any doubt is that given the National Curriculum and the exam system any absence will result in gaps some of which might be crucial in understanding a whole topic or a half term's work.

The problem I see is this. That the parents and the children benefit from the holiday but the teachers are unfairly penalised for it as they are now quite punitively judged on their pupils' progress in a way which wasn't the case in the past.

A holiday which results in a 'borderline child' gaining a D grade at GCSE instead of a C grade affects the school's results and the teacher whose pupil 'slipped' will be targeted adversely. Pupils are now meant to make 'two levels of progress' between year seven entry and GCSE and this is hard enough without any absences because achieving level four at Key Stage Two SATs is not really sufficient to make a C grade without hard and focussed work.

My solution would be to make term-time holidays on a 'at your own risk' basis whereby parents would sign a form to excuse the school from having to reach the targets set for their child and the child would be taken off the school league table statistics.

This will never happen in a million years because the whole point of the attendance drive was to make teachers responsible for that which should be the responsibility of parents: their children's progress in school. It is not 'democratic' and 'equal' to tell parents the truth, i.e., that term time absence damages their child's education and that they should put that first for a few years while the children are in school.

However, if parents don't view education as an 'exam factory' and are relaxed about results why should they not spend a happy time with their children? Philip Larkin writes about 'that toad, work' squatting on our lives. However, he does conclude in the poem that, however much we dislike it, the alternatives are worse. I think that the important things are that parents make their decisions with their eyes open (and absence does damage learning, for sure) and that teachers are not blamed for what parents choose to do.

My ex DiL has just now rung to say she has booked for the family (3children) to go to Florida over Easter next year. She will be taking the 2 younger ones out of school for part of the second week as the cost is £10,100 to cover the complete school holiday against £6500 to take them out for 4 days.

well said * Newquay* !

No wonder there are some schools that need more dicipline.

We never took the lads away from school, neither did any in their class.
But my parents sometimes used to take me away during the first two weeks in September. But they had a reason as my father had a hotel, so the summer holidays was one of the busiest times of the year and I went to private school so soon caught up.

How would the parents feel if teacher took a week off during term time to go on holiday?

I'd struggle to name you 12 O level subjects harrigran

My DC took French and Maths O level a year early which allowed them to concentrate on the other ten subjects.

I will just add that if I had spent 365 days a year in school I would still never have passed Maths O'level I was suprised when I looked at an old school magazine and realised only a handful passed 7 or 8, most people only seemed to manage 4 or 5 . The only way we could take more than 8 subjects was to fit another one in with our A Levels.

I would have thought that nowadays, when parents are under so much pressure, with both of them working full time and children in after school clubs , it is even more important for families to have time away together.

And yet, and yet, it's always said that, on their death bed, people never say I wish I'd spent more time at work!
Feeling a bit reflective after a lovely funeral today.

Regalo - reading the list of important events your headteacher husband missed I am genuinely saddened and respect his undoubted dedication. I then reflected that as a lowly worker in the banking sector, I have missed my mum's death, my 18 year old son's heart operation and my dog's euthanasia. Work (and conscience) gets in the way regardless of your occupation ....

We had to take our children out of school ,30 odd years ago as DH was a junior manager in the team and the senior staff had secondary school kids, so they had priority . Our DC had good attendance records and the head teacher gave them projects to do and a diary . But nowadays there is so much more pressure on teachers and children , I think if we were in the same position now , we probably would not have had holidays sadly

Most annoyingly, some parents ask for the teachers to supply the missed work! As a retired teacher, it was always difficult if children missed time as they needed to be given 1:1 time to catch up. But what did make me see red was those parents you knew were lying...what message does this give the children. Our family could only ever have holidays in the school holidays as we were both teachers. Many people do not realise how much teachers miss by putting school first.....my husband would not take 1/2 day in term time to watch our son play at a university final at Twickenham, he was not at his mother's side when she died because OFSTED were in and he was head, I could not attend a very close friends funeral because it was term time....I could go on and on!

Exactly. Everyone else just has to pay up or save up and plan ahead.

Indeed- but far far too low to be a deterrent. As the OP says, parents just factor it in as they would parking, or any other extras. To be a deterrent, it should truly reflect the amount of saving on a holiday taken in term-time.

The ski châlet we booked for the family at half-term, to celebrate DH's 70th bd, would have been about 50% of cost had we gone in January or March. But that is the way it is.

DS1 and DiL never take the children out of school during term time. Why? Because she is a secondary school teacher. Their holidays are usually caravanning or camping except for a week at February half term when they have their annual skiing trip. There must be many thousands of teachers in the same position who surely feel frustrated when they see children being taken out of school when they know they never could . Not that they would, because they, of all people, know the value of a good education. My XH and I were both in adult and further ed, so were in the same position.

Its nothing to do with fundraising its a fine with the aim of deterring truancy!

If it's like sanctions the teachers will be given targets and people will be fined whether they take children out of school or not.

Jaycee5 nothing would surprise me. I do feel that the previous arrangements for children in Primary school where the Head Teacher could make the decision, work well. The last time my little family in Australia came over it was at Christmas - their summer holiday - so they didn't need more time but they are coming in the summer this year and they are having a week off. They are five and eight and the teachers are used to people going to see families in the UK and seem to take it in their stride. I know we have all commented on when they or rather when my DGD reaches secondary school things will change - or possibly before then as their education comes first.

I know I have said this before but this government "knows the price of everything and the value of nothing" and if you can't put a price on it they do not value it at all.