Parents taking children on holiday in term time.

Milliedog

Ex primary school teacher here.
So, I have an imaginary class of 32.
A child misses a week of school. He writes a diary of his activities. Great. What's not so great is that the rest of his class has covered some basic but important maths. When he returns to school, how will he catch up with that? Am I expected to give up my break and lunch time to give him some private tuition? Or does he skip it and it affects his future learning (I also tutored children whose maths had suffered because they'd missed an essential 'building brick'). Now imagine - each of the 32 children taken a week out of school to go on holiday. That's 32 times I have to give 'private' unpaid tuition to. And then, to add insult to injury, I have to pay premium prices to take my own children on holiday in holiday time. The word 'furious' doesn't quite cover my reaction....

Exactly the situation I described above, Milliedog Every child is the one child that their parents deal with. They can imagine the teacher spending time focussing on explaining long division to their son or daughter, one to one, after a week's absence, but if the same teacher neglects their child at the next challenging session because they we concentrating on other children who had missed the long division, they would be on the school doorstep first thing next morning.

PS I am sure people of a certain age, particularly primary teachers, remember that long division is/was a complicated operation, which was taught over several lessons, each of which was dependent on the class remembering the previous steps learnt. No skipping a week!

Germanshepherdsmum

Why is nobody content with a self catering holiday in the UK as we always had?

Prices for airbnbs and the likes of haven are very expensive in the summer holidays.....don't you want more for your GC than you had? I know I do....my 3 GDs have been some amazingforeign places .....and hopefully will continue to do so

Milliedog

Ex primary school teacher here.
So, I have an imaginary class of 32.
A child misses a week of school. He writes a diary of his activities. Great. What's not so great is that the rest of his class has covered some basic but important maths. When he returns to school, how will he catch up with that? Am I expected to give up my break and lunch time to give him some private tuition? Or does he skip it and it affects his future learning (I also tutored children whose maths had suffered because they'd missed an essential 'building brick'). Now imagine - each of the 32 children taken a week out of school to go on holiday. That's 32 times I have to give 'private' unpaid tuition to. And then, to add insult to injury, I have to pay premium prices to take my own children on holiday in holiday time. The word 'furious' doesn't quite cover my reaction....

I don't get this...when a person chooses to be a teacher...they know that they will have only school holiday to go away ....one of the reasons I would never have chosen that profession....I like yo take my leave when it suits me

There is more to life than holidays! I completely get Milliedog's point. It's a shame you don't.

I can’t for the life of me remember how to do long division - perhaps I was on holiday with my parents that week.
It’s ok though cause I’ve got a calculator on my phone😳😂
(PS - I’m only trying to lighten the mood 🫣)

LOUISA1523
I don't get this...when a person chooses to be a teacher...they know that they will have only school holiday to go away.
When a person chooses to be a parent, they know that holidays will be more expensive in school holidays, and more expensive the more children they have. Would you suggest they shouldn’t have children, or should none school?

Teachers do know, as do all the other school staff, whether cleaner, TA, office staff or cook and school lunchtime staff.
But that doesn’t mean they don’t know about the cost of holidays in school holiday times.

Home school, not none school

I've heard of arents going on holiday in term time and asking for teacher set work which I thought was very unreasonable

Thank you Milliedog some common sense from the front line at last. Thats exactly what I was trying to explain earlier -chaoes if everyone were selfish, but you do it so well.

I agree.

VS yes parents do. And we don’t hand it out.
“Can I take a few reading books? I don’t want her to miss out/get behind.”
I don’t give her any reading scheme books, but just offer a list of books suitable for the child’s reading level.
“Can I have some worksheets so he doesn’t get behind?”
Sorry, most of our work is in books and is to follow up the lessons, which he will miss.
Encourage him to keep a diary or a scrapbook and praise him if he writes neatly.
Besides which, if they are going on holiday, that’s what they should do.

Not everyone has the luxury of being able to get leave during the school summer holidays, for example, tourism workers, hospitality staff, healthcare workers ... so of course their children don't deserve a holiday

Then there is the issue that sometimes family members are abroad and you need some additional holiday time to attend family weddings, grandparents' big birthdays, etc etc But often there is very little overlap between different countries' school holidays. But I guess these children don't deserve holidays to spend time with family either

Then of course holidays are only for the wealthy as everyone seems to remember the days where you could rent a cottage for sixpence - totally ignoring the fact that even what we remember as "cheap" holidays - camping, self catering etc - can cost in the £1000s these days.

Then of course there are the environmental arguments that I have read. Of course the irony is, that if you don't fly and instead use car, ferries, trains etc to travel 1000-2000 miles to your holiday destination, then it takes much longer and you need more time out of school ....

It all makes me happy that my children went to school abroad where the system is less rigid and draconian and children are allowed to take up to 10 days of authorised absence so they could attend family weddings, their Grandmother's 80th birthday, have holidays with family and go away even when leave was restricted so they did not have to spend the entire year in school and childcare.

Saggi

Do teachers get fined for strike days or when they close schools because of inch of snow….I don’t think so!

The snow days are a Health & Safety issue (protecting pupils - you imagine the upsetif a pupil broke a leg. In older schools, the heating may be unable to cope. And as has been mentioned staffing ratios need to be maintained). It's decided by the Head, Site Manager & Chair of Governors at around 6am that day. Nothing to do with teachers.

As for strike days, I listened to one man saying his teacber-wife was on strike, no pay, at home writing her reports!

Interesting thread from both sides.
Can I just pop in a comment (from the much maligned independence sector on here!), that .....
IF the state system had much smaller classes,
IF the curriculum were not so prescribed,
IF teachers were allowed the autonomy to teach using methods they felt best for the children,
IF parents were on board and had the right respect for the teachers
THEN holidays during term time can work with no problems.

In the same way Chardy that a lot of parents have no control over when they can take their annual leave from the workplace and are expected to deal with emails etc that arrive in the evening/weekends and on their day’s off. Sadly it’s a tough world out there for everyone these days.

I echo your thoughts Milliedog.
One year the parents of six children - in different year groups - requested work to be set while they used term time for holidays. I had to precisely anticipate where each child would be in the scheme of work when their holiday started, estimate how much they would independently progress, tailor provision to that child’s needs, photocopy materials, and calculate if sufficient/insufficient tasks had been set. Meanwhile I was planning for and teaching the other 200+ children in my classes and writing individual end of year reports.
It did irk me when the headmaster bountifully and liberally granted holidays in term time then hounded staff to cater for his generosity.

Even in Joseann's circs I think "good reasons" .

But then you get into the "who decides "good reasons?"

To me a "good reason" might be if parents were GP's and it would wreck the practice for 6 weeks if most GPs were parents and therefore necessary for good of all etc.

Not all lessons are learned in the classroom. Take the holiday. Holiday companies need to do better, instead of capitalising on families.

Nannagarra what a nightmare!
I bet your head didn’t offer to mark the work when it came back or chase up the parents when the work didn’t come back completed.

As a ward sister, I had 22 ward staff. Most were parents and some had partners who had no choice with holidays. It was a nightmare managing holidays during the six week school holidays. I could only allow the equivalent of two full-staff. To be on holiday at the same time.

Don’t censor the parents who have to take breaks during term time and, please, don’t judge those who do. Parents deserve a holiday too.

Tweedle24
That’s the whole point. There is no one solution that fits all.
Besides your situation Tweedle24, we have parents in hospitality, whose busy times are . . . the school holidays.
We shouldn’t censor the parents, and I actually agree that parents shouldn’t be fined, especially since the money doesn’t go into school where we could perhaps be used to provide catch up lessons for those children who missed something.
However,
there was a huge drop in absence numbers when fines were introduced.
^Most noticeable changes for us were:
1. Parents stopped taking more than one term time break per year.
2. Parents stopped taking the first week of term or tacking a week onto half terms or Easter. )
Parents also started complaining because
the absences were recorded on the annual reports.

What would be the best solution for parents, children and teachers? I’ve read lots of posts saying children soon catch up. Some do, but many of them struggle.

We did it when the children were little - would generally tag a day or two off at the end of term, as going a day or 2 earlier would save hundreds and we just couldn't afford it! Generally they don't learn anything at the end of the year anyway, just play games etc all day, so I didn't feel that they were missing much!

Joseann

Interesting thread from both sides.
Can I just pop in a comment (from the much maligned independence sector on here!), that .....
IF the state system had much smaller classes,
IF the curriculum were not so prescribed,
IF teachers were allowed the autonomy to teach using methods they felt best for the children,
IF parents were on board and had the right respect for the teachers
THEN holidays during term time can work with no problems.

This is SO true!

Milliedog, you are so right.
I did have that experience, spread throughout the year, of 17 children missing vital lessons, and several parents getting quite cross because they didn't understand new concepts properly; (eg, grid multiplication taking much repetition and reinforcement to grasp). TAs were pulled away from their normal roles to explain individually to these children, at cost to the other children they were there to support.
MadeInYorkshire, volunteer to help in a school for the last few days of term and see what actually happens; you will be surprised.
I was married to a teacher and our holidays were always peak time; we took a few family holidays abroad, but the cost then, (80s/90s) was nothing like it is now.

We had (and still have) a SME, our busiest times of the year were/are school holidays.

Whilst I appreciate that the teachers on here are against taking children out of school. I have just worked out that due to the ages of our five children if we had never taken them out of school we would not have had a holiday in 28 years.