School holiday bookings and best holiday websites??

yorkshirecath

Hiya
Like a lot of people, next year i am going to have to take our holiday in school holidays as its my sons first yr at school. I know i could take him out of school(which hubby wants) but i'm reluctant.
Anyway. Have been looking at holidays and it seems that it's going to be around £1600 which is too much for us.
Is it best to book flights and hotel separate do you think?
Any good websites rather than the usual Thomas Cook etc... that are trustworthy??

Thanks

jayok

The Scottish and English school holidays are staggered. Try a Scottish airport departure from mid to late August as the Scottish schools go back and I believe the English schools are still on holiday.

I booked our holiday for late June from Manchester as the Glasgow departures were 25% more because of the Scottish school holidays. I just include a trip to Manchester as part of our holiday.

yorkshirecath

Oh wow, thanks for that

melb

Obviously it's up to you if you don't want to take your child out of school during term time but I honestly wouldn't worry about it - especially if they're only 4 or 5. The weather in my opinion is much kinder to young skin in May or June than august - (assuming you're going abroad), it's so much cheaper and really they won't be missing out on any schoolwork that they can't catch up on. I've only stopped taking mine out during term time since my lad started at high school last september and I'm going to take him out for a week to go for 2 weeks over whit next year as other people in his year have!

wanttobeasaver

Hi,

I booked a holiday this year through sunshine.**.uk i found it on the forum here & it was great from flights to hotel to even transfers & i see theyve deals for next year hope this helps:beer:

yorkshirecath

melb wrote: »

Obviously it's up to you if you don't want to take your child out of school during term time but I honestly wouldn't worry about it - especially if they're only 4 or 5. The weather in my opinion is much kinder to young skin in May or June than august - (assuming you're going abroad), it's so much cheaper and really they won't be missing out on any schoolwork that they can't catch up on. I've only stopped taking mine out during term time since my lad started at high school last september and I'm going to take him out for a week to go for 2 weeks over whit next year as other people in his year have!

In a way i agree with you totally but we had a big pep talk from the head before he started saying that they wouldn't agree to taking them out of school just for holidays:mad:

melb

It's very difficult and our headteacher always makes us fill in a form and have a meeting with her. The don't like it because it affects their attendance records but I know of people who just book the holiday take them out of school and deal with the consequences later. There is also a big intake of foreign students and their children at this school and children regularly take several weeks off to visit extended family in the Middle East, Asia etc. I don't agree with doing it this way as I think it is disrespectful to ignore a head's wishes and it is only good manners to consult with them but I always had the excuse that my OH is self employed and has to work when he is offered it so we took holidays when we could rather than when we wanted. I understand totally that you don't want to rock the boat but just give it a bit of time and see how the land lies. I bet by the time it comes to next spring there will have been quite a few off. Even if you took a holiday at the beginning of July you'd get it much cheaper and I think schools are winding down by that time anyway.

markelock

does it not depend on where you take them? our school allows two weeks out per school year, so far I've booked holidays in europe either far enough in advance to make half terms affordable.

however next year I will be going to the USA, and whilst I would prefer to get the agreement of the head, to be honest it wouldn't have mattered, she'll learn much more there than she will in the classroom.

I can see where the head is coming from, but at 4/5, both myself, and my wallet don't agree.

Mrs_Thrify

Hiya, not to long ago a msn member recomended a site for me .... that I thought was very good. It is www.alpharooms.com . you can put in whare you want to travel to? dates, and it tells you the cheepest accomodation.
I played around on this site for quite a wile, looking at my options, flight times...I liked the bar at the top that recomends the cheepest weeks for a good offer. It def..helped me decide. You could play around with the dates, like seeing if May was cheeper than October. Prehaps you prefer the summer holidays? well it will tell which out of the 6 weeks is the better deal!
Give it a look and tell me if it has helped another msn member?