Should parents be allowed to take kids out of school for a holiday?

Phao

The debate over allowing pupils days off in term time is something of a double edged sword. I am a Governor at a seaside resort school, most (if not all) pupils have a parent who is in employment that is tied to the holiday industry, and as such they cannot get school holidays off as they are required to work. If they want to have time off (eg for a family holiday) they must have it when they are quiet (workwise) ie in term time, but if they take their children out of school in term time, the childs schooling will suffer and the attendance rate of the school will drop. If the attendance rate of the school drops below a certain limit then no matter how good the school is the OFSTED report cannot grade them above 'average'.
The question should be which is the lesser of the two evils:-
1. Take a child out of school and let the child fall behind and the school suffer.
2. Restrict the amount of family time between the child and the parent/s

cats2012

Personally, i think when children are younger this is ok, but timing should be very regulated when children are at senior school. And i also think it should only be 1 week.

2 weeks out of my senior school and quite frankly i'm not sure i would ever have fully caught up, there is already so much to fit in regardless of what level you're at.

Unfortunately though prices will not go down, it's simple supply and demand. If they were cheaper, more people would take them, so loads of people simply wouldn't be able to get a holiday anyway.

DiggerB9

For an example of the difference in cost just look at the Centreparks website for a 4 day break from 19th May 2014 you'll see comparison for the week after (which is half term) jumps up by more than 50%.

MsHoarder

I don't think its a good idea for children to miss schooling, and I have no intention of taking my own son out when he reaches school age. But I don't think its a decision for the government to make, I think its a parenting decision.

If a parent decides on balance that a holiday is better for the family than that week in school, they they should be allowed to make that decision for 1-2 weeks a year. At the moment families who need time together in term time due to holiday restrictions on parents, bereavement, family events in other parts of the world and a whole host of other reasons to take a holiday in term time are being fined by the government for making a decision about what is in the best interest of their child.

duchy

DiggerB9 wrote: »

The human rights element was meant to be tongue in cheek, as it seems to be the excuse for most things in this country.

Benidorm was used as an example of somewhere people would think would be relatively cheap for a family holiday but was coming up at extortionate prices.

My point is that if you go to book a holiday and there is more than a 50% increase in price, no wonder people who work hard all year will look to take their children on holiday in term time, choosing to pay the fine as it is still the cheaper option.

Affording the holidays was never an issue for us, the money for these, were budgeted for by working hard and saving hard but the difference in cost this year was a massive eye opener.

We are lucky that our household income allows us to take holidays abroad, which we do every two years, alternating our holidays, visiting different areas of Britain as I did with my parents until I took my first trip abroad at 17.

Missing Wednesday to Friday had no baring what so ever on my daughters education and only enhanced it, as acknowledged by her teacher. Neither has our 4 day honeymoon left any mental scars on them, as that was taken in the holidays.

So you can afford it but others can't. Uh-huh
Frankly if you kept them off the first few days of term I really DO think it was selfish . Did you not think through when you'd take the children on holiday when planning a school holidays wedding though -it all sounds very short-sighted.

Personally I don't have a problem in general with parents tacking a week onto half term or whatever (but a week off should be the maximum which I understand is 10 sessions currently allowed anyway without triggering a fine so the OP wouldn't have been fined for the 6 sessions she kept her child away anyway so her human or financial rights weren't affected ) except at significant times like beginning of term - SATs time etc at primary level and would far rather schools had greater flexibility to work with parents (eg my son's school for several years had a two week half term in May and broke up for the summer a week later than the other schools locally as the first week in June half the school was missing to pay May prices and lose a week rather than double to go July/August ...until a few parents complained it caused problems as they had kids at other schools too and we had to go back to the old system). If schools could "offset" for example reduce October and Febuary half term to long weekends and add the "saved" days to enable a longer break at say the end of May or break up earlier for the summer I think it could help a lot of people.
Holiday companies aren't going to reduce peak time prices -it's supply and demand so a better solution is to dilute the demand AND keep kids in school.

All of the above applies to primary however my feeling is once they are in high school -children should be in school full time and fines are perfectly acceptable.

I don't really understand your post though ...... you complain about cost then claim you could have afforded it anyway but simply put a cheaper holiday as a higher priority than your child's schooling ....... I suppose we all have different priorities - (Oh and it is bearing not baring - Maybe you were on holiday the week that spelling was covered at school though )

duchy

MsHoarder wrote: »

I don't think its a good idea for children to miss schooling, and I have no intention of taking my own son out when he reaches school age. But I don't think its a decision for the government to make, I think its a parenting decision.

If a parent decides on balance that a holiday is better for the family than that week in school, they they should be allowed to make that decision for 1-2 weeks a year. At the moment families who need time together in term time due to holiday restrictions on parents, bereavement, family events in other parts of the world and a whole host of other reasons to take a holiday in term time are being fined by the government for making a decision about what is in the best interest of their child.

Bereavement I believe is counted as sickness not holiday absence...as for family events in other countries - presumably most families will take into account relatives abroad before planning such events but ultimately if you choose to live away from family in another country that's one of the things that is always an issue and doesn't merit special treatment IMO. If I chose to emigrate to Australia then I wouldn't expect to be able to make family events back "home" guaranteed. It's one of the things most people consider before upping sticks and moving across the world after all.

The current fines kick in at 10 sessions which is a whole week so a family realistically could travel after school or Friday and be back in time for the after school session the following Friday and not be fined anyway as they'd have missed nine sessions and avoiding the trigger of ten.

Lemoncurd

Gosh, really surprised by the results here, I really expected more would be against taking children out of school.

I was brought up to think that taking non-essential time off school was not acceptable. My parents wouldn't have dreamed of taking a holiday in term time. Holidays for us involved camping for a week in the UK as this was all we could afford.
Now we are fortunate enough to be able to take our children abroad if we want but we don't budget for this every year, maybe every 2-3 years. We just wouldn't consider taking them in term time - it's marked on the calendar as 'busy'. Several years we simply didn't take a holiday at all but I don't think the children have suffered for it!

I can appreciate that there might be some times where more flexibility might be needed e.g. family abroad with important events such as weddings/funerals etc but possibly these could be considered as exceptional circumstances when leave is requested.

Katem

As a whole, I don't think it's acceptable to take children out of school during term-time, more from the point of view of the teacher having all the disruption of various pupils disappearing out of his/her class, rather than the child falling behind.

However, in the last week of term last year, my primary school child watched DVDs and played all week and it did make me question the value of that week at school. I can see why some parents would be inclined to take advantage of that - their child might as well be playing beside a pool as watching a DVD.

pippinpuss

I was a Gov at my child's primary school & we had a rule that the limit for hols was 10 days per school year. Then it had to be a written request. Not many parents requested time though. It was mainly due to companies telling employees that they could have time off during certain weeks.

I only ever took my eldest out of school. This was the last week of Reception, so not much learning was going on. The younger 2 were never taken out.

I know holiday companies use supply & demand to price their goods, but to penalise parents doesn't make them want to use your company again.

WestonDave

Its not a question of penalising parents - the prices are as they are to make the years income work for the hotels etc. They need the lower prices off season to get anyone in at all, and to offset that, need to charge more in season (i.e. school holidays) to ensure the overall total income for the year covers costs etc.

The more fundamental problem is the concentration of demand created by all European schools having broadly the same holidays for historic agricultural reasons.

If we were to be radical about this we could resolve the problem and arguably improve educational performance by a better spread of holiday and 4 shorter terms as compared to the current system which flogs the kids for up to 7 weeks without a break, and then gives them 6 weeks in the summer to forget everything so teachers have to revisit and revise for the first few weeks of the new year.

If we divided the year into 4 10 week terms each sub divided by a week half term holiday, then based on this year, we'd get as an example, a half term week off 10th Feb, 2 weeks off last week of March, first week of April, HT week off 12th May, 2 weeks off last week in June first of July, week from 11th August, 2 weeks end September early October, and another half term mid November. Easter has been as early as the first 2 week break (the Easter weekend would have to float free like May Day does as a simple double bank holiday whereever it falls) and its often a decent weather spell, late June early July is decent weather in many resorts, whilst plenty of people enjoy the less fierce heat in late September.

Getting back to the original question, there does need to be some kind of minimal limit to deal with the fact that life doesn't always happen in neat packages. A family member having a significant event which happens to be on a school day leaves parents either taking unauthorised absence or lying or the kids misses out - none of which are realistic. We've got a family event coming up, and the kids are going - school can like it or lump it. Ours have excellent attendance and no problems academically - possibly other attendance and acceptable progress could be determining factors as well. Someone who has already missed a lot of schooling will already be behind, whereas someone on near 100% attendance won't suffer.