MSE News:

brewerdave

As usual, massive overreaction !
We took our kids out of school regularly for holidays up until they went to secondary school -they both got good honours degrees. Having experienced what happens in the last week of the Summer term and even the last week before Easter term ( bring games to school,sports days,"educational" trips -to Disney????) I can't see that their education is compromised any more than the kids who regularly have 3 or 4 days off sick with a cold!!

cbsexec

If one week of education is so important to a regular attending school child why do they have six weeks summer holiday? As brewerdave says many last weeks of term (and others) turn into holidays anyway. School sking trips dont seem to be in school holidays - and the teachers go to!

davidgmmafan

I think there needs to be some balance here (though I am puzzled by people who take their kids in term time to make a saving then let the fine escalate at £60 you are still winning right?). The dilemma is that parents who follow the 'right' procedure fall foul of the system.

If they just sent a note to say their kids were ill they would be fine, but putting children in a position to lie is morally very dubious so they check with the school. The school says no as per DFE instructions. The parent now has a dilemma.

I don;t see why there can't be a middle ground found where parents can ensure their children do still part in educational activities on holiday. For example there's a mini cruize which takes in the battlefields of world war one I've always wanted to go on, if a child was studying the conflict wouldn't that make it way more real than any amount of books?

Finally it may have changed since but when I was at school there was an activities week which my family coulnd't afford to participat in. Officially we did other activities at school but really what we did was just go in and mess about as the teacther didn't want to be there either. This was fine and we all got good grades, we appreciated the down time. The last week of term was also a time in whic very little work was done.

tgroom57

So the DfE is saying it is ok for a teacher to take the kids on trips (ratio something like 1 adult to 10 children on a good day) but not ok for a parent to take kids on a trip?

This will clearly have a detrimental effect on the education of those children, the rest of their class and their teachers."

I think it far more likely that the school, the council et al are far more worried about the impact to their precious attendance figures- which could be easily solved. I don't see them marking kids absent when they go off on school trips, but that is a day out of the classroom too.

I'd like to know how much money was wasted pursuing a £60 fine which should never have been assigned in the first place.

marksmith99

vikingaero wrote: »

Don't think that will happen...ever.

There's been loads of discussion on other threads on MSE about this. Responses range from they're only watching videos to they are getting a cultural experience.

The whiny shouty parents that do this are the ones that don't read with or spend time helping their kids. They don't think of disruption to other children. Why would they? Chav used to be confined to the underclass but it now transcends all sections of society. Chav rulz.

We took my son out of school last week of summer term last year. My daughter's school had already finished and we went on a 7 week tour around New Zealand, with some days in Hong Kong and Sydney at either end.

I'd like to think he learnt something from the trip - feeding pandas in Hong Kong, seeing the destruction left by the earthquakes in Christchurch, I could go on.

I do think there are occasions where your sweeping stereotype is not correct.