Supreme Court: Parents CAN'T take kids on term-time holiday without risking a fine

Guest101

martinsurrey wrote: »

like one where someone else pays for your kids education?

Well that's an interesting view point, but schools aren't a capitalist market, it's a social service. An investment by the state. Yes there are private schools, but they aren't competing for business in the same way.


IE if you want your child to have an education outside the home, you have choices. If you want to go on holiday there is no publically owned holiday firm.

Stalin had principles, doesn't make him a good role model or father figure.

Again you jump to an extreme viewpoint. So i'll agree with you stalin was a bad man, if you agree this man is a good man?


Or are you simply using an extreme example to bolster a generic argument.


We don't all have the same principles, evidenced by this very debate. Doesn't make either of us wrong. It's just a sharing of ideas

Guest101

Gavin83 wrote: »

They can still have one, the parents should just expect to either pay a 'fine' or go when the kids aren't in school. I expect in a lot of cases the former would be cheaper so they just need to build this into their holiday costs. If they can't afford it then have a cheaper holiday but I expect in a lot of cases it's more a case of don't want to pay than can't.

I think if you waste any 'free' service then you should pay for it with some exceptions.

So you accept the fine is just a holiday tax?


Well it's not 'free', it's free to use and I agree if you waste the service. But taking a child out of school is not the same as missing a 1 on 1 appointment with a GP as an example

maman

copperclock wrote: »

The fine is ludicrous, whichever side of the argument you are on. It turns what should be a moral decision into a financial one.

There's an interesting account in (I think) one of the Freakonomics books: a nursery noticed that parents were increasingly turning up late to collect their children. It was annoying them so they decided to impose a fine system, wherein parents would be fined a small amount if they were more than a few minutes late. After some time in this system they noticed that lateness was actually increasing - parents who had previously avoided lateness for fear of embarrassment or shame now saw it as a simple financial transaction. Paying money absolved them of guilt and it became the norm.

Parents simply factor in £60-£120 per kid to the cost of their term time holiday now. They feel like everyone else is doing it so why shouldn't they.

Those of us who chose not to take their children out of school for holidays get left feeling like mugs.

Sadly it can get lonely on the moral high ground but I think it's worth it to lead by example with children.

Keep_pedalling wrote: »

What kind of father tries to save money by taking his child out of school, but is then prepared to spend a vast amount of time and money perusing a paltry fine to the highest court in the land?

A clever d*ck who noticed the law was badly worded and was determined to prove his point.

Pincher

All this grief just so a family can go on a pre-packaged slot,
which is just another inflexible bureaucracy with its own demands for punctuality. The All-inclusive pina coladas are so cheap and nasty, they are not even worth drinking, anyway.

anselld

Keep_pedalling wrote: »

What kind of father tries to save money by taking his child out of school, but is then prepared to spend a vast amount of time and money perusing a paltry fine to the highest court in the land?

He didn't pursue to the highest court, the Council did.

Spendless

With the DofE funding the case there was only likely to be one outcome.

What I would like to see is the case against the rules on term-time holidays in the courts again, but this time be about what constitutes 'exceptional circumstances' and some clarification on this, rather than the current situation where different LAs have different rules about what does and doesn't consider anything as exceptional unless it exactly fits into their stated criteria. Hence we have some workers unable to take time off with their family, people going through medical treatment (eg Chemo) unable as the term dates don't fit with their sessions. Workers in certain professions struggling because they can't all holiday en-masse (eg police or ambulance staff) and so on.

Where I work, we are an office of 4 inc a supervisor, plus a manager. We have been told that it's one at a time off within the 4 of us, and the manager also shouldn't have holidays at the same time as the supervisor. There is only me with children in education, so I had a look at our holiday board this afternoon. Of the 6 weeks summer hols

week 1 - odd days taken by workmate 1 due to babysitting her Niece.

week 2 and 3 - taken by workmate 2 who holidays with his grown up kids and grandchildren, one grandchild is at school.

weeks 4 and 5 - taken by me, who has kids in education.

week 6 - 1 day taken by me at beg of week, due to my flights, 1 day taken my supervisor at end of week, who is taking the following 2 weeks off.

So that's all the school holidays used up and one of us isn't even taking the main hols as their AL.

If our small office struggles to fit AL in to go away in the school hols, people should be able to see what chaos is caused over the country by this.


For myself I don't care, my kids are teenagers in GCSE years or 6th form. I wouldn't be taking them out anyway regardless and I'm on sight of thankfully being out of this madness. For the rest though I think the answer is to stop the 6 weeks holidays in the summer. Reduce them, spread the days out to the other holidays and stagger different areas.

gettingtheresometime

A school in South Wales last year told the parents that all their inset days were going to be taken as a week block in June, so if the parents wanted a cheap holiday that was the week to aim for.

Brilliant idea - don't know why more schools don't take up this idea

Keep_pedalling

Guest101 wrote: »

One with principles?

Putting rather dubious principles in front of common sense usually leads to a bit of a fall, as has happened in this case.

Having been through this in the not too distant past with our own children I know it can be frustrating to see how high high season prices can go, but we put our kids education above a cheap foreign holiday. Most of ours were taken in the UK but if we did go abroad we would chose places like Austria and northern Italy where high season was the winter skiing period, rather than high summer.

I think most kids are just happy to have a holiday, it's the parents who put their wants of a holiday in the sun ahead of education.

leespot

If only he'd paid the fine and moved on :rotfl:

Browntoa

Sorry but for most people the excuse that it's an educational trip doesn't work if it's benidorm/lanzarote/Cyprus/Turkey/Florida/Disney world

Don't dress it up , own up it's a holiday and take the consequence