School Holiday Fines

Maybe we should embrace this pick and mix culture in our "compulsory" education and the government can give out education vouchers or holiday vouchers depending on what their parents want.

Mojisola wrote: »

I used to be a teacher and I would use a combination of short lunchtime sessions and any other opportunity during the school day to help a pupil who had been off sick.

One-to-one sessions are very effective - you need only a fraction of the time to get results compared to whole class teaching. If the parents are willing and able to help, I would send information home as well.

If you pick the really essential parts of learning that have been missed, they can be made up reasonably quickly.

That depends on both concepts and child.

Jagraf wrote: »

Schools can't win can they. Whilst us parents think we are educational experts (until they need to blame schools) then the whole system will continue to be a mess.

It should be left to the professionals to sort it out. We dont tell pilots how to fly planes. Most of us aren't qualified to do so.

There's also a shortage of teachers. Maybe some parents should train to be one (and then they can see the work involved before making naive statements), if it's such an easy job with so many holidays.

Speaking as someone who went and worked in a school for a year to help me decide if I wanted to go back to qualify as a teacher so probably have more insight than I did as just a parent with friends who are teachers.....I believe many teachers who have no industry or commercial experience don't understand that few graduate positions are a straight 40 hour week and they aren't nearly as hard done by as they believe and if you tot up the extra hours including lesson planning and marking they still stack up the same or slightly less hours annually than other graduates although the distribution is different.

I contributed to the teacher shortage too as although I loved my year working in what was to be polite a challenging high school it wasn't the work or even the challenges of the kids that put me off it was the pettiness of the management structure and the fact that teachers are often put in situations where the politics of education come before the best practices for the students. I saw too many incredible teachers either quit or become demotivated by it.

pollypenny wrote: »

Serious question - how and when do you suggest this is done?

The child and teacher give up lunch time for a Week?
The child and teacher stay for an hour after school for a week?
The teacher ignores the class for three or four sessions and just teaches the child?


I would do my very best to help any pupil, especially one who has been ill. However, it's rarely possible to make it the same as the original. Most pupils in my school would catch a bus at 3.45 so couldn't stay.

This is actually why I never queried any further. I sort of assumed it couldn't be done. After school wouldn't have been an issue though as this was during the (later) Primary years and we live 5 minutes walk away. I mentioned it because the outcome for my son at this point was the same regardless of whether he'd been of a week with swine flu or off on a weeks sunshine break.

Mojisola wrote: »

One-to-one sessions are very effective - you need only a fraction of the time to get results compared to whole class teaching. If the parents are willing and able to help, I would send information home as well.

If you pick the really essential parts of learning that have been missed, they can be made up reasonably quickly.

Certainly, which is why a year later, I paid for a private tutor who sorted the issue (and beyond) in 3x1hr sessions.

I was bemused this morning to find a letter in my DD'S schoolbag, saying that there is an 'Enrichment Day' next week and what some of the pupils would like to do for it is watch the football match England vs Wales and any pupil can go and watch in the school hall and if they don't want to they can do independent study at school. The ones who do chose to watch footie can either watch until the end or leave part way through so they can catch the bus home. Wonder what the reaction would have been if I'd rung up requesting child come home to watch a football match?