Term-time-holidays-will-be-banned

Parents are to be banned by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, from taking their children out of school to save money on holidays.

He is to abolish the right of head teachers to “authorise absence” from the classroom, which has been used to let families take term-time breaks, and will warn them they face fines for their children not being at school.

The move, to be announced by the end of the month, will form a key part of a Government review into school discipline and attendance carried out by Charlie Taylor, a teacher and behaviour expert.

But it will dismay many parents who can pay up to twice as much for flights and accommodation during busy school holidays than in term-time and have come to expect that they will be able to remove their children from class to save money.

At present, head teachers have the discretion to approve two weeks of absence from school for each child, which is supposed to be for illness, bereavement or when children cannot get to school because of bad weather.

It is not supposed to be granted for holidays but teachers wary of upsetting parents have widely ignored the rule.

I bet we have a few internet rebels 😉

what a ****.

Im taking Stoner Jr out of school for 7 days at the end of summer term to catch the TdF as part of a month in France.

His headmistress completely supports it, in private, but cant advocate taking-out in public.

It’s a load of crap. It’s not the state’s place to mandate attendance, only levels of education. Its the kind of crap that made me go freelance and out from the salaried world. Face time not equal to performance.

GRRRRRRR!!!!

Ill still take him out and see what sanction they think they can throw at us.

PS Stoner Jr is in reception year, age 5, and I plan on taking him out early this year, and if necc next, but after that probably less inclined.

Keep kids at school. Then they’ll learn how to spell “arguments”.

🙂

stoner how will that benefit a 5 year old>

Ach; I wouldn’t listen; he also told me I was losing my pension and I was going to move to yearly contracts, he does this all the time. However you do realise that despite anything that is said,it is a legal requirement that a child attends school. Trying to suggest the TdF is educational is like suggesting they are carrying out a study of tidal patterns in Lanzarote out of high season.

He’s learning French already, reading well and ahead of target enough to be able to give up term time. He will be getting a sense of wider geography and place, different culture and its all the more effective because it’s immersive.

And he gets to see the Tdf. How cool is that?!?!? 😉

EDIT: and anyway, he’;s my son and I dont have to justify how I choose to educate him. Its not Gove’s place to do so, and obviously not STW either 😉

I’d be more inclined to support this if kids spent all their time in school learning.

The last week or so of the Summer term is usually spent watching videos and on trips out. So missing a few days of that won’t harm.

Im taking Stoner Jr out of school for 7 days at the end of summer term to catch the TdF

I wish my Dad had done this. Please be my Dad Stoner.

I’m getting a bit tired of the education establishment dictating this, that and the other to me and then **** off on strike when they feel like it. You didn’t seem worried about my childs education then did you.

I wonder how this will get enforced.

it is a legal requirement that a child attends school

Duckman, no, the legal requirement is for education, not school attendance.

Loads here
http://www.underhill.nildram.co.uk/law.htm

I don’t suppose it’ll make any difference whatsoever
people will just ignore Gove

I don’t want noisy kids on holiday when I am, I’ve raised my kids now so I don’t want anyone else’s upsetting my R&R 😀

anyway – Gove?
There’s something wrong with him, one look at him tells you that

If that’s the case parents will simply take them out of school and say that the kids are ill. Pointless exercise. What difference is a week or so going to make to a kids education.

Please be my Dad Stoner.

If you can manage not to spread mud all over the inside of my campervan Matthew, then consider yourself adopted, and Stoner Jr will be put up for scientific research….

Farmers Choice – did you actually bother to read the text?

Who is doing the “dictating” in this circumstance? Who did the striking and against whom?

Seems fair to me tbh.

Having kids means having to accept that your life will change and you’ll have to be less selfish in what you want to do.

I’m happy to let the schools educate my children and say when they want them to attend. It is especially important that children not miss school these days with the youth unemployment problem.

If you want to take your kids out of school to save money so you can go somewhere nice, then you have to accept the consequences.

Holiday destinations are less important to kids than adults, so you can go somewhere cheaper and still have a great family holiday.

consider yourself adopted

*skips round room. Books July off work*

It’s the government who set the rules not the teachers FC. They as peed off with Gove as everyone else.

However there is plenty of evidence about the correlation about attendance and attainment. Parents who invest care and energy in their children’s education might well not cause any damage but those who expect the schools to shoulder all the responsibility tend to cause disruption to learning patterns.

Seems fine to me, and perfectly common sense. Just inconvenient for some. It’s not the ones who’s parents have good plans for and will compensate for missing time that it’s to protect, it’s for the kids who’ll get forgotten in a pool while the parents are off getting cheap beers all holiday who just want the cheapest possible trip to some minging tourist resort. Hopefully the intelligent parents will see the reasoning and the need to protect the kids who’s parent’s don’t care.

Parents could simply say that they feared it may snow so decided to hold off chancing the dangerous conditions for a couple of weeks

Convert – yes, I did read the full Times article and I have aired an opinion. That’s all really.

At present, head teachers have the discretion to approve two weeks of absence from school for each child, which is supposed to be for illness, bereavement or when children cannot get to school because of bad weather.

That seems to be a bit nonsensical. What if the child is ill for three weeks? Can the headmaster no authorise and illness of that length? Hmmmmm. You’re not ill because you’re not allowed to be. If only it worked for major illnesses.

Guess my kids will do without then as I can’t always have the school holidays off and I do the holiday leave. Might be selfish of me wanting to take my kids on holiday rather do another week at school but there you go I like being selfish and spend time with my kids.

Farmers choice you do realise that the education establishment have known Gove is a complete **** **** for some time dont you?
All part of his plan to make private education mkre attractive imo.

TBH – I think most head teachers refused any request outright anyway

More headline grabbing BS from Gove. If this actually happens it’ll just encourage people to lie and the ‘illness’ stats will go through the roof…

Already been done by some ducation authorities..
Wanted to take my great neice to mayhem last year, would mean she
would miss 2 days so school, cost to her mother, £80 per day missed.

Stoner Jr is pencilled in for a serious bout of grazed knee come July….

Guess my kids will do without then as I can’t always have the school holidays off and I do the holiday leave. Might be selfish of me wanting to take my kids on holiday rather do another week at school but there you go I like being selfish and spend time with my kids.

You can’t do long weekends or take one of the 2 months in the summer off? What’s your profession?

As far as I was concerned, as a kid, school was compulsory, holidays mid-term were not even on the table as an option, it just never crossed anyone’s mind.

would miss 2 days so school, cost to her mother, £80 per day missed.

That’s just so silly.

Im glad our head is so forward thinking.

They should stop the holiday companies doubling the prices in the school holidays, that’d be more sensible. It’s the only reason I’ve ever taken my son out of school in term time.

Consequences? A number of excellent skiing holidays that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford. Some great memories. Lots of family time together in great locations doing things we enjoy. He left school having passed all his GCSE’s and got a place in the college he wanted to.

They’re consequences I can live with.

You can’t do long weekends or take one of the 2 months in the summer off? What’s your profession?

Dracs the local STW Vampire aka Drunk Taxi.

You new round here CK? 😉

Surely just go on holiday for a week and then send junior back to school with a 100% genuine sicknote?

Another reason to go private, maybe he’ll get an award for ‘Services to Industry’ 😉

TBH – I think most head teachers refused any request outright anyway

Ours didn’t. I guess they look at how well the kid is doing in class, what they’re like for attendance, whether the parents turn up for parents evening and are supportive, that sort of thing. If all boxes are ticked, have a nice time.

As AD says all this will do is encourage more normally law abiding people to break the rules. It won’t make a jot of difference to those parents whose kids have truancy problems.

1 to 2 weeks per year out is not going to damage the education of most kids, sure 2 weeks out in an exam year may have a negative effect, a week out when they’re seven won’t make a jot of difference.

I do hope he’s also going to play this the other way so the days lost through strikes and bad weather are made up or was missing these days not detrimental to the childrens education. Local primary school near me closed for an extra week as they were moving into a new school. No mention of that time being made up.

Headline grabbing ******** that totally fails to address the real problems.

They should stop the holiday companies doubling the prices in the school holidays, that’d be more sensible. It’s the only reason I’ve ever taken my son out of school in term time.

Consequences? A number of excellent skiing holidays that we otherwise wouldn’t have been able to afford. Some great memories. Lots of family time together in great locations doing things we enjoy. He left school having passed all his GCSE’s and got a place in the college he wanted to.

They’re consequences I can live with.

This is most likely the scenario for every parent on here. If they are worried about truancy then tackle that.

I’m all for giving kids a better sense of the wider world, but the fact remains that most parents (at least the ones which the chinless wonder that is Michael Gove seems to be targeting) take kids out of school to go on cheaper holidays. Admittedly I may have a chip on my shoulder, as it was always the wealthy kids’ parents who took them out of school before the summer holidays. Otherwise they might have been forced to downgrade their hotel on the playa de las americas or whatever, whilst my parents couldn’t afford to take us much further than the next county.(Yes still a little bitter 30 years on)
Having said that I would still find it incredibly hard to support anything that that patricular MP proposed. Start of another thread I suppose

You new round here CK?

No, just really really poor memory when it comes to stuff that isn’t numbers and logic I’m afraid!

I don’t really see how such work would stop you having summer/school hols off, but I’m not in that field so what do I know.

To be fair, the teachers I know well enough to talk about work have complained that their heads moaned that they’re sick of being asked to judge which kids are good enough to be taken out of school for holidays and having to present a two-tier approach, so I expect it’ll be fairly well received in general.

Teachers must hate the expensive holidays as much as the rest of us.

How about having an inset week every now & then instead of occasional days ? (no, I have no idea what teachers actually do on these days, where they do it or with how many other colleagues)

Then parents can maybe take their kids away outside of the holiday peaks and teachers can choose either do their inset training on those days or else during one week of the holiday period and have the cheaper week off instead. Some schools could take these weeks before holidays, others after to stagger it all across the country

We’ve had the last week of summer term off for several years now while my 2 were at juniors. School was fine about it but if not, I’d expect a detailed plan of exactly what DVDs and “bring in your own toys” they’d be enjoying whilst at school 🙄

Oh, and Gove’s a turd

As far as I was concerned, as a kid, school was compulsory, holidays mid-term were not even on the table as an option, it just never crossed anyone’s mind.

indeed. I hardly missed a day of school ever for anything – even dentist was out of school time.

So when your child has missed something in school because you took them on holiday why should the teacher have to redo that with them disadvantaging the other kids? Or your kids doesn’t get that bit.

Stoner – I am fairly sure attendance is mandatory not discretionary unless you are given permission